Thorpe goes bonkers abroad Thorpe finds that it is in the best interests of the children if their mother permanently ends contact between a father's children and their father by emigrating with his children to another country and living with a man resident in that country who is married to another woman. London, July 31, 2003, Court of Appeal TWO fathers are to lose regular contact with their children after their former wives won the right yesterday to take them abroad with their new partners. The Court of Appeal reversed the decisions of county court judges who had refused the mothers permission to relocate the children, in one case to South Africa and in the other to Australia. Lord Justice Thorpe said that to frustrate "natural emigration" risked the survival of the new family or blighted its potential for" fulfilment and happiness". He said: "Often there will be a price to be paid in welfare terms by the diminution of the hildren's contact with their father and his extended family." He said that it was also possible for a father to take employment abroad after separation or to marry a foreigner and there would be the same loss of contact. "These are the tides of chance and life and in the exercise of its paternalistic jurisdiction it is important that the court should recognise the force of these movements and not frustrate them unless they are shown to be contrary to the welfare of the child." Both cases involve mothers whose marriages broke down and who want to marry new partners. None of the parties can be named to protect the identities of the children. One of the mothers, who is 40, married her husband, now 44, in 1986 and they had two children who are aged 7 and 10. The marriage began to fall apart in 1999 after the mother met a wealthy South African businessman. Both began divorce proceedings in 2002, but although the mother's divorce comes through next month, her new partner is not yet free to remarry. In the second case the 32-year-old mother has a six-year-old child by her marriage to the 38-year-old father. They were divorced last year. The
mother met a Philippines citizen with right of residence
in Australia and they want to set up home
in Perth, where the man has a well-paid job. Source: Frances Gibb, Legal Editor The Times, July 31, 2003, Mothers can take children to new life overseas
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