FA-2025-000247 - [2025] EWHC 2437 (Fam)

The criticisms levelled at the Recorder’s judgment in the Grounds of Appeal amount, in the final analysis, to a critique of the weight the Recorder attached, or did not attach, to the evidence that he read and heard. It is not the role of the appellate court to second guess the Recorder’s conclusions in that regard, particularly in circumstances where the appellate court has not had the benefit of hearing the witnesses and evaluating the evidence in real time in the way the Recorder has. Only if the Recorder has gone wrong, committed a serious procedural or other irregularity in the proceedings or exceeded the generous ambit of his discretion when evaluating and attaching weight to the evidence in order to arrive at a conclusion could an appeal succeed.

There is plainly no basis in this case on which it can be said that the Recorder’s order of 22 July 2025 can be so impugned. The judgment, given ex tempore by the Recorder at the conclusion of the hearing, amounts to a clearly and properly reasoned determination by a judge who, in the exercise of his discretion, was entitled on the evidence before him to make the child arrangements orders that he did. Having regard to the reasons given by the learned Recorder, there is no basis for finding that in exercising his discretion in this case that the Recorder went wrong, committed a serious procedural or other irregularity in the proceedings or exceeded the generous ambit within which a reasonable disagreement is possible. The fact that the father does not agree with the Recorder’s decision does not change that position.

Accordingly, the appeal is dismissed and the stay discharged. I will invite the parties to provide short written submissions as to costs if that issue is not capable of being agreed in the context of these being proceedings concerning children.