The Court of Appeal yesterday authorised a single mother to take her child abroad in order to complete her studies despite objections raised by the child's natural father.
The woman, AM, claimed that she had been awarded a scholarship to study in the United Kingdom. This meant that she would have to take up residence there. She claimed that this would be advantageous to her child and so she requested authorisation to travel to the UK with her child to pursue her studies.
The father, KZ who is not Maltese, claimed that the application was merely an attempt to thwart the court rulings for him to have proper access. According to him, the mother was prepared to uproot her child simply to make the boy unavailable to his father.
The Family Court upheld AM's request but imposed a number of conditions upon her, namely that she was to indicate her contact details in the UK and that the child's passport be restricted to travel between Malta and the UK. The passport would have to be deposited in a UK court and the mother was not to obtain a foreign passport for the child.
The first court also ruled that the mother was to return the child to Malta for good by not later than April 2010 and that she was to make possible personal contact by the father with the child on a monthly basis for 10 hours spread over a period of two days.
The court further ordered the mother to give a guarantee of €7,000, forfeitable to the father, in the event that a court decided that she had not fulfilled the conditions imposed upon her.
Both parties appealed to the Court of Appeal, presided over by Chief Justice Vincent Degaetano, Mr Justice Albert J. Magri and Mr Justice Tonio Mallia.
The father asked the court to disallow the mother from taking the child to the UK while the mother claimed that the first court's conditions were too burdensome in her regard.
The court declared that it fully agreed with the decision of the first court to allow the mother to temporarily take the child to the UK so that she could continue with her studies.
The four-year-old child had always lived with the mother and was in her care and custody. Although the father had offered to look after the child for the duration of the mother's studies, the court felt that it would not be wise to relocate the child to a new country and with a different parent.
In order to minimise the effects of the move on the child, it was best that the boy remained in the custody of his mother. It would also be unfair to deprive the mother of her rights due to her decision to continue with her studies.
The Court of Appeal slightly varied the access conditions by stipulating that the two days of visits were to be consecutive days. It also raised the bond in security for compliance with the conditions from €7,000 to €10,000.