Heroic F4J dad WINS battle against the Child Maintenance Service but loses son to Parental Alienation
Heroic, long-standing Fathers4Justice supporter Charles Adams, has won his case against the Child Maintenance Service to the extent they now owe him money, but conceded he has lost his son as a result of long-term parental alienation.
BACKGROUND
Mr Adams is a loving and responsible father to 4 children, including his 18-yr-old son Nicholas. He battled through the family courts at great financial and personal cost to see Nicholas for 18 years with mixed results, all ultimately sabotaged by mothers conduct.
Far from evading his responsibilities to any of his children (as the mother claims), he has done everything possible to fulfil his emotional and financial responsibilities to them. Mr Adams is currently unable to work because he is a major carer for his very aged parents, aged 96 and 92 who he also supports financially.
He says, the mother, Ms Elizabeth Green is a destructive, vindictive and abusive mother consumed by bitterness and personal enmity towards Mr Adams as evidenced by her approach to the national media AFTER losing her case.
She has denied and frustrated Mr Adams access to his son since September 2002. He says she has alienated his son from him. He regards this as child abuse.
Subsequent children’s proceedings in which he has battled to see his son have cost him significant sums of money. Ms Green’s relentless hostility has reduced Mr Adams role in Nicholas’s life to that of a cashpoint and sperm bank.
THREATS & DOMESTIC ABUSE
Ms Green is on record as saying in November 2003; “The only things I want are that I get Charles’ house and that he never sees his son again…I will sever your head…I will take you for every penny, watch me.” Mr Adams says her bitter vendetta is motivated by the fact he refused to marry her because of her abusive conduct.
Mr Adams says he is a male victim of domestic abuse.
He says Ms Green threw a knife at him when he was holding baby Nicholas in 2002. She has also destroyed property belonging to Mr Adam’s parents, and physically assaulted him and trashed his home in January 2003. She was charged then bound over for affray and criminal damage.
FINANCES AND THE CSA/CMS
Ms Green comes from a very wealthy family. She personally owns property in London which she rents out at a significant profit in addition to her work income. Further, Mr Adams has always properly paid towards all the private education of Nicholas, in particular since January 2015 to the end of secondary education in 2019. A trust Mr Adams created – with money he saved and the trustees invested – largely paid for Nicholas’s private school education. In addition to this, the Trustees will continue to finance half the cost of Nicholas’s University education commencing September 2019.
In addition to this Mr Adams, via trustees in the court-approved manner, already provided extraordinarily generous capital payments of £220,000 to provide a home for Nicholas until the conclusion of full time education and moving costs of £24,860.
Mr Adams had also offered Ms Green the use of a flat he owned rent free for herself and Nicholas to avoid years of litigation. She refused.
Further, Mr Adams says the money is in trust for all his children and his elderly parents, NOT Ms Green, who if she had access to this, would doubtless spend it. Mr Adams says it is perfectly legal, proper and responsible to keep money in trust for children and his elderly parents. This is also a celebrated Jewish tradition. In addition to this Ms Green refused offers of child maintenance of £120 a week.
Up until 2007, the then CSA was not involved in the case and Mr Adams paid voluntary maintenance of £40 a week. After his ex Elizabeth Green approached the then CSA, they then reassessed child maintenance at £14 a week. Mr Adams offered to restore the £40 a week payment but Ms Green refused and embarked on a number of applications, making a number of extraordinary and false claims about his wealth.
All her applications were unsuccessful, as ruled by the last Upper Tribunal decision (2018) UKUT 377 which is now final given that on 4 August 2019 the Court of Appeal refused Leave to Appeal.
MONIES OWED TO MR ADAMS BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE
The effect of the successful Upper Tribunal Appeal [2018] UKUT 377 in November 2018 was to turn arrears of £37897 into an overpayment of £851. The Secretary of State refused to refund the overpayment.
However, the Sec. State was forced to discontinue the Charging Order case as one cannot found such an Order on a no longer existent debt, and as a result had to pay Mr Adams costs of £397 (Read more in detailed legal statement below).
