A v B (private law final hearing - application for non-molestation order)

Samara Brackley for the respondent mother, instructed by Emma Leavesley of Penningtons Manches Cooper LLP

(i)                  There has already been a decision that fact-finding should not form a part of the final hearing;

(ii)               there is a risk of unfairness to the mother should the Court dismiss her allegations, for example on the basis that there was no corroborating evidence, when she had not in fact ever been directed to prepare for such a hearing, for example by obtaining relevant police disclosure, witness statements, or notes of contemporaneous accounts;

(iii)             equally there is a risk of unfairness to the father if findings were to be made against him, for example about allegations within the mother�s evidence which he was not previously warned about, and did not have opportunity to respond formally, and to consider ways of challenging what she said;

(iv)              these allegations have come back into the frame due to the father�s application for a non-molestation order, but the question that I have to determine to resolve that application is not whether or not the mother�s allegations are proved on a balance of probabilities to be true (which would be the domain of the fact-finding exercise which has been discounted).� I have to determine whether she has engaged in conduct which amounts to harassment of the father.