Case No. EWFC-75

– At C111 there is a statement from B. In it, he says that: i) he has heard the husband saying on many occasions that he is the owner of the restaurant; ii) he can confirm that his father is married to the 7th respondent; iii) the two children are the children of the 7th respondent and his father; iv) he has visited 4 Morland Rd where his father stays with his ‘stepmother’ and half siblings. The husband responds to this statement at D3, denying B’s primary assertions.114.In oral evidence B said that he had come to court so that the truth might be known. His mother had wanted him to come to court and his father had told him not to get involved; I believe that account. 115.He said that he had typed the main body of his statement at C111; he asked E how to structure the statement but did not know she had done one. He was cross examined on the similarities between the wording of his statement with that of E (C109). Given those similarities, I was expecting to hear B say that he had written a draft statement and a solicitor had transposed it into the statement at C111; he did not say that. Having studied the similarities in language, contention, content and font between the statements of B and E, I do not believe the account that B gave as to how his statement came to be filed in those terms. Nor do I accept that E and B did not discuss their statements together.116.He said that he has worked at ‘my Dad’s restaurant’. When he finished his GSCE’s last summer he worked there on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays over the summer. He said that his father was paying him about £200 pw in cash for the work that he did as a waiter. The father denied that B was working that often at the restaurant or that he was paid £200 p.w. On that issue, I believe B.117.He said that, when he was younger, his Dad used to dress him up and send him to the restaurant where people called him ‘junior boss.’ He referred to a time some years ago when he thought that ‘one of the other workers, a Mr Haque, was the owner of the restaurant and I ran to the back of the restaurant and started crying and my father told me: ‘Oh no, he’s not the owner. I am the boss.’ I am boss of restaurant’. B said that his father said this in broken English and would say on other occasions ‘this is my restaurant.’ I believe that evidence from B also. The husband said in evidence that he told B, on the occasion in question, that he was the ‘manager’ of the restaurant. The difference between ‘boss’ and ‘manager’ for these purposes is unimportant but, given the husband’s poor English, I think that ‘boss’ was more likely. I accept that the husband did not tell B that he was the ‘owner’ of the restaurant premises. He did assert his role as the person who ran the business although I also find that he fulfilled that role in conjunction with Almas. As B said in cross examination: ‘My Dad was in charge. He was the boss of the restaurant. He did not say he was the owner. He said that he was the boss. He said this a few times.’118.B said that Morland Rd is his brother’s home - his evidence made repeated reference to X, rather than Y. He described X as his ‘step-brother’ although the difference between stepbrother and half-brother was merely language and his assertion was that he knew that X was his brother. In cross examination he said: ‘My mum told me when I was young that my father was married to someone else and that is when I knew that X was my half-brother. I say that he is my half-brother because my dad is married to R7. No one but my mum has said that my father is married to Sume Begum.’ I accept that the source of B’s information on this issue has been his mother. For reasons that I have stated, I do not accept that she had reliable evidence that Sume Begum was married to the husband or that X or Y are his children. The wife certainly believed that to be the case and, I find, has educated the children into her own beliefs. I do not blame B for this. I have already stated my findings about the alleged marriage to Sume Begum and the paternity of the two children. 119.B said that, from June / July 2021 he used to stay at 4 Morland Rd every week and would spend the night there. He said that his Dad would sleep in a room with him and then, when he went to sleep, his Dad would go to Sume Begum’s room. I asked B how he knew that, and he said that he had seen his father coming out of her room when he went to the toilet. He said that he stopped going to Morland Rd in January / March of this year. The father denies that B saw him coming out of Sume’s bedroom. I accept B’s evidence. I accept that B had no wish to give evidence that was contrary to his father. I see no reason why he would invent that account. I do not accept that the wife’s influence would extend to the point of him doing so.120.B said that his father was living at 4 Morland Rd, but he could not say for how long he had been doing so. He said that, at the top of the stairs there was his father’s room; that was the room that he and his father occupied when they stayed. He said that, every day that he worked at the restaurant with his father, his father would take him to Morland Rd to sleep. I do not accept that B is in a position to say that the father lived at Morland Rd all the time. I find that, when the father and B were working at the restaurant, they would sleep at 4 Morland Rd as B described. There is a geographical logic to that arrangement since the restaurant is in Burnham and Morland Rd is about 1.4 miles away in Highbridge, according to Google maps. For the father to have taken B back to the home in Clevedon (and to have picked up in the morning) would have involved a journey of 18.5 miles each way.121.