FD25P00113 - [2025] EWHC 2670 (Fam)

I repeat what I set out at the outset of the judgment namely that PD12J sets out that domestic abuse includes transnational marriage abandonment:

“2B. For the avoidance of doubt, it should be noted that “domestic abuse” includes, but is not limited to, forced marriage, honour-based violence, dowry-related abuse and trnsnational marriage abandonment.

Abandonment is defined as:

“… the practice whereby a husband, in England and Wales, deliberately abandons or “strands” his foreign national wife abroad, usually without financial resources, in order to prevent her from asserting matrimonial and/or residence rights and/or rights in relation to childcare in England and Wales. It may involve children who are either abandoned with, or separated from, their mother;”

As Moylan LJ observed in Re A (Children) [2019] EWCA Civ 74 at [§70-71]:

“It is clear from the Practice Direction that the words abandonment and stranding are not terms of art and that they are not intended to be applied in a formulaic manner. This is because there are a number of ways in which a spouse might be said to have been abandoned or stranded abroad or in which the other spouse might have sought to achieve this. I would agree with Mr Gration when he submitted that cases can include many differing elements which militates against their being placed in distinct categories.

The core feature of the concept of stranding or abandonment is the exploitation or the attempted exploitation by one spouse of the other's vulnerability or weakness to seek to ensure that they are not able to come to or return to the UK. As Peter Jackson J (as he then was) said in ZM v AM[2014] EWHC 2110 (Fam), at [1], it can be the "opportunity" the secure immigration status of one spouse and the insecure immigration status of the other gives "the former to exploit the latter's weakness". However, as PD12J makes clear, it is based more generally on "controlling, coercive or threatening behaviour, violence or abuse".