Lee v Lee
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE DUNN,LORD JUSTICE WATKINS |
| Judgment Date | 11 August 1983 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1983] EWCA Civ J0811-1 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Docket Number | 83/0789 |
| Date | 11 August 1983 |
[1983] EWCA Civ J0811-1
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM CHICHESTER COUNTY COURT,
HIS HONOUR JUDGE BOLLAND
Royal Courts of Justice,
Lord Justice Dunn
and
Lord Justice Watkins
83/0789
MR J. RENNIE (instructed by Messrs Neville & Co.) appeared on behalf of the appellant (mother).
MR J. SESSIONS (instructed by Messrs Staffurth & Bray) appeared on behalf of the respondent (father).
This is an appeal from an order of His Honour Judge Bolland in the Chichester County Court whereby on the 6th July last he dismissed the application of Mrs Lee under section 1 of the Domestic Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act 1976 for an order excluding her co-habitee, Mr Lee, from their home at 24, Hadleigh Gardens, Bognor Regis. He accepted an undertaking by Mr Lee not to assault, molest or otherwise interfere with Mrs Lee.
The background to the application is that Mr and Mrs Lee are respectively 33 and 30 years old. They started living together in early 1977. They never married, although she calls herself Mrs Lee. She had one child by a former marriage, Sarah, who was born in July 1971, and there is a boy Jon-Paul who is a child of the parties, born in January 1978. In early 1980 they were granted by the local council a joint tenancy of the premises in question, which is a three-bedroomed council house. Mr Lee is unemployed, and it appears from the affidavits and the oral evidence of the parties that the relationship was a stormy one. They both of them seem to have been people who lacked the normal degree of self-control and there were frequent arguments and quarrels between them. Although there were no serious allegations of violence by Mrs Lee, Mr Lee says that she used violence to him on occasions. Certain it is that during the period of their cohabitation she left on more than one occasion, including an occasion in November 1982 when after leaving she made an application for non-molestation and ouster orders; but before the hearing the matter was compromised in anticipation of a reconciliation, and the judge accepted cross-undertakings by each of them not to molest the other. Mrs Lee returned to the house and they lived there together, relations becoming increasingly strained between them until some time either at the end of April or May of this year when, as a result of the stress she was feeling, Mrs Lee took a large overdose of pills, it may be coupled with drink, the effect of which was quite serious because she was in hospital for seven or eight days.
When she went to hospital Mr Lee took the elder daughter, Sarah, to her maternal grandmother who lives with her second husband in a three-bedroomed house in Worthing. There are no other children living in that house, and Sarah has been with the grandmother, who is in her middle 50's, ever since. The boy, Jon-Paul, stayed with and was looked after by his father while Mrs Lee was in hospital. While she was with her grandmother Sarah made allegations of indecency to her by Mr Lee, and those were reported to the Police. The child was medically examined. It seems that the examination afforded some corroboration of what she had said, so the Police interviewed Mr Lee and he denied all the allegations, and it has been suggested on his behalf that they were made up by Sarah because she did not like him. We were told that so far as the Police involvement is concerned, no proceedings have yet been taken. But the local Social Services Department were alerted. They obtained a place of safety order for Sarah and subsequently an interim care order placing the child in the care of the local authority, the West Sussex County Council, was made and the care proceedings were adjourned until the 8th July, the purpose being to hold the situation pending the result of the mother's ouster application in the County Court. When the mother's application was refused a further interim care order was made until the 4th August and on that date the care proceedings were discontinued. The child was ordered by the Juvenile Court to be in the custody of her mother, but there was a supervision order in favour of the West Sussex County Council. One of the terms of the supervision order was that the child should remain with her grandmother until suitable accommodation had been provided for the mother, and that in the meantime the child was not to be brought into contact with Mr Lee. So much for the position of the child Sarah.
So far as the mother, Mrs Lee, is concerned, she returned from hospital to Hadleigh Gardens for a matter of a few weeks until she discovered the allegation which Sarah had made against Mr Lee, and then she left on the 13th June taking Jon-Paul with her. She is now living with a girl friend in Tangmere. She described the accommodation as being 2 bedrooms and a living-room with a toilet downstairs and a bathroom upstairs. Her friend and one child sleep in one room and Mrs Lee and Jon-Paul sleep in the other. In her evidence Mrs Lee said that she wanted Sarah. She said "She hates living with Grandma now and wants to come to me". She also said that she could not return to Mr Lee.
So the situation on the ground is this: Mr Lee is living on his own in this three-bedroomed council house, of which Mrs Lee is the Joint tenant. She is living in unsuitable circumstances, which can only be of a temporary nature, with Jon-Paul. The child Sarah is living with her grandmother, where, according to the evidence, she is not happy, and the local authority will not let her go back to the mother until the mother is suitably housed. That was the situation as it was when it came before the judge, subject only to one thing and that was that at that time the care proceedings were still on foot relating to Sarah.
We have only been provided with a very short note of the judge's reasons. Apparently he did not give a reasoned judgment. He simply said "This is one of those hopeless applications for an ouster order. On the facts found by me, there is no evidence to support an ouster order".
This is the first case which has been decided in this court since the case of Richards v. Richards...
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