Family court, child arrangements and coercive control
Family proceedings
Coercive control is now explicitly recognised in family law proceedings involving children, particularly in disputes over contact and residence. Courts are required to consider whether a pattern of controlling behaviour by one parent affects the safety or wellbeing of the other parent or the children - a significant shift from treating each incident in isolation.
Key family law cases about coercive control
Here are some family law cases that touch on coercive or controlling behaviour. Click on the citation for a link to the judgment.
Re P (Children) [2020] EWCA Civ 1088
The father had applied for contact with his children, then aged five and two. The mother opposed contact, saying he had subjected her to extreme coercive and controlling behaviour and to sexual abuse, including rape. She wanted to rely on evidence that he had behaved in a strikingly similar way towards another woman, whom a local authority had concluded he had treated in a coercive and controlling way. The judge had refused to allow that evidence.
The Court of Appeal held that the evidence that the father had behaved in a strikingly similar coercive and controlling way towards another woman could show a propensity to behave in a coercive and controlling way. It recognised that this kind of behaviour is hard to prove because it “is a pattern rather than an event”. The decision to exclude the evidence could not stand.
F v M [2021] EWFC 4
A father applied for contact with his two children, then aged six and three. In 2017, the mother had obtained a non-molestation order against him, based mainly on complaints of coercive and controlling behaviour. The court looked at his conduct in two separate relationships, conducting a two-week fact-finding hearing focusing on coercive and controlling behaviour. It found that the father had controlled the mother throughout their relationship by preventing her from getting antenatal care, isolating her from family and friends, controlling her money and food, and restricting her freedom. Early in the relationship, he had also persuaded her to close a bank account in which her parents had put money aside for her.
The judge said the term coercive and controlling behaviour needs no legal definition because it “is unambiguous and needs no embellishment”. The judge described controlling behaviour as acts designed to “render an individual subordinate and to corrode their sense of personal autonomy”. The key, he said, is a pattern or series of acts, whose impact “must be assessed cumulatively and rarely in isolation”. He also recognised that control can be financial. In Re H-N, the Court of Appeal approved the judge’s approach.
F v M [2023] EWFC 5
In this follow-up to the 2021 case, the father applied for contact barely eight weeks after the court’s findings against him. The judge said that the father had “found the opportunity to extend his controlling behaviour into the Court arena”. Courts are now alert to “Lawfare”: legal proceedings themselves being used to continue a pattern of coercive control.
Re H-N and Others (Children) [2021] EWCA Civ 448
The Court of Appeal heard four linked appeals in children cases involving allegations of domestic abuse. The court placed coercive and controlling behaviour at the centre of the modern definition of domestic abuse and recognised that it can harm children living in the household. The court accepted without reservation that a person can be a victim of controlling or coercive behaviour without ever being physically injured. It also said that a pattern of such behaviour can be as abusive as any single incident, or more so.
The court said that judges who fail to consider a properly raised pattern of coercive control, where it is relevant to future risk, may be found on appeal to have made an error. It criticised lists that itemise allegations incident by incident (sometimes called Scott Schedules), as “a potential barrier to fairness and good process, rather than an aid”. It encouraged narrative statements describing the relationship as a whole.
K v K [2022] EWCA Civ 468
The father applied to restore an existing contact arrangement that had stopped because of practical problems with transport and work shifts. He skipped the usual requirement to attend a mediation meeting first by claiming exemptions on the court form. A case that may have suited mediation instead led to a series of court hearings, and the children did not see their father for two years. The appeal concerned the fact-finding process that followed.
The Court of Appeal held that a separate fact-finding hearing should take place only where “the alleged abuse is likely to be relevant to what the court is being asked to decide relating to the children’s welfare”. The Domestic Abuse Commissioner has raised concerns that this approach may let courts avoid deciding whether abuse took place.