B v UK
| Judgment Date | 14 September 1999 |
Human rights – Unmarried fathers – Parental rights – Whether English law discriminated between treatment of unmarried fathers and married fathers.
On 18 August 1994 the child was born to unmarried parents. Following their separation in 1994 the father maintained regular contact with the child, who lived with and was cared for by, the mother. On 17 February 1997 the father issued an application in the county court for a parental responsibility order and a contact order under the Children Act 1989 in respect of his son. The following month the mother took the child to live in Italy. At an ex parte hearing in the High Court the father applied, inter alia, for a parental responsibility order, and a declaration that the child’s removal was wrongful within the meaning of art 8 of the Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (the Hague Convention), as set out in Sch 1 to the Child Abduction and Custody Act 1985. The court refused to grant the applications on the basis that as the father did not have parental responsibility when the mother took the child to Italy, his parental rights had not been breached, and that he did not have any formal rights of custody in English law. Thereafter the Court of Appeal refused him leave to appeal from that decision. The father issued a complaint against the United Kingdom in the European Court of Human Rights under art 14 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (the European Human Rights Convention) in conjunction with art 8, that the national law discriminated between married and unmarried fathers. The court gave a decision as to the admissibility of the complaint.
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a Article 14 of the Human Rights Convention, so far as material, is set out at p 294a–294b, post
b Article 8 of the Human Rights Convention, so far as material, is set out at p 293h–293i, post
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Held – As the relationships between unmarried fathers and their children varied from ignorance and indifference to a close stable relationship indistinguishable from the conventional family based unit, there was an objective and reasonable justification for the difference in treatment between married and unmarried fathers with regard to the automatic acquisition of parental rights under the Children Act 1989, namely the different responsibilities borne by fathers who had the child in their care and fathers who did not. Accordingly the different treatment under domestic law of the
applicant and a father with parental responsibility did not disclose a violation of art 14 of the European Human Rights Convention in conjuncture with art 8, and the court unanimously declared the application inadmissible.
Cases referred to in decisionInze v Austria (hereditary rights of illegitimate children) (1987) 10 EHRR 394, ECt HR.
McMichael v UK (compulsory care and parental rights in relation to child born out of wedlock) (1995) 20 EHRR 205, ECt HR.
ApplicationThe unmarried father issued a complaint against the United Kingdom to the European Court of Human Rights under art 14 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (the European Human Rights Convention) (Rome, 4 November 1950; TS 71 (1952); Cmd 8969) in conjunction with art 8, that the refusal of the domestic courts to grant his application for a responsibility order in respect of his son and their refusal to grant a declaration that the removal of his son from the United Kingdom to Italy by the mother was wrongful under the Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (the Hague Convention) (The Hague, 25 October 1980; TS 66 (1986); Cm 33), amounted to discrimination between unmarried and married fathers. The facts are set out in the decision of the court.
Allan Levy QC and Jeremy Rosenblatt (instructed by Daniel & Harris) for the applicant.
14 September 1999. The European Court of Human Rights (third section) delivered the following decision.
The factsThe applicant is a British national, born in 1964 and living in London.
He is represented before the court by Messrs Daniel & Harris, practising in London.
A. Particular circumstances of the caseThe facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
On 18 August 1994 a boy, J, was born to the applicant and Ms CS, an...
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