Last week saw publication of an important judgment from the President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, in a case called Re Y (Experts and Alienating Behaviour: The Modern Approach) [2026] EWFC 38.
The case involves now notorious family court expert Melanie Gill, who has featured in some of our blog posts before (27 March 2025; 3 February 2026), and in a number of prominent reports by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. It builds on the earlier judgment in the 2023 case of Re C (also touching on the involvement of Melanie Gill), and the subsequent Family Justice Council Guidance documents on Alienating Behaviours, endorsed by the President – and the FJC / British Psychological Society’s guidelines also reissued after Re C.
The President’s judgment repeatedly emphasises that it is not ‘about Melanie Gill’. Instead, says the President:
it is, much more worryingly, about the failure of the system to act, as it should have done, in discharging its responsibility to protect the children and to prioritise their welfare needs.
He goes on to say that:
The issue of alienating behaviour will, predominantly, arise in private law proceedings but, as this case demonstrates, a finding may lead to a radical dislocation of family relationships that is sustained over a period years. The expectation should be that the degree of rigour that is applied by professionals and the court in managing the instruction of an expert in public law proceedings, is similarly applied in private law proceedings of this nature.
What is important about this judgment is that it acknowledges systemic failure that goes beyond concern about a particular expert, and acknowledges the possibility that this may go beyond one single case. Anyone who has been following reporting concerning unregulated experts such as Melanie Gill in recent years will know that there have been widespread complaints about patterns of systemic failure around these issues.
However, it is – at least, in part – about Melanie Gill, even if the issues raised and acknowledged in this judgment are wider and deeper than one single expert and one single case. The circumstances of and around Gill’s instruction and involvement are illustrative of wider systemic issues and of how they can cause harm.
This post attempts to summarise what the judgment tells us about Melanie Gill in particular, and what it says that might affect other cases (either cases involving Melanie Gill or other experts). Along the way, I have added some comments based on my experience as a child lawyer over 20 years (you can identify these because I have said ‘in my experience’ or similar).
First, a little background about the case in question, so that what follows will make sense…
The facts of Re Y
The original court case took place in 2019. It concerned two children, of whom Y was the younger. They were about 9 and 12 at the time. There were ‘extremely serious allegations’ made by both parents of domestic about and coercive control. Cafcass said there should be a fact-finding hearing and indicated that a tool their family court adviser had used indicated that ‘parental alienation’ might be a factor in the case. (NB Cafcass guidance and tools have moved on since then). The court duly listed a fact-finding hearing and joined the children as parties, meaning a Cafcass Guardian was appointed to represent their interests. This Guardian wasn’t the person who had recommended a fact-finding hearing.
Once the new Guardian was on board, they made an application for Melanie Gill to be instructed to carry out a ‘specialist family assessment’. It appears from the judgment that no formal application was made and the request was made orally at the hearing when the mother was unrepresented. It seems that the court didn’t even have a draft letter of instruction. ContextL all of this is contrary to good practice, the rules set out in FPR Part 25, and associated practice directions. It particularly shouldn’t happen in a case involving a litigant in person, but in my experience this is not an isolated example.
The report concluded very negatively about the mother, using terminology that will be familiar to anyone who has seen a report from this expert before (as I have), and which add up to a conclusion of parental alienation and a suggestion that the children were suffering significant harm in the mother’s care. This led to the father applying for an immediate transfer of residence, which the court granted – without waiting for the fact-finding hearing. The judge concluded that the fact- finding hearing was no longer needed at all, because (in short) it wouldn’t make any difference whether or not the mother’s allegations were true, in light of the expert’s report and evidence. The judge made findings mirroring Gill’s conclusions.
