A series of high-profile stunts by the pressure group Fathers 4 Justice has put the family court system in the spotlight like never before.

But a case involving parents in the North-East has shown how complex family wrangles can be. Graeme Whitfield reports.

**********

It appeared the ultimate dilemma for a woman with outstanding career prospects - abandon your dream job or give up custody of your child.

That was the choice facing one Newcastle woman earlier this year after a judge at the city's county court told her she could not take her daughter on a two-year trip to New Zealand that she felt was necessary to further her career.

The woman - who cannot be named - has custody of her young daughter five nights a week, but the county court judge said that moving to the southern hemisphere would have too great an impact on her relationship with her father.

That left the woman facing a heartbreaking choice between leaving her daughter behind or forgetting her career dreams.

But Lord Justice Thorpe, sitting in London's Court of Appeal, has now overturned the county court decision, giving her the green light to move to New Zealand.

The decision inevitably upset the girl's father and pressure group Fathers 4 Justice said that the ruling showed the courts' implicit bias against fathers. But lawyers said that the case showed how complicated family law was becoming in an age where relationships between people from different countries and working abroad was becoming increasingly frequent.

A spokesman for the Solicitors Family Law Association said: "As the number of inter-country marriages increases, these types of cases are becoming more common.

"Applications to move children to another country are among the most difficult for the courts to decide.

"The courts must be careful to weigh up the children's best interests in every case and not assume that the mother's and the child's interests are automatically the same."

In London's Court of Appeal on Friday, Lord Justice Thorpe said that the county court judge had treated the mother's application "too harshly", as though it were a request to permanently relocate the child.

The judge, sitting with Lord Justice Wall and Mrs Justice Black, said: "Relocation exposes children to upheaval and loss of what is familiar, and loss of contact with the other parent is almost inevitable. This means such applications for permanent residence require the courts' highest level of scrutiny."

Lord Justice Thorpe said that criticisms the Newcastle judge made of the mother's concern for her career above her daughter's welfare had also been unfair.

"The judge undervalued the importance of the visit abroad to the mother's career and the fact that it was a step to facilitate her return to Newcastle and long-term employment there," he said.

Enhancing the mother's career would be of long-term benefit to the child, Lord Justice Thorpe said, though he stressed that focused and practical discussions must take place to set up regular visits for the father, as well as contact through email and video phones.

Outside court, the girl's disappointed father took a philosophical tone, saying: "That's just the way it goes, apparently."

But Matt O'Connor, from Fathers 4 Justice, said that the Appeal Court ruling risked cutting the father out of the girl's life entirely for the next two years. "Enforcing any kind of contact once a child has left the jurisdiction of the British courts is not realistic, unless the mother co-operates," he added. "The danger is that the daughter could be completely cut off from her father, but that is the way the family courts work.

"My only surprise is the way the original court verdict went.

"All the legal precedents allow mothers to go wherever they want.

"A mother could take her child to Mars if she wanted, but dads can't even move down the street.

"Certainly, if the roles were reversed, there's no way a father could take his daughter to New Zealand.

"The tragedy in this is that the daughter could lose any access to her father but that's the reality of the family courts - the child's best interests in the family court have been replaced by the mother's best interests."

Fathers 4 Justice has put the issue of the family courts in the spotlight over the last few years with a series of high-profile stunts.

Members of the group hit the headlines by throwing coloured flour at Tony Blair in the House of Commons, staging a protest at Buckingham Palace and climbing other public structures in fancy dress.

But a resolution to the increasingly tangled problems of child access in a relationship breakdown is now being sought by an inquiry chaired by Berwick MP Alan Beith.

This has been set up to look at child custody and contact arrangements as part of a general review of the family court system.

The Constitutional Affairs Select Committee will also examine whether family court judges have sufficient powers, whether cases are unduly delayed and whether those using the system get the service they deserve.

Mr Beith believes the best approach is through a mediating process, rather than "Judgement of Solomon"-style pronouncements from the courts.

He said: "There are fathers who feel their side of the story is being ignored, that they can responsibly spend more time with their children and they are not getting the access that has been granted to them.

"Equally, there are mothers concerned they may be pressed into a situation where someone who has committed domestic violence on them - and they even have a record for doing that - may be given access to their children in circumstances where they are worried about their safety.

"There are many different aspects and many different interests - perhaps most important of all, the children's interests."