A family court judge has ordered a mother to pay £27,100 towards her former partner’s legal costs after she pursued sexual abuse allegations against him that were not proven in court. The ruling, in the case of FAZ v MAZ & Anor (Costs), was handed down by Mr Justice Poole, who rejected the father’s original claim for almost £260,000 in legal fees as “disproportionate.” The decision comes after a painful family history: the couple married in 2008, separated in 2015, and their daughter, now 14, made allegations against her father in 2023. Those allegations led to all contact between father and daughter being stopped. In 2024, the father applied to vary the child arrangements order so that contact could be reinstated. The mother, however, applied to extinguish all contact and asked for a s91(14) order—a powerful restriction that would prevent the father from making any further applications to the court while their daughter was still a child. The case then went to a fact-finding hearing, and the judge ultimately found that none of the sexual abuse allegations was proven. The father, he said, had been “sorely wronged.” Yet the judge also made clear that the enormous legal bill the father sought to recover could not simply be passed on in full to the mother.
The fact-finding hearing was narrow in scope, which became central to the costs decision. There were only three allegations for the judge to determine. The first, that the father had entered his daughter’s bedroom and sniffed her underwear, was withdrawn at the outset of the hearing. Later, the mother told the court that she no longer believed the father had sexually abused their daughter. In the end, the judge found that all three allegations were unproven and that each had reasonable explanations. But the judge’s assessment of the mother’s conduct was nuanced. He accepted that she “genuinely believed that FAZ had abused their daughter.” However, he went on to say that her “anxieties and distrust of FAZ resulted in her adopting a perspective on past events involving FAZ which are untethered from reality.” This is striking language. It suggests a mother who was not necessarily lying from the beginning, but who had become so locked into a narrative of abuse that she interpreted ordinary events as sinister. The judge also found that, in her desperation to prove the case, “she was sometimes dishonest,” leading to “inconsistencies, embellishments and insinuations.” These findings mattered not only to the question of abuse, but also to the later question of who should pay for the litigation. For the father, the judge’s words were a form of vindication, though they cannot undo the months of separation from his daughter or the trauma of being accused of such a crime.
The costs battle was almost as fierce as the fact-finding itself. The father asked the mother to pay his legal fees in full, a sum of £256,667.80. Mr Justice Poole dismissed that claim, saying the amount was disproportionate. Instead, he recalculated what he considered to be a more reasonable and proportionate total: £108,439. He then ordered the mother to pay 25% of that amount, which comes to £27,100. The judge’s reasoning for reducing the father’s claim was twofold. First, he found that some of the costs claimed were not related to the sexual abuse allegations, but to other issues in the case, such as the mother’s application for a s91(14) order and the wider child arrangements dispute. The costs order was limited to the costs attributable to the abuse allegations. Second, he was critical of the father’s legal team for instructing both a leading counsel and a junior counsel for the fact-finding hearing. In his view, this was unnecessary and disproportionate. “This was a case suitable for an experienced junior counsel” acting alone, he said, because there were only three allegations to determine. The instruction of leading counsel alongside junior counsel resulted in “disproportionate expense,” and the judge refused to make the mother pay for that choice.
The judge also conducted a detailed assessment of the solicitors’ bills. He found that the hourly rates charged by the father’s solicitors were reasonable. The work had been carried out by grade B and grade C fee earners, at rates of £260 and £230 per hour respectively. Those rates, he said, were “reasonable and proportionate to the case.” The time spent, however, was another matter. The solicitors recorded about 22 hours of correspondence with the father, and a similar number—21.2 hours—of letters and emails to the opposing side. Work on documents was claimed at just over £23,000, and attendances at hearings at approximately £15,000. Taking a “broad-brush approach” to the summary assessment, the judge said some of those hours concerned matters other than the sexual abuse allegations. The sums claimed were disproportionate. He reduced the solicitors’ costs attributable to the abuse allegations to no more than £40,000 net of VAT and court fees. When counsel’s fees and other expenses were added, the more proportionate total came to £108,439. The judge’s careful dissection of the bill demonstrates that courts will not simply accept whatever costs a party asks for, even when that party has been wronged. There is a balance to be struck between compensating an innocent parent and ensuring that costs orders are fair, realistic, and not punitive in themselves.
Why did the judge order only 25% of the recalculated costs rather than the full amount? The answer lies in the nature of the proceedings and the mother’s state of mind. Although the judge found that the mother had sometimes been dishonest, he did not find that she had acted with purely malicious intent. He accepted that she genuinely believed the abuse had happened, even though that belief was “untethered from reality.” This distinction is important. In family law, costs orders are not automatic, and the court has a wide discretion. The judge had to weigh the father’s clear wrong—being accused of sexual abuse and separated from his daughter—against the mother’s genuine, albeit distorted, fears. He also had to consider that the father’s own choice to instruct leading counsel had inflated the bill. By ordering the mother to pay a quarter of the more proportionate sum, the judge sent a message that she bore significant responsibility for the litigation, but he stopped short of making her bear the entire financial burden. The order is therefore both a sanction and a compromise. It acknowledges the father’s suffering and the mother’s culpability, while also recognising that the costs claimed were excessive and that the mother was not the only party whose decisions contributed to the expense.
The wider implications of this judgment are significant. It shows that family courts are willing to make costs orders against a parent who pursues unfounded allegations, even when that parent acted out of genuine belief rather than malice. It also shows that such orders are carefully limited and proportionate. The mother will have to pay £27,100—a substantial sum, but far less than the £256,667.80 the father originally sought. The judgment also highlights the financial cost of family litigation and the need for lawyers to keep expenses under control. By criticising the use of leading counsel in a relatively narrow fact-finding exercise, Mr Justice Poole has reminded practitioners that proportionality is not just a legal principle but a practical discipline. The case was reported with Janet Bazley KC and Lucy Sprinz of Blandy and Blandy LLP appearing for the father, and Martha Holmes on Direct Access representing the mother. For the father, the costs order is a form of vindication, but no judgment can undo the lost time with his daughter or the stigma of having been accused. For the mother, the financial penalty is a heavy consequence of a belief the judge found was genuine but fundamentally disconnected from reality. In the end, this is a story about the damage that can be done when fear and certainty are allowed to overtake reason—and about the court’s difficult task of doing justice in the aftermath of a family torn apart.