A four-year-old boy will go back to the UK after the Family Court ruled that his mother had brought him to Malta without the father’s knowledge or consent.

Madame Justice Abigail Lofaro, presiding over a case instituted by the Department for Standards in Social Protection against the mother, heard that the parents, both Maltese, who were unmarried but cohabiting, had settled in the UK in 2012 together with the child.

The father found a job and the mother was accepted for a university course there.

The couple eventually ended the relationship but remained in the UK where the child was enrolled in a school.

The mother returned to Malta last Christmas without informing the father who claimed that his son had been abducted from the country of his habitual residence.

Madam Justice Lofaro said there was no doubt the habitual residence of the child was in the UK and that the mother had unilaterally brought the boy to Malta without his father’s knowledge or consent. The court ordered the child to be returned.