Case No. EWFC-50

[2011] EWHC 3431. In TJ at [24] and [25] he said:“24. In my judgment it is essential at this point to put aside the fears, aspirations and feelings of the adults and to try to look at the case through the eyes of a growing boy, as BA is. He will grow up in the family of CV and S and to him that will be unremarkable. However, he will go to school and it will not surely be long before he has questions about a father. The present proposal (reasonable in itself) is that he will be told of the kind man who enabled mummy to have him. He will hopefully grow up knowing his extended family on both sides. He will accordingly know TJ as one of his uncles. The rest of the family (on both sides) knows of course that TJ is more than that as BA will inevitably discover. To avoid this information coming out in an unplanned way, Dr.S wisely advises that BA learns early of the facts of life and of the means by which he came to be. Will it help him, I ask myself, to know also that this uncle is more to him than that? I am sure that it will. The experience of adoption, which surely we must not neglect in other less conventional forms of parenting, is that children often develop a real interest in their natural parents. This is hardly surprising since that person, however small their involvement in the life of the child, has contributed 50% of his genetic make-up. The other powerful lesson from adoption is the need for truth and the avoidance of deceit from the earliest days. Young children rarely have trouble with the truth, however strange it may seem, although the adults around them may do so. However, the discovery in adolescence that they have been duped or misled (as they may choose to see it) may have serious ramifications for family relationships.25. It is for these reasons that I think that, if it is possible to do, it is strongly in BA's interests to maintain some kind of relationship with TJ. As a bald statement that is not really controversial. Moreover both Dr. S and, more cautiously, the guardian saw such a role particularly where the court has concluded that TJ is genuine in motivation even if clumsily heavy-handed in style.”