Court upholds mother's right

The principle that children in custody battles should be raised by their mothers has won the backing of the Court of Appeal.

The precedent was set by the court's rejection of a house-husband's bid for custody of his children. Today a pressure group condemned the decision as "appalling".

The father, who had raised the children in their £1million home while his wife earned £300,000 a year, argued that he was the victim of sex discrimination. But the court refused him leave to appeal against a High Court decision granting custody to his estranged wife.

In a ruling likely to have wide repercussions, Lord Justice Thorpe, sitting with Lord Justice Buxton, said the court could not ignore the "realities" of the "very different" functions of men and women.

The father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, wanted the children to live with him in London, maintained by his wife. He opposed her plans to give up her career and move hundreds of miles away with the children, both aged under six.

His barrister Richard Todd argued that if a male breadwinner proposed this, "his application would be looked at with extreme scepticism". But Lord Justice Thorpe said that seemed "to ignore the realities involving the different roles and functions of men and women". The judges heard that after the couple split last year in "fraught circumstances", each had applied for custody.

The husband moved out of the family home, while the mother cared for the children briefly. They reached an agreement to share time with the children. The husband moved to a nearby rented house, paid for by the mother. But her wish to give up work, Lord Justice Thorpe said, placed her claim to custody above the father's.

The judge said the issue was easily defined - if the mother was granted residency she planned to move far away and the father would move nearby. If the father was granted residency, the mother would stay in London. "They are both agreed about that and they are both agreed that there should be generous contact with the non-residential parent," he said.

The High Court judge described the mother's evidence as "highly satisfactory in every regard", finding her to be a person of integrity and intelligence. He was equally complimentary of the father but said there was "no realistic prospect" of a challenge succeeding.

Trevor Berry of Families Need Fathers said: "I think it is appalling. There is plenty of evidence that men are perfectly capable of bringing up children as well as women."