Reported Case: 3 Members of 4PB Appear in Re Y (Experts and Alienating Behaviour: The Modern Approach) [2026] EWFC 38

Judgment in Re Y (Experts and Alienating Behaviour: The Modern Approach) [2026] EWFC 38 has been handed down by The President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, in which three members of 4PB appeared.

Justin Ageros acted for the applicant mother in the proceedings, instructed by Georgiana Farnell and Jenny Beck KC (Hon) of Beck Fitzgerald Solicitors.

Jo Delahunty KC, leading Chris Barnes, instructed by Peggy Ray of Goodman Ray Solicitors, represented the child (Y).

The President allowed the mother’s application to set aside the historic findings of ‘parental alienation’ and emotional abuse made in 2019–2020. Those findings had been based upon the court’s acceptance of the evidence of an unregulated expert, Melanie Gill. They resulted in the removal of the mother’s two children, then aged 12 and 9, from her care and in an order for no contact unless and until she completed therapy recommended by Ms Gill. That therapy required her to accept Ms Gill’s assessment and the court’s findings founded upon it. She did not do so.

Accordingly, there was no contact between the mother and either child from December 2019 until January 2025. The findings and the children’s removal were supported at the time by the father, Cafcass and the local authority, and were endorsed by the court in what the President has now described as a “fundamentally unsound… failure of the whole process.”

The President further ordered that Y, now aged 15, should live with his mother. That outcome followed earlier proceedings in LM (A Child) (Interim Welfare Arrangements), in which Y, represented by Jo Delahunty KC and Chris Stevenson, brought separate proceedings after absconding from his father’s care to his mother’s home and refusing to return. Mrs Justice Lieven concluded that the best interests of the child would be met by living, on an interim basis, with a family friend (Ms W) and her family for the next few months.

Melanie Gill’s reports have now been central to a number of judicial decisions, including O v C [2025] EWFC 334, in which Justin Ageros (instructed by Jasmine Hollis of Beck Fitzgerald solicitors) 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 Ms Gill.

The President’s judgment provides important guidance on a range of important issues: the proper approach to allegations of alienating behaviours, the use of unregulated experts in the Family Court and the procedure and practice around applications to set aside findings of fact. The mother in this case likened the Court’s findings of fact, and the removal of her children which flowed from those findings, to a ‘noose around her neck for 6 years’. The President pays tribute in his judgment to her tenacity in continuing to challenge those earlier decisions, which had such a profoundly disruptive impact on the lives of the children and the mother.