BREACH OF FATHER’S ARTICLE 8 RIGHTS TO FAMILY LIFE
Mr Adams and Fathers4Justice are considering a civil action against Ms Greening for breaching his and his son’s Article 8 rights to family life.
FATHERS4JUSTICE STATEMENT
Said F4J founder Matt O’Connor; “Mr Adams is a long-standing and loyal supporter of Fathers4Justice. He has also sought our help and advice many times since 2002.”
“This been a traumatic and deeply-upsetting experience for him and his family, which has seen him being denied contact to his beloved son Nicholas, and alienated from him.”
“It is regrettable that after losing her legal case, Ms Green seeks to further harm Mr Adams in the media by weaponising his son against him in an attempt to demonise him and falsely portray him as an irresponsible father.”
“The facts conclusively and overwhelming demonstrate the opposite is true and that it is Ms Green who has been a violent and abusive mother.”
READ THE LEGAL STATEMENT PREPARED BY DR MICHAEL PELLING: CHARLES ADAMS & ELIZABETH GREEN / MAINTENANCE OF THEIR SON NICHOLAS J ADAMS.
Charles Adams (b. 8/12/1951) and Elizabeth Green (b. 28/8/1966) cohabited from 1998 to September 2002 when they separated. They never married. Their son Nicholas J.Adams was born 22 March 2001 and therefore became 18 on 22 March 2019. There has been protracted litigation between the parents over the years since 2003 to 2019 in the Courts in relation to residence of Nicholas [s.8 Children Act 1989] andfinancial provision for him [Schedule 1 Children Act 1989] and also protracted litigation in the Tribunals (1st-Tier Tribunal and Upper Tribunal) over child support under the Child Support Act 1991 as administered by the Child Support Agency and the Child Maintenance Service, from 2011 to 2019.
- There have been a number of Court judgments, many reported or available on the Bailii website, over the years but for Press purposes it is important to note that recent such judgments in relation to finance have been officially published under the full names of the parents: see Green v. Adams [2017] EWFC 24 (Mostyn J) and Green v. Adams [2017] EWFC 52 (Mostyn J). Nicholas was referred to as “N” in the judgments but since he is now 18 and there is no Reporting Restrictions Order in force the Press and anyone else are at liberty to write and report on the financial matters and proceedings without any anonymisation of parents or child- see also Scott v. Scott [1913] AC 417 at p.483 [Lord Shaw].
- This freedom to publish withoutanonymisationapplies a fortiori to the child support proceedings in the Tribunals where not only are there no Reporting Restrictions Orders but the judgments of the Upper Tribunal have been officially published with total lack of anonymity, parents and child: see Adams v. Secretary of State & Green [2014] UKUT 359 and Green v. Secretary of State & Adams [2018] UKUT 377 which are available online at https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKUT/AAC/2014/359.pdf and https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKUT/AAC/2018/377.pdf. It should be noted that these unanonymised Upper Tribunal judgments date from the time when Nicholas was still a minor. No evidence of harm or likely harm to Nicholas was ever produced so there was no reason to anonymise.
- The media have asked the question: “Why did Mr Adams wish the anonymity order to be lifted while Nicholas was still a child?” − but his premiss is wrong in that in fact no anonymity order was made. Mr Adams was attacking the rubber stamp practice in the Upper Tribunal Administrative Appeals Chamber, in particular in child support appeals, of automatically without any order anonymising the parties and any relevant children. See Adams v. Secretary of State & Green [2017] UKUT 9, [2017] AACR 28, available at https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKUT/AAC/2017/9.pdf. The attack was successful despite being opposed both by the Secretary of State and Ms Green.
- While matters of Open Justicewould take us far afield, Mr Adams is an Open Justice campaigner who believes that secrecy in the Family law jurisdiction in the Courts and in child support matters in the Tribunals is inimical to justice and has been used by the State to suppress criticism and campaigning against a corrupt system of law where children are concerned. This is done under the guise of “protecting the child”when in reality the system needs to be exposed as damaging to children and parents. But if you silence the parties who suffer in secret courts and tribunals and prevent them openly publicising their own sad experience of injustice under their own identities then the effect is to perpetuate bad laws and practice and evil decisions, as for example the Courts routinely tolerating parental alienation in Children Act cases and supporting the removal of one parent (usually the father) from the child’s life.
