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

The appellant supported his application for permission to appeal with a document entitled witness statement which is dated 17 May 2024. It was in reality a skeleton argument. Within that document he set out his grounds of appeal which included the following:

Within his witness statement the appellant expanded upon that ground stating that the further application to vary was made by the respondent in a skeleton argument sent to the court for the hearing on 26 April 2024 but sent to an old unmonitored email address of the appellant which the respondent, he says, knew he would not access and not the email address to which the court had previously permitted service.

Within his witness statement, the appellant also complained that HHJ Oliver had extended the order for child beyond the child of the family’s eighteenth birthday. In relation to that he stated that The judge gave no reason in the hearing except that the Respondent needs it and the judge himself can make such an order. The appellant argues that the case law requires that the circumstances must be exceptional before such order can be made. He says that HHJ Oliver failed to say why he considered this case to be exceptional such as to justify making the order.

After receipt of the relevant transcripts, the appellant’s skeleton argument in support of his application for permission to appeal is dated 15 November 2024. He relied upon that document for the appeal. Within that document he expanded upon his grounds of appeal and provided additional information, namely, that he says that he had sought a form of order that would end his spousal and child maintenance obligations at the end of the academic year following the eighteenth birthday of their daughter. That application was, he says, filed and served on 9 February 2024. As he puts the intention of his application was to reduce the temporal scope, not the quantum of the child and spousal maintenance orders then in force. The appellant argues that HHJ Oliver failed to consider his application and repeatedly stated during the April 2024 hearing that he had no application from the appellant. He also argues that when extending the order beyond the child’s eighteenth birthday HHJ Oliver was drawn into speculation that his income was greater than disclosed. He submits that the total level of maintenance (child and spousal) exceeds the needs of the respondent and child. I have set out the appellant’s arguments because I have read and understood them. I note that they are outside the grounds upon which permission has been granted and that they thus do not have any direct relevance to the issues before this court which is a court of appeal.

In his skeleton argument the appellant took me to case law. I have read it all but directed myself specifically to that which is relevant to the grounds of appeal upon which permission has been granted.

The respondent filed and served her skeleton argument in response to the application for permission to appeal on 28 November 2024. Like the appellant, she too relied upon that skeleton argument at the appeal. Within it she asserts that the skeleton argument for the hearing at first instance was served on the appellant at the correct email address on 23 January 2024 in readiness for the hearing on 24 January 2024. It was within this document that she made her application for the child maintenance order to be extended beyond the child’s eighteenth birthday. The application was made before the child turned eighteen on 2 February 2024 although she accepts it was disposed of in the April 2024 hearing, after the child’s eighteenth birthday. She asserts that the appellant had notice of it and seeks to demonstrate that knowledge by reference to the oral argument she says she presented before HHJ Oliver in January 2024 and her letters to the appellant dated 9 February 2024 which specifically referred to an application to extend beyond their child’s eighteenth birthday.