FA-2024-000131 - [2025] EWHC 2361 (Fam)

This is an appeal against the extension of the duration of a child maintenance order beyond the age of eighteen years. It was made by HHJ Oliver on 26 April 2024. The amount payable under the order is not at issue in this appeal. The grounds upon which permission to appeal was allowed were limited. They are:

The appellant is a qualified and practising solicitor. The respondent is a qualified but non-practicing lawyer. They represented themselves before HHJ Oliver and before me.

The child in question is a child of the marriage between the parties. The appellant is their father, the respondent their mother. The child was born in February 2006. The initial hearing before HHJ Oliver was on 24 January 2024. The hearing had been listed in response to the respondent’s application, a D50K, for Enforcement Directions. That D50K application was dated 6 November 2023. The application to extend the duration of the child maintenance order was made informally in the respondent’s skeleton argument for the hearing on 24 January. That hearing was adjourned principally to enable the appellant to issue an application to vary downwards the amount payable under child and spousal maintenance orders which were already in existence and to provide medical evidence in support of his application. However, as matters turned out the appellant did not issue any such application and provided no such evidence for the adjourned hearing on 26 April 2024. The appellant’s position at the April hearing was that he had not filed any such application because by then he had the means to comply with the orders then in force. However, that was not the end of the matter. HHJ Oliver on 26 April 2024 proceeded to determine the respondent’s application for an extension of the duration of the child maintenance order then in force. HHJ Oliver decided to extend the child maintenance order until 31 August 2028. The appellant objected to that extension. It is the extension of that order which is the subject of this appeal.