- The reality behind the legal saga lasting throughout most of Nicholas’s life is Ms Green’s bitterness and hatred of Mr Adams because he refused to marry her in the early 2000’s. Her revenge has been to conduct a vendetta of greed against Mr Adams to obtain money and property from him and hound him through the Courts and Tribunals. She has also been guilty of serious domestic violence. Note the following:-
(i) Ms Green was violent towards Mr Adams in the period 2000-2003, particularly in 2002/3. In 2002 she threw a knife at him while he was holding baby Nicholas; she destroyed property belonging to Mr Adams’s parents; she keyed Mr Adams Snr’s car; and after many incidents of domestic violence things culminated in January 2003 (after separation) when she attacked Mr Adams at his home and trashed the home as a result of which she was charged then bound over for affray and criminal damage.
(ii) Up to 2007 the CSA was not involved and Mr Adams paid voluntary maintenance of £40/week to Ms Green for Nicholas which would have been increased as he grew older. However, in 2007 Ms Green went to the CSA which assessed child maintenance of £14/week. Mr Adams offered to restore the £40/week provided Ms Green withdrew her CSA application, but she refused and then embarked on a series of applications to the CSA to try and get more than £14/week maintenance. She made false allegations about his alleged wealth and sought to use the existence of certain Adams family trusts as a means to get an increased award from the CSA. This was ultimately unsuccessful, as ruled by the last Upper Tribunal decision [2018] UKUT 377which is now final given that on 4 August 2019 the Court of Appeal refused Leave to Appeal.
(iii) The media have asked: “So in general, Ms Green – who has lost her latest appeal hearing – contends that any father, if he’s rich enough, is able to put his wealth into trust(s) and be immune from paying maintenance payments for his child. This is what she claims Mr Adams has done. Obviously, it’s legal, but many people would question the morality – what does Mr Adams say?” The answer is that this is a travesty of the facts. The only trusts in issue were, as they are called, the Adams Trusts, the Lattner Trust, and the Pacific Trust: all discretionary trusts. The Adams Trusts were settled by Mr Adams’s parents in 1994 and no alleged wealth of Mr Adams was ever put in them. The Lattner Trust was a will trust of the residuary estate of the late Inge Lattner (Mr Adams’s aunt) who died in 2007 and no alleged wealth of Mr Adams could form part of that estate. The Pacific Trust was settled by Mr Adams in 2012 by a cash lump sum payment of £151000: this Trust is a discretionary trust and Mr Adams is not a beneficiary − the beneficiaries are his four children including Nicholas.
With typical destructive greed Ms Green sought to destroy the Pacific Trust and have the settlement by Mr Adams set aside so that the £151000 would be clawed back and she could get her hands on it. She sued Mr Adams and the Trustees under s.423 Insolvency Act 1986 but in the end the action was settled by a consent order in 2016 with undertakings by the Trustees to assist Nicholas by paying half of his School fees: although the Trustees were going to do that anyway. Totally unnecessary and vindictive litigation which even appalled Mr Justice Mostyn when the matter came before him as he could not understand why Ms Green was bent on destroying the Trust which was of such benefit to Nicholas. The Trust has paid half of Nicholas’s School fees from January 2015 through to the end of secondary education in 2019. Far from putting money into a trust to avoid paying child maintenance, Mr Adams created a Trust which, through wise investment by the Trustees, has proved of great benefit to Nicholas, and the Trustees are also going to finance half the cost of Nicholas’s University education, expected to commence in September 2019.
It should also be noted as evidence of Ms Green’s true motivation that she refused an offer in the course of her Insolvency Act 1986 case made by the Pacific Trustees of, in addition to half the School fees, child maintenance for Nicholas at £120/week, on the condition that she no longer used the CMS. She refused this offer and preferred to continue with the CMS to attack Mr Adams, a strategy which has completely failed.