Considered against the correct approach as set out in Re C and the FJC guidance, this was obviously a wrong approach – although, back then the guidance did not exist. The President [para 15] rightly commends counsel for the mother, Fenella Cooil, for pointing this out at the time, but she was a lone voice and not heeded. The principles which supported such an argument were all in place even before Re C and the FJC guidance, but this case illustrates how difficult it was to ensure that they were properly applied, at least before the guidance categorically set out that correct approach. Many of us will have similar experiences of pointing out that fairness requires the judge to determine facts and that this can’t be delegated to an expert, and of having shouted into the wind. Here, the Guardian, having applied for this particular expert to produce a report, advised the court that the children’s ‘strongly expressed views’ could not ‘be given much weight…due to the negative influence of their mother’. She endorsed the proposed move, saying that Gill’s conclusions mirrored her own professional view and observations. That, to me, is hardly surprising: in my experience, an application for the instruction of a known ‘parental alienation’ expert is usually prompted by pre-existing belief in or suspicion of alienation on the part of the party making the application, and is made with the purpose of proving its existence. I have never seen a report from such an expert which does not conclude that alienation exists.
Primarily as a result of Melanie Gill’s evidence and the court’s actions based upon it, the children moved to live with their father and had no contact with her for six years – essentially because the mother was seen to persist in not accepting the findings and had not undertaken the ‘schema therapy’ recommended by Gill (which in any event was unavailable to her).
Her refusal to accept the findings, and to engage in the recommended therapy, which would involve her acceptance of the findings, has led to her being estranged from her children for the past five years.
The mother made various attempts to challenge or vary the arrangements but was unsuccessful and, in 2022, a s91(14) order was made against her, preventing her from making further applications about the children for a year. Her applications for permission to appeal were unsuccessful.
The application which the President was dealing with in 2025/26 came about when Y became old enough to vote with his feet and took himself off to their mother’s home (his sister had done the same a few months earlier, though is recorded as having gone back to her father’s after a few months. The judgment doesn’t tell us where she now lives, but she is now probably 19 years old and outside the Family Court’s jurisdiction). Y’s decision led to the police removing him from his mother (at 4 a.m.) and he was placed in a series of foster homes, eventually with a family friend where he remained until a final decision, by agreement. The mother sought orders to permit Y to live with her, and to set aside the findings of parental alienation made against her. This was heard by Mrs Justice Lieven to make interim arrangements in December. It was agreed that there was now no purpose in re-litigating the factual matters, given Y’s age and wishes. Y was represented by his own legal team rather than through Cafcass, having reached sufficient maturity to do so on his own account. The court made a ‘live with’ order for Y in favour of the mother. He was nearly 16 when that order was made.
What the judgment tells us about Melanie Gill
The judgment sets out the titles Melanie Gill uses:
psychologist, forensic assessor and forensic consultant (to policy makers/media, institutions) with her own practice’. In oral evidence she described herself as ‘an assessment psychologist.
It confirms what Ms Gill is not:
Ms Gill does not have a clinical or therapeutic practice in which she sees patients. Whilst her CV lists membership of a range of organisations, Ms Gill is neither a chartered psychologist, nor registered with the Health and Care Professions Council [‘HCPC’].
It tells us the basis of assessment:
by the application of ‘Attachment Science’ and through requiring the family members to complete certain bespoke psychological assessment tools (particularly the Adult Attachment Interview)
It sets out in detail the terminology used and the conclusions reached by Melanie Gill, which includes.
significant psychopathology within the mother’s psychological profile and pattern of attachment organisation, so that she was a ‘highly vulnerable person’ with traits of ‘narcissistic’ and ‘histrionic’ thought processing
It also sets out the conclusions of fact drawn by Melanie Gill:
There was ‘unresolved trauma’ from emotional neglect arising specifically within her relationship with her own mother at a fundamental level of functioning […]
the children [were] being ‘used in order to support “projected” vengeful anger, from her childhood relationship with her mother, against their father’;
The children’s behaviour, which was ‘directly influenced by their mother’s hostile antipathy to the point of hatred of their father’, was […] so challenging to the father and his partner that the father and partner ‘are running out of ways in how they can help the children regulate the “alienation” they are being subjected to within their home environment’;
[there was] ‘extensive evidence’ that the children were being actively ‘alienated’ from their father by their mother;
It reminds us that (as per the FJC guidance)
These assessments should not be undertaken by academic psychologists or psychological researchers in the field of alienation. The guidance from the BPS is that only HCPC registered psychologists have the relevant clinical experience and training to conduct psychological assessments of people and make clinical diagnoses and recommendations for treatment or interventions, whereas, academic psychologists, who should be Chartered, but who are not registered with the HCPC, would not normally have the clinical experience and training in order to complete psychological assessments or make clinical diagnoses.
