FD24P00235 - [2025] EWHC 952 (Fam)

The differences between the mother and the father evident in their respective accounts regarding questions of birth, backgrounds and nationality continue to be apparent when it comes to the circumstances of the parents’ relationship.

At this hearing, the mother has maintained that the parties met in Dubai in 2017 when she was 17 years old. However, as Ms Khalique KC noted in her judgment, this would have meant the father was 14 or 15 years old when the parties first met. The father states he has never been to Dubai so could not have met the mother in that jurisdiction. He maintains that the parents met online in 2009 on a website identifying Muslim marriage partners, the father having converted to Islam in around 2008. After being in contact by phone, email and text, the father states that he travelled to London on 30 April 2010 and married the mother at a ceremony at her sister’s house at the beginning of August 2010. The father produces a photograph which he asserts depicts the wedding. The father’s account is corroborated by an email from the East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre dated 27 February 2024, confirming that an Islamic marriage took place. Thereafter, the father asserts the parties were married in a civil ceremony in Bolivia to enable him to make an application for the US spousal visa for the mother to which I have referred. Again, the father produces documentary evidence of that marriage in the form a copy of a marriage certificate dated 15 February 2012 (together with Bolivian document detailing the parties later divorce in 2023 following breakdown of their relationship).

The mother, at this hearing, maintained her denial that the parents have ever been married. However, whilst the mother asserts that the documents relied on by the father from East London and Bolivia are forgeries and that his photograph does not show a wedding in London, it is plain from the information available to the court from the United States that in the past the mother consistently maintained that she and the father met in person for the first time in, and were married in, London and did so until the father issued his proceedings under the 1980 Hague Convention.

For example, the mother stated to the DA in Colorado in 2020 that the parents met in London (in oral evidence the mother alleged for the first time that she gave this account to the DA as a man named ‘Ryan’ had made threats to kill her and the children). On 10 August 2020, to officials in Colorado and to the District Attorney, the mother confirmed that the parents had been married in a Mosque in London in 2010. There are multiple other documents in the bundle that record the mother making references to her and the father being married, including her petition for an injunction for protection against domestic violence in 2017 and her application for a Civil Protection Order in 2020, her 911 call on 24 June 2020, the affidavit of probable cause on 18 July 2020 and such of her medical records as are before the court. The mother repeated this account in this jurisdiction to UK Border Force officials when seeking asylum, stating that she and the father married on 1 August 2010, and to the local authority and the Home Office. Within this context, it is further clear from the evidence before the court that the mother only began asserting that the parents had met in Dubai and that she was not married to the father after he issued proceedings under the 1980 Convention. The mother now seeks to argue both that the father “coached” her to give an account of meeting and marrying in London when in the United States and that she was too scared on arrival in England to reveal the truth as she “received lots of threats”.

I am satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the parties met in London in April 2010 and were married in an Islamic ceremony in London shortly thereafter. There is no evidence that the parents met in Dubai, and the dates provided by the mother would mean that the father was in his early teens when the parents met. The father has produced photographic evidence of his wedding to the mother and an Islamic marriage certificate from the East London Mosque. He likewise produces the marriage (and divorce) certificate from Bolivia that preceded the mother being granted a spousal visa in Bolivia for entry into the US. Prior to the issue of proceedings under the 1980 Hague Convention, the mother herself confirmed to agencies in the US and the UK that the parents met and married in London. I reject the mother’s assertion that she gave these accounts under duress.