A further important point is that although Mr Adams was and is a beneficiary of the Adams and Lattner Trusts he has not received any income or capital distributions from any of these Trusts. Mr Justice Mostyn accused the Trustees of these Trusts of “artifice” in not making any distributions to Mr Adams but none of the Trustees were called to give oral evidence, so the accusation evidentially is weak and says more about the judge than the truth. In the Upper Tribunal Trustees were called and cross-examined so Tribunal Judge Jacobs unsurprisingly came to different conclusions from Mostyn J. There were good reasons why Mr Adams did not receive income from the Trusts and so no injustice in the Trusts not increasing the child maintenance assessed.
(iv) Provision of a capital nature has also been made for Nicholas in that under Schedule 1 Children Act 1989 the Court in 2005 ordered a Settlement be made by which Mr Adams would provide £220000 to provide a home for Nicholas and his mother Ms Green during his minority and continuing until conclusion of full-time education (i.e. university). Mr Adams also provided moving/furnishing costs of £24860. The establishment of the Settlement and purchase of a property was delayed to 2011 and 2012 for a number of reasons, one of which was Ms Green’s insistence that the Settlement money of £220000 be paid directly to her and not to Trustees. That led to further litigation in which Mr Adams succeeded in having the Settlement set up in the proper manner with a Deed of Settlement and Trustees: see Green v. Adams [2009] EWHC 11 (Fam), [2009] 1FLR 1442 FD (Mr Justice Munby). Again the whole litigation was unnecessary from the beginning because after separation in 2002 Mr Adams had generously offered Ms Green the use of a flat he owned in a good area rent free for herself and Nicholas.
(v) In response to media enquiries please note that the £220000 Settlement sum is NOT “a loan to Ms Green”. It was a payment to independent Trustees of the Settlement who used it, with other funds contributed voluntarily by Ms Green, to purchase the 3-bedroom flat in London N21 which is Nicholas’s and Ms Green’s home. As is standard with Schedule 1 settlements, which by law must be made for the benefit of the child, when Nicholas completes his education the Trustees must sell the property and Mr Adams receives back the proportion of the proceeds of sale equal to the proportion he contributed to the original purchase (in fact 22/35 and Ms Green receives 13/35).
(vi) In response to further inaccuracies related by Ms Green to the media please note:
(a) Mr Adams is not “sole heir to his father’s clothing company fortune”.
(b) He has not “promised a further lump sum to cover half of Nicholas’s tuition fees and living expenses at university” but only that he will pay or cause to be paid these fees and expenses, and in fact it is the Pacific Trust which is taking this on to assist Nicholas as a Trust beneficiary.
(c) Highgate School in the School year 2018/19 was charging fees of £6990/term or £20970/year and as previously stated the Pacific Trust took on responsibility for the School fees share from January 2015 − before that Mr Adams always fulfilled his responsibility to pay half of the fees; also while it is correct that Mr Adams did pay a lump sum of £20000 or so in 2017 the amount for the car was £15000 [see Green v. Adams [2017] EWFC 24] and it should be also noted that in reality this was primarily an illegal benefit for the Mother Ms Green and not Nicholas who had even said that he preferred to travel to school by train.
(d) Ms Green always pretends to be poor and hard done-by to curry favour with judges and the press but the reality is very different since she comes from a very wealthy family who will not allow her and Nicholas to lack for anything, for example expensive annual holidays like a transatlantic crossing on the Queen Mary are financed by her family who also financed her half-share of the School fees and will finance half of Nicholas’s university fees and expenses. Ms Green is also lying to the press when she claims that “she has to get by on her £1300/month take home salary as an administrator” because she has omitted to state that she owns a property (a house) in another part of London which she rents out and this generates a significant profit that more than doubles her alleged £1,300 a month income to about £2,800 per month.
