Child & Family Law In Re G (A Child) (Abduction: Article 13(b): Mental Health) [2026] EWHC 2201 (Fam), handed down on 25 August 2026, Mr S Karim KC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge, refused a father’s application under the 1980 Hague Convention for the summary return of his six-year-old son, G, after the mother removed the child from their home country to a second country in January 2026. The mother resisted return by invoking Article 13(b) — the “grave risk” exception — relying centrally on psychiatric evidence about her own deteriorating mental health.
That evidence came from Dr T D Brow, a clinical psychiatrist instructed to assess the mother by remote examination. His report, based partly on her own account in the absence of complete GP records, diagnosed a mixed depressive and anxiety disorder complicated by migraine, and concluded that a return to the country of habitual residence — or separation from G if she refused to return — would each trigger a rapid deterioration in her mental health “which could escalate to suicidality.” The judge acknowledged the limitations of a remote, partly self-reported assessment but nonetheless accepted its conclusions, noting they were “predicated on a formal mental health examination” rather than mere assertion.
Applying the established principle that a court must assess the child’s circumstances on return in concrete terms, the judge modelled both scenarios: the mother refusing to accompany G, and the mother returning with him. In either case, he found, G faced a grave risk — either through loss of his primary carer or through exposure to a parent whose health was acutely deteriorating. The father had offered eight protective measures, including funded travel, continued maintenance and a structured contact schedule, but the judge held these could not address a deterioration that the psychiatric evidence suggested would begin at, or immediately after, the point of return itself. The application was refused.
The judgment sets out a template other courts are likely to apply in future Article 13(b) cases built on a taking parent’s mental health: psychiatric evidence of a specific, time-linked deterioration — rather than generalised distress — can be decisive, and its evidential limitations (remote assessment, incomplete records, reliance on self-report) will not automatically be fatal to it if the underlying methodology is sound. For psychiatrists asked to assess a parent in abduction proceedings, the case underlines how much turns on being explicit about the mechanism and timing of any predicted deterioration, not just its severity.
