A mother who set up a fundraising page for her family case has lost in her application to travel with her children to Asia after the website made it ‘difficult for the court to trust’ that she will not breach an order as a result of ‘another serious error of judgement’.
The family court case involved child arrangement orders for two young children, including an order permitting the mother to remove the children temporarily from the UK to visit maternal family members abroad.
The judgment in A father v A mother described the mother’s GoFundMe as a ‘misguided attempt’ to raise funds for legal proceedings. On the page, the mother named herself and the children, included a photograph and details of her applications in family proceedings as well as allegations, not pursued in court, against the father.
The judgment acknowledged that the father was not named but would be readily identifiable by anyone who knew the family. By the time the webpage was deleted, it had received 37 donations totalling £3,350.
The judge criticised the mother’s GoFundMe page as a ‘serious error of judgment’.
Paul Bowen KC, sitting as a deputy judge of the High Court, said ‘the publication of those details without first checking with her legal advisers was a serious error of judgment’ and details of the proceedings published on the website had ‘inevitably set back this process’.