It also clearly scotches the suggestion that Ms Gill was ‘exonerated’ by the President in Re C:
One final matter relating to Re C requires clarification. At this hearing, the court was told that Ms Gill has used social media to claim that she was ‘exonerated’ by the judgment in Re C. If such a claim has been made by Ms Gill, she has fundamentally misunderstood the court’s judgment in Re C which was critical of her claim to any form of expert qualification and which strongly cautioned any court in the future from instructing an expert, such as Ms Gill, who is neither registered nor regulated.
Re C simply did not embark upon any detailed evaluation of Ms Gill’s involvement in that case; in lay terms, the question of whether or not she was open to criticism was simply ‘not put’. That situation obviously falls a good deal short of exoneration.
This judgment touches on two other recent published judgments involving Melanie Gill’s work, and of course Re C makes a fourth. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has reported that it is aware of at least twelve mothers whose children have been removed on the strength of Gill’s recommendations – if that is right there are at least eight other families we don’t yet know of, though based on my experience it is likely to be much higher.
Taken with the clear and unequivocal guidance (below) about how matters involving allegations of domestic abuse or alienating behaviours ought to be dealt with, and on questions regarding the appointment and role of experts in such cases, it is now very clear that Melanie Gill is not an expert whose use is endorsed, as a result of her lack of qualification and regulation alone. Given that the judgment also lays bare that Melanie Gill’s reports have included opinion that ought only to be proffered by a regulated professional in clinical practice, i.e. she has gone beyond her expertise – and that those reports have been relied upon in multiple cases, with profound consequences for the families involved – it is difficult to see how she could be appropriately instructed in future cases.
The wider implications of Re Y
The President’s judgment says that the mother’s application was ‘not about Ms Gill, it is about the failure of the whole process, which was undertaken in a manner which is now to be seen as fundamentally unsound’.
The judgment is likely to have a ripple effect that goes wider than this case. It may have consequences for other cases involving the same expert, other cases involving different experts who have also had inadequate qualifications or gone beyond the proper remit of an expert by offering diagnostic opinion or purporting to determine facts:
I have said that this judgment is not ‘about Ms Gill’, and that is right. It is about those individuals who hold themselves out as ‘psychologists’ and are willing to be instructed in Family Court cases, but who are neither registered, nor chartered as psychologists.
More importantly, it will potentially bear on any case where a family judge has used expert evidence as a shortcut to a ‘finding’ of parental alienation, particularly where that has been coupled with a failure to consider allegations of domestic abuse properly (or at all).
Against the yardstick of the approach which is now clearly set out, explained and justified within the FJC guidance, the process adopted in 2019 was fundamentally flawed […]
new guidance or not, the fundamental flaw at the centre of this case is in reality a breach of basic and long established principle. Like Judd J in O v C, who found that the judge acted on a ‘mistaken foundation’, the judge in the present case fell into a basic error by not establishing the factual matrix first, in particular whether there had been domestic abuse, and before considering any expert evaluation. The submissions of mother’s counsel that that was what should have happened were spot-on. They were based on the long established principle that judges decide the facts and experts advise on the basis of those facts, and not the other way around as was, unfortunately, the case here. [….]
Turning to detail, when held up against the modern approach to cases where there are cross-allegations of domestic abuse and alienating behaviour, together with the approach that should now be taken to the appointment of an expert psychologist in the Family Court, it can be seen that the course adopted in the present case, both as to case management and by the judge in making his core findings of fact, was fundamentally flawed and must be set aside
At para 83 the President sets out no less than six reasons why this is so (summarised):
- Any question of instructing an expert psychologist or filing a final s 7 report should have been postponed until the conclusion of the fact-finding process
- (An individual such as) Ms Gill should not have been instructed to provide a psychological assessment at any stage of proceedings relating to children (NB this appears to be worded in the judgment to apply to proceedings generally, not to this case in particular).
