LM (A Child) (Interim Welfare Arrangements)

Court

The High Court of Justice Family Division

Practice Areas

Public Children Law

Three members of 4PB appear in LM (A Child) (Interim Welfare Arrangements) [2025] EWHC 3243 (Fam)

Judgment has been handed down in LM (A Child) (Interim Welfare Arrangements) [2025] EWHC 3243 (Fam), a High Court decision concerning interim welfare arrangements for a 15-year-old child, in which three members of 4PB appeared.

Jo Delahunty KC and Chris Stevenson (instructed by Peggy Ray of Goodman Ray Solicitors) appeared for the Claimant.
Justin Ageros (instructed by Georgiana Farnell of Beck Fitzgerald) appeared for the First Respondent.

The application was brought by LM, against the background of long-standing and complex private law proceedings between his parents. In December 2019, LM then aged 10, District Judge Smith made a child arrangements order providing that LM, and his older sister X, should live with their father and have no contact with their mother. That order followed findings that the mother had alienated the children from the father, findings which were reached pursuant to, and in reliance upon, the evidence of an unregulated expert, Melanie Gill. 

The present proceedings arose after LM, now aged 15 years and 7 months, absconded from his father’s care to his mother’s home and refused to return. Mrs Justice Lieven made clear that the issue before the court was not a re-litigation of past events, but the determination of where LM should live now, whether in foster care, with his mother, or with Ms W and her family, emphasising that the court’s focus was on LM’s current best interests. Mrs Justice Lieven concluded that those best interests would be met by LM living, on an interim basis, with Ms W and her family for the next few months. The court further directed that LM should have gradually increased contact with his mother, initially supervised by Ms W but progressing to unsupervised contact, with the detailed arrangements set out in the order.

The mother has issued separate proceedings seeking to reopen and set aside the historic findings, which are listed to be determined by the President of the Family Division in January 2026. At the heart of that application is criticism of Ms Gill’s assessment and the extent to which it informed the findings made in the earlier proceedings. In addressing the background to those findings, Mrs Justice Lieven observed that “it is clear that DJ Smith’s conclusions were very heavily based upon Ms Gill’s report”, and that “the decision to move the children’s residence and to prohibit the M from having any contact whatsoever with the children was based on findings of ‘parental alienation’ within Ms Gill’s report, rather than on any other significant risks posed by the M to the children.”

Ms Gill’s reports have now been central to a number of judicial decisions, including O v C [2025] EWFC 334, in which Justin Ageros successfully argued in the High Court for the setting aside of five-year-old findings of ‘parental alienation’, which had also been based on the evidence of an unregulated expert, Melanie Gill. In the wake of the judgment in O v C, the incoming Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, Claire Waxman, called upon the Ministry of Justice and the President of the Family Division to review all cases in which Ms Gill had been instructed, stating: “It is a national scandal that unregulated ‘experts’ have been given so much unchecked power.”

Read the judgment in LM (A Child) [2025] EWHC 3243 (Fam) here.