Unreasonable Refusal to Agree

In Re F (Minors) (Adoption: Freeing Order) (TLR 6 July CA)

It was to be hoped that the useful and clear exposition of the approach a judge should take in determining the view of a hypothetical reasonable parent clearly expressed in Re C (a Minor) (Adoption: Parental agreement: Contact) ([1993] 2 FLR 260) would be more widely disseminated. In that case the joint judgments of Steyn and Hoffman LJJ had suggested that the ‘reasonable parent’ shared with the ‘reasonable man’ the quality of being an ‘anthropomorphic conception of justice’ and was only a piece of machinery invented to provide the answer to a question that might be raised in a demythologised form by the judge asking himself whether, having regard to the evidence and applying the current values of society, the advantages of adoption for the welfare of the child appeared sufficiently strong to justify overriding the views and interest of the objecting parent. It was a difficult area of jurisprudence but that approach had never been criticised and had the judge in the present case approached his task with that direction at the front of his mind he might have reached a different conclusion than he had in finding that a father was not unreasonable in refusing his agreement to the consent of his two-year-old child because this would result in her being separated from her three elder siblings who would remain together in long-term care. Having regard to the evidence and applying current social values, the advantages of adoption for the welfare of the child were sufficiently strong to justify overriding the views and interests of a parent.