ZC24P00662 - [2025] EWHC 2691 (Fam)

Fecha: 17-Oct-2025

The Parties’ Submissions

41.

Ms Kirby filed a detailed skeleton argument which I have considered carefully. Her overall case on behalf of the Applicant is that the Respondent is dishonest and has played the English legal system to coercively control the Applicant and to exclude her from H’s life. She submits that judges have been fooled all along by this manipulative father. She submits he routinely files dishonest evidence, makes inappropriate without notice applications and has failed to pay maintenance. She was highly critical of the manner in which the Respondent ended the relationship with the Applicant. Her closing submissions on behalf of the Applicant (direct quotations are italicised) said inter alia:

Ms Demery has done a very superficial job and has been fooled by the big house and the grandparents;

The father has demonstrated hatred and placed his lack of respect of Applicant at the forefront of everything he has done;

The father heard the court require him to regularise the Dubai process and has called the court’s bluff

F has manipulated the courts with his 100 % dishonest behaviour with the court;

the Respondent has a made up his job in England; his life is in the Middle East;

the Respondent is disingenuous and misleading;

the Respondent has not paid maintenance and he breached an undertaking not to interfere with the Applicant’s work visa in Dubai (Ms Kirby did not engage with the findings of HHJ Jacklin in August 2024 that the father had not breached orders for H’s financial maintenance);

He obtains orders on the basis of unlawful evidence, as he did before HJJ Jacklin“one of the most extraordinary orders after one of the most extraordinary processes I have seen” (an order in respect of which permission to appeal was refused);

Ms Kirby accepts this court has jurisdiction and that this matter should be reserved to me and she also accepted there should be a s. 91 (14) order;

She sought the return of H to Dubai and the ‘resumption’ of 50:50 shared care.

42.

Mr Basi submits on behalf of the Respondent there is a risk of litigation in Dubai and that the Applicant repeatedly ignored Hemain injunctions in Dubai and converted to Islam. He says the Respondent followed orders and only raised litigation to enforce orders, aside from the abduction. He agreed with a section 91 (14) order and accepts the travel ban for 2 years. He submitted H’s best interests are clearly met by remaining in her current home and school.

43.

Miss Renton submits on behalf of H that this case is hugely sad and depressing; amounts to a highly damaging web of litigation which has blighted H’s childhood. Ms Demery is appalled by both parents’ conduct. They have lost focus on H and her welfare and have caused her emotional harm. The parents are mired in the past and they both lack insight on the impact of their behaviour on H. The closing submissions illustrate that point. Miss Renton (rightly) characterised Ms Kiby’s closing submissions as amounting to a “wildly out of time appeal”. H needs stability and security and needs a relationship with both parents and that is more likely to happen if H remains in England and she has more to lose in Dubai. The Guardian has real concerns about the weaponisation of the Dubai courts and the local police complaint process. The Guardian was very worried about the criminal complaints and counter complaints, the travel bans and the involvement of the Sharia courts. Ms Demery has no reassurance that the Applicant would not take steps in Dubai to take control of H’s life and there is a real risk of the Applicant retaining H in Dubai.