Re CX (No 2) (Domestic Abuse: No Contact) [2026] EWFC 230
In Re CX (No 2) (Domestic Abuse: No Contact) [2026] EWFC 230, the Family Court took what Mr Justice Garrido described as the “exceptional course” of suspending contact between a father and his six-year-old daughter for a period of three years.
The decision shows the court’s welfare jurisdiction where a child enjoys a positive relationship with a parent, but the continuation of that relationship is found to pose a serious risk to the psychological health of the child’s primary carer and, in turn, to the child’s longer-term welfare.
Background
The proceedings concerned CX, a six-year-old girl. Her mother, referred to as AZ, applied to vary the existing child arrangements order and sought an order that CX should have no direct or indirect contact with her father, BY.
BY opposed the application. He sought to preserve his relationship with CX to the greatest extent possible.
The parties had previously been involved in extensive private law children proceedings. In earlier proceedings, findings were made that the parents’ relationship had been characterised by “extreme emotional and psychological abuse of the mother” perpetrated by the father over a number of years before the parties separated in 2020.
In a judgment delivered on 20 January 2022, the court found patterns of behaviour deliberately intended to worsen the mother’s anxiety, intimidate her and cause her to feel subordinate. Concerns had become sufficiently serious during 2017, 2018 and 2019 that welfare professionals considered making disclosures to the father’s employer, although the mother did not consent to that course. Safety plans were instead put in place and the mother was referred to support services.
The Existing Child Arrangements
In September 2023, a District Judge made provision for CX to spend time with her father under a carefully staged arrangement.
Contact initially took place under supervision before progressing to supported contact and subsequently to unsupervised time. The duration of contact was gradually increased from two hours to six hours over approximately eight months.
Importantly, the evidence before Mr Justice Garrido was not that contact between CX and her father was itself negative. On the contrary, CX was enthusiastic about seeing him and appeared genuinely to enjoy the time they spent together.
The difficulty arose from the effect that the continuation of contact arrangements had upon AZ.
The Mother’s Complex PTSD
The court received extensive expert evidence concerning the psychological consequences of the domestic abuse experienced by the mother and her diagnosis of complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or CPTSD.
The evidence ultimately led the court to conclude that continuation of the existing arrangements, or realistically any alternative form of ongoing contact, would prevent the mother from recovering from CPTSD.
This presented the court with an unusually difficult welfare balancing exercise. On one side was CX’s loving and positive relationship with her father. On the other was the risk that the continuation of that relationship through ongoing contact arrangements would undermine her mother’s psychological health to such an extent that she might become unable properly to meet CX’s needs.
Alternatives to No Contact
The history of the proceedings was important. A number of alternatives had already been attempted, including supervised contact, supported contact, tightly controlled handover arrangements and a reduction in the frequency of contact.
The Children’s Guardian considered the realistic alternatives and did not identify any arrangement capable of addressing the fundamental difficulty.
Mr Justice Garrido recorded the submission that, had there been a way of enabling the mother’s recovery while maintaining the father-daughter relationship, the Guardian would have identified it. The available alternatives had been exhausted and the court was ultimately faced with what the judge described as a “binary choice”.
The Welfare Decision
The court plainly recognised the immediate harm that would be caused to CX by the suspension of her relationship with her father.
Mr Justice Garrido found that CX loved both of her parents, was enthusiastic about contact with her father and genuinely enjoyed spending time with him. Equally, she was happy and secure in her mother’s care and her mother was fundamental to her wellbeing.
The judge considered that, if CX were capable of understanding the adult issues involved, she would want her mother to recover sufficiently to provide the best possible care throughout her childhood. Such recovery might also create the prospect of a less restrictive relationship with her father in the future.
Mr Justice Garrido concluded: “In my judgment, the immediate cessation of contact, whilst painful in the short term, is the only way to secure CX’s medium and long term welfare, promoting the likelihood of two healthy parents able to meet her needs through her childhood, adolescence and beyond.”
The court found that maintaining the status quo, or imposing some other continuing form of contact, carried an appreciable risk that the mother would cease to be able to meet CX’s needs, exposing the child to significant and potentially unmanageable harm.
Conversely, stopping contact would cause CX acute emotional harm and create a risk of longer-term harm, including the possibility that the father-daughter relationship might ultimately be lost.
The decision therefore involved balancing serious harm whichever course the court selected.
On the evidence before it, the court determined that the greater risk to CX’s long-term welfare arose from continuing contact.
The Three-Year Suspension
Expert evidence suggested that a period of approximately two to three years might allow the mother sufficient opportunity to recover so that the question of contact between CX and her father could properly be considered again.
The court therefore suspended contact for three years.
Before that suspension takes effect, CX is permitted to spend time with her father on one further occasion. During that meeting, BY is to explain the position to CX using an agreed narrative.
The father has also prepared a photograph album for CX, which is to be given to her at that meeting.
The order does not entirely remove the father from knowledge of his daughter’s life. The mother is required to provide quarterly updates about CX through her solicitor, including information concerning CX’s education.
The Significance of the Decision
An order preventing a child from having direct contact with a parent with whom the child enjoys a loving and positive relationship is highly unusual. I have worked in the family courts for many years and cannot recall many occasions when it has happened. The last case I remember was a decade ago, and the applicant father in that case was not the biological father of the child.
This is a powerful reminder that the court’s paramount consideration remains the welfare of the individual child. The existence of positive contact will not necessarily determine the outcome where the wider consequences of maintaining that contact create an unacceptable risk to the child’s stability and care.
The case is also an example of the court considering the continuing impact of domestic abuse long after the abusive relationship itself has ended. The welfare consequences of abuse may extend beyond the immediate behaviour between the parents and may materially affect what child arrangements are capable of operating safely.
The judgment does not treat the suspension of contact as punishment of the father. Nor does it proceed on the basis that CX derives no benefit from her relationship with him. The decision rests upon the court’s assessment of competing welfare risks and its finding that the mother’s recovery was necessary to protect CX’s longer-term wellbeing.
The three-year period also leaves open the possibility that the father-daughter relationship may be revisited once the mother has had a meaningful opportunity to recover. It is a difficult distinction between an order which brings contact to an end indefinitely and one which imposes a substantial interruption because, on the evidence presently available, no less restrictive arrangement is capable of protecting the child’s welfare.
Re CX (No 2) is likely to be of particular interest to practitioners dealing with private children proceedings involving domestic abuse, parental trauma, applications to suspend contact and cases in which the psychological functioning of a primary carer is directly relevant to the welfare analysis. I suspect we will be referring to this case in court often in the coming years.
For assistance in this area of law, contact clerks@anvilchambers.co.uk