Samson v Samson
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE ORMROD,LORD JUSTICE DUNN,MRS. JUSTICE HEILBRON |
| Judgment Date | 12 January 1982 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1982] EWCA Civ J0112-1 |
| Docket Number | 82/0024 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 12 January 1982 |
[1982] EWCA Civ J0112-1
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL
ON APPEAL FROM THE OXFORD COUNTY COURT
(His Honour Judge Clover)
Royal Courts of Justice
Lord Justice Ormrod
Lord Justice Dunn
and
Mrs. Justice Heilbron
82/0024
81 D 1743
MISS JUDITH M. F. PARKER (instructed by Messrs Nunn Kaye & Co., solicitors, Bucks.) appeared on behalf of the Respondent (Petitioner).
MRS. E. B. SOLOMONS (instructed by Messrs Geoffrey Wicks & Co., solicitors, Bucks.) appeared on behalf of the Appellant (Respondent).
This is an appeal by a husband from an order made by His Honour Judge Clover at Oxford County Court on 2nd December this year when he held that the wife was entitled to an order excluding the husband from the former matrimonial home and made an order accordingly.
The learned judge's judgment indicates considerable sympathy for the husband. He started it off by saying:
"This case causes me difficulty because of the sympathy which I cannot help but feel for the husband."
He went on to refer to the allegations in the wife's petition, which certainly are vague and far from "strong". The learned judge, having heard the wife in the witness-box, noted and indeed commented upon the fact that she could not actually state what her objections were to living with her husband, although he thought that she was an intelligent and articulate person. She could do no more than say "I hate him", and so on. But the learned judge found at an early stage in his judgment—and this is one of the important findings in the case—that these two people cannot get on. He said that he thought the wife was "relentless and unforgiving to her husband's faults and failings" but he accepted that she meant what she said when she said she could not bear to be in the same house as he. Note the language—"could not bear to be in the same house as he". The learned judge was satisfied that the wife would not return if the husband was living in the house. So he had to consider the resulting situation, which was that the wife and the two children, one aged not quite 5 and the other a year old, were living in grossly overcrowded conditions in the wife's mother's house. It meant that the 5 year old child was sleeping on the floor and the mother and the two children were all in one room. That he thought was not at all a satisfactory arrangement for the children of a man earning a substantial income, as the husband in this case is. Having expressed considerable sympathy for the husband, he found himself constrained in the interests of the children to make the order which the wife sought.
We have said in this court on many occasions that it is extremely difficult for any court to deal with these problems in isolation; that is, an order relating to the occupancy of the former matrimonial home in isolation from some decision as to custody, interim or otherwise, of the children. But, for reasons which must be strong because it seems so habitual, neither party in these ouster cases seems willing to take the initiative of asking for custody. It is quite obvious in this case that the wife has no case at all for an order ousting the husband from the matrimonial home unless she is to be responsible for looking after the children. It would be quite ridiculous to order him out if it were not for the children and so the children become the centre of the problem. But because of the delays involved in welfare reports and so on, the issue of interim custody is, in effect, ducked in these cases, and it is not at all satisfactory.
One has only to take the facts of this case. If, on the evidence available, the court decided that the wife should have the interim custody of these two children and, having regard to their age, it would be very surprising if the court did not decide in her favour—there would have to be serious criticism of her capacity as a mother to justify taking a child of one year old away from her—is it conceivable that any court would insist upon her living in the very unsatisfactory conditions that she is living in now, while the father of the children would be living alone in the former matrimonial home which was, after all, the children's home just as much as his? I think that no court would make such an order. It would be obvious, if the matter were approached from that direction, that there would have to be an order excluding the husband. It is unfortunate that these matters are not dealt with in that way. The consequence is that we get into this unreal world of trying to debate on very limited material such issues as to whether the wife was 'justified' or not in leaving the matrimonial home. The only way of resolving that in a hurry, as these cases have to be dealt with, is by looking at the petition and making some comments on it, which is never a very wise or safe way of assessing the strength of the case, or by listening, as the judge did in this case, to the wife trying to describe the problems that she was having at home.
I do not want to comment on the situation between the husband and wife in this case, except to make a few points. There is an allegation in the petition, which, as I have said before, is not at all strong enough, which may be of importance and certainly could explain much of the trouble, and that is an allegation made by the wife that she found a written statement (the husband, I should say, is a solicitor) written by the husband and his mother containing a list of wrongful allegations against the wife. Her main complaint is that her confidence has been completely undermined by her husband's continual criticism of her.
Another significant point appears at the end of Dr. Bagg's report, the child psychiatrist who saw this 5 year old. I will not read it...
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Richards v Richards
...the existing accommodation where she was then living was "overcrowded and not a fit home for the children". Contrasting the case with Samson v. Samson ( infra) he said that the wife had told him that she "could not bear to be in the same house as the husband". He added: "The wife is strong-......
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O'B v O'B
...Cooper (No. 1) [1955] P. 99. 5 P. v. P. (High Court: 12th March, 1980). 6 McLaughlin v. McLaughlin [1956] N.I. 73. 7 Samson v. Samson [1982] 1 W.L.R. 252. 8 C. v. C. [1976] I.R. 254. Husband and wife - Incompatibility - Matrimonial home - Barring order - Exclusion of husband - Whether warra......
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Jennifer Ann Watson (Appellant (Petitioner) v Glyn Alexander Watson (Respondent
...[1982] 1 WLR, 244, which was followed in the same report by other judgments in this court on the same subject, Myers -v- Myers and Samson -v- Samson. 12 If it were to be established that the wife was applying for an injunction ordering the husband from the house without reasonable grounds t......