[2025] EWHC 2961 (Fam)

Before I deal with the recording, I pause to make some general cautionary comments about audio evidence. I firstly caution myself that such evidence may be selective from the person conducting the recording and that important parts of the surrounding context may be missing. I also remind myself that the person recording the exchange knows that s/he is being recorded. I also specially remind myself, in this case, that mother’s first language is not English.

Turning to the incident, the father has referred to what happened in his case in various sources, including in the Form C1A [470]. He alleged that mother “…threatened to go back to Japan and take our unborn child with her (she was 3 months pregnant with [the child] at this point). She told me that because of Japan’s sole custody laws, she could stop me from ever seeing [the child] or meeting her. During this period she also threatened to call the police and say that I hit her. She acknowledged it was not true, but said she could still do it. I have never forgotten this incident because firstly of how chilling the threat to call the police was, and secondly because this was the first time that she used our child against me in arguments, even though [the child] had not been born yet”.

I have listened to the recording. It lasts 16.16 minutes. The mother does indeed threaten to make allegations against him to the police. Whilst there is no transcript, I did discern her saying about an allegation that “I can prove it even though you didn’t do it”. The father refers in the exchange to being attacked by mother. She denied doing so. She alleged that the father talked in a “horrible” way to her and treated her like a “servant”. He denied doing so. She wanted him to leave. He offered to sleep on the sofa. He referred to her“…pulling the pregnancy card” about the proposed sleeping arrangements. For the avoidance of doubt, I did not discern any reference to potential court proceedings in Japan in the recording sent to me. The mother has set out her version of the wider context.

This was plainly an unpleasant argument. I am driven to comment that it seems unusual that the father sought at the time to record the exchange at that stage in their relationship. He says he kept the recording because of the above referenced “chilling” effect. I see the force in that point.

Turning to the context, I remind myself that mother was, as indicated, pregnant at the time. Furthermore, and in any event, it seems that the argument did not seemingly have any lasting effect on the parents, as revealed by the subsequent events in their shared lives from 2022 to 2024 at least, together with the abundance of real affection between them in most of the subsequent electronic messages before me.