- Given Ms Gill had no clinical practice, it was of concern that a Children’s Guardian should have sought her to be appointed as an expert psychologist and that the court endorsed this (Re C and the FJC Guidance make clear that proper scrutiny of an expert’s CV is really important, and they provide a helpful checklist for this purpose, My experience is that this is often a problem and it persists).
- The fact finding should have preceded the expert evidence and mother’s counsel’s submissions to that effect ought to have been accepted by the judge.
- The court (and Guardian) were wrong in taking the approach that the expert and Guardian should file final reports prior to any fact finding.
- the decision to hear Ms Gill’s evidence first AND to go on and decide that no other evidence was then necessary was a ‘fundamental error’.
From the judgment, it appears that the systemic failure potentially includes the actions of the judge, the Guardian (and possibly their line management who quality assure reports and have oversight), the children’s and father’s (then) legal teams (who ought to be drawing the attention of their client and the judge to relevant guidance and authorities), the expert and possibly the appeal court judges who refused PTA (though we don’t know how the appeals were framed), and even possibly the police. There are also likely to be training issues raised across the board. If none of these people or agencies spotted (or raised) the fundamental errors set out above, it seems quite likely that similar errors are being overlooked in other cases.
Acknowledging that this may not be an isolated example of systemic failure, and taking the lead from submissions made on behalf of both Y and his mother, the President also considered what was the best approach procedurally to ‘cases of this nature’:
The hope is that this process would address gatekeeping (for example by a High Court judge), allocation, funding (in light of difficulties in accessing ‘exceptional funding’), procedure and potential remedies. I am grateful for this proposal, which has my support and which I will now pass on to the FJC for consideration.
We are told that the basis of the mother’s set-aside application was this and it is easy to see that there may be other cases to which this same framework applies:
The application asserted that ‘very significant new evidence and information’ now existed sufficient to cast doubt on the earlier findings and justify reopening them. The new material was said to include the approach to ‘parental alienation’ taken by this court in the case of Re C (‘Parental Alienation’; Instruction of Expert) [2023] EWHC 345 and extensive guidance on alienating behaviours issued by the Family Justice Council in December 2024 [‘the FJC guidance’]. The application drew particular attention to the fact that the FJC guidance is clear that unregulated experts, such as Ms Gill, should not be instructed in cases of alleged alienating behaviour. The advice is that expert evidence should only be directed after any findings of fact have been made and should not be relied upon for the purpose of making such findings. The application further relied upon criticism of Ms Gill within the judgment in Re C and in the more recent authority of P v M [2023] EWFC 254 …
The judgment helpfully signposts to the relevant guidance and judgments, including a potted summary of the caselaw applicable to applications to set-aside findings.
If you are affected by similar issues to those raised in this case
As an educational charity, we can’t offer you advice. But we can signpost anyone concerned about the issues they’ve read about here to check out whether they qualify for legal aid (including what’s called ‘exceptional legal aid‘). It would be a good idea to let your solicitor know that you think your case might fall into the Re Y category, and you can give them the case citation above (Re Y (Experts and Alienating Behaviour: The Modern Approach) [2026] EWFC 38. You can find out about a Part 18 application here.
Although we find out about or select hearings we attend as legal bloggers in various different ways, we do receive enquiries asking if journalists or legal bloggers can attend hearings in cases with some of the features of this case. Our website provides some helpful information about our role as legal bloggers (independent lawyers who attend, observe and report – but do not advise), and it tells you what information we do and don’t need, and how we operate. Please scroll down the page we’ve linked to, in order to find our FAQs. Unfortunately, as we are a small team of volunteers, mostly with day jobs, we cannot cover every hearing we are asked to attend. If you would like a journalist to attend your hearing you will need to contact them directly.
About the author of this post
The author of this post is Lucy Reed KC. Lucy is a trustee of The Transparency Project. She has been practising in children proceedings for over 20 years.
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