(e) Mr Adams does currently pay CMS child maintenance of £7/week because that is the CMS assessment based on his only present income which is his State pension. He is unable to pursue employment because he is a major carer for his very aged parents (aged 96 and 92). He has long exhausted capital resources, a major part of which were swallowed up in the Settlement to provide a home for Nicholas and Ms Green. But as previously stated, even on his comparatively meagre income, Mr Adams would have paid much more weekly child maintenance had Ms Green stopped hounding him through the CSA/CMS. But at periods in the past the CSA maintenance has been much higher: thus in the period April 2009 − December 2011 it was £43.57/week. What matters is that Mr Adams has fully paid (in fact overpaid – see infra) the assessed child maintenance as finally and conclusively determined by the Upper Tribunal.
(vii) If one wants more evidence of Ms Green’s true motivation then in a telephone call in November 2003 to a mutual acquaintance Ms Green said: “The only things I want are that I get Charles’ house and that he never sees his son again”. This was followed later in July 2004 by a call to Mr Adams when Ms Green threatened: “I look forward to October [date of Court financial hearing]when I sever your head. I will take you for every penny, watch me”.
- Parental Alienation True to her word Ms Green did everything she could to ensure that “Charles never sees his son again” and from separation in 2002 Mr Adams spent years battling in the courts trying to see his son and play a part in his upbringing. Ultimately he did succeed in 2008 in obtaining an Order in which he was allocated 42% of the time averaged over a year with Nicholas, or de facto “joint residence”. The negotiated Order was approved by Mr Justice Munby but it cost Mr Adams £20000 or so in legal fees in instructing solicitor and counsel to achieve this one order which only lasted until January 2014 from which time he has not seen Nicholas: money which could have been used for Nicholas’s benefit if Ms Green had not been so destructive.
- However, Ms Green continued in her efforts to alienate Nicholas from his father and sadly she succeeded in early 2014 when Nicholas, now 13, refused any more to stay with his father. It remains to this day that Nicholas is severely alienated from his father so ultimately Ms Green did get her way.
- The media ask if it is true as alleged by Ms Green that “Mr Adams kept sums of money given to Nicholas by relatives and friends for his Bar-Mitzvah”. Short answer is no. This is malicious, misleading and alienating: There are many gifts not yet opened because she refused to let him come to my home at allsince January 2014, and he has therefore not opened all his Bar Mitzvah presents to this day. Our Jewish tradition mandates every parent may invest for their Bar or Bat Mitzvah child of 13 and return the invested money years later when the child is settled in a job and possibly married and Nicholas is far from that now, so you can see this is parent alienating behaviour which he has been receiving all his life from his mother. She admitted she has her maternal family Bar Mitzvah money in a bank account she controls, so does that make her a thief now? No it does not. Why does she suggest I should be treated differently to her? She is accomplished parent-alienator and this is the proof of it.
- Behaviour of the Secretary of StateThe 1st-Tier Tribunal’s decision in April 2017 meant that Mr Adams had arrears of child maintenance of approximately £40000. Although he obtained Leave to Appeal to the Upper Tribunal the Secretary of State decided to enforce the payment of those arrears, not withstanding that a successful Appeal to the Upper Tribunal could drastically diminish or even eliminate the arrears altogether. The Sec.State proceeded to obtain a Liability Order in the Willesden Magistrates Court in the sum of £37897 on 3 October 2017. Mr Adams then issued Judicial Review proceedings seeking to quash the Magistrates’ Order: a case which is still pending as the High Court considered it better to await first the outcome of the Appeal to the Upper Tribunal, and then after that to await the decision of the Court of Appeal on Leave to Appeal. Meanwhile, the Secretary of State on the strength of the Liability Order applied for a Charging Order in the County Court against Mr Adams’s Flat that he owned. She also sent bailiffs to harass Mr Adams and to try and take possession of his effects. The effect of the successful Upper Tribunal Appeal [2018] UKUT 377in November 2018 was to turn arrears of £37897 into an overpayment of £851. The Secretary of State refused to refund the overpayment.
- However, the Sec.State was forced to discontinue the Charging Order case as one cannot found such an Order on a no longer existent debt, and as a result had to pay Mr Adams costs of £397. The Secretary of State has also made plain that the Judicial Review case will be contested to the bitter end, even though Mr Adams is stuck with a false Court Order declaring a debt of £37897 for which the only remedy to remove this repugnant and wrong Order is by Judicial Review.
