Legal Update: Restricting parental responsibility

In the recent case of H v A (No 1) (2015) EWFC 58 the court granted an order that amounted to the "comprehensive proscription of the exercise of the father's parental responsibility for the duration of the minority of the children". The case is an important example of the exceptional situations where, even if parental responsibility cannot be removed from a party, it can be significantly restricted to a point where it cannot be exercised in any meaningful sense in order to protect a child's welfare.

The case involved three children whose father was convicted of a number of offences, including battery on the mother, breach of a non-molestation order, and encouraging the commission of assault, theft, criminal damage and arson while in prison. In light of the risk to the children, the mother argued that the restriction on the father's parental responsibility needed to be "fully comprehensive" and that the disclosure of "any source of information" constituted an unacceptable risk of the father discovering the whereabouts of the mother and the children.