A wife fighting for the right to bring up her husband’s love child despite violent threats from the child’s natural mother has won a crucial legal victory.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, wants to raise the 18-month-old girl alongside her own children with her husband.

The “thoroughly decent” Mrs X wants the couple to have custody of his love child, A, even though her biological mother has threatened to firebomb their house and abduct the child if this happens.

Essex County Council argued that the girl should be put up for adoption, in accordance with the wishes of her biological mother. Earlier this year, following the threats, a judge at Chelmsford County Court backed the local authority and ruled that A should be placed with foster carers. Three experts who gave evidence at the hearing agreed with this view, with nobody supporting Mr and Mrs X.

The judge also found that the couple had failed to recognise the problems that A’s mother might cause if they were granted custody, and that they had sought to play down the risk she posed.

But on Thursday, Lord Justice Thorpe, sitting with Lord Justice Lawrence Collins at the Court of Appeal, overturned the decision and ordered another hearing of the case, saying that the mother’s threats had been given too much weight. He said that there was a “fundamental risk of injustice” if the case were to be dismissed without another hearing and sent it back to Chelmsford County Court. He added that the case was so “extraordinary” that none of the professionals involved had ever seen anything similar.

The court heard that Mr X had had a four-month affair with A’s mother without his wife’s knowledge, but that Mrs X was now standing by him. After A was born, her mother at first denied that Mr X was the father, but DNA tests proved his paternity.

A’s mother did not attend the county court hearing, but was contacted to determine her views on the prospect of Mr and Mrs X raising the child. She replied by telephone that she would firebomb their house, and would attempt to abduct A unless she was given a fair hearing.

Ann Courtney, the barrister for Essex Council, described the mother as an “emotional loose cannon” and that the county court judge had ruled that A could find herself at the heart of an unending and increasingly bitter dispute between her mother and Mr and Mrs X. He had said that it would be better for her if she was placed with foster parents with a view to adoption.

Yesterday, Lord Justice Thorpe said that the behaviour of A’s mother may have been designed to stop Mr and Mrs X getting custody: “It is significant that the threats emerged for the first time during the course of the county court trial”, he said.

“There must be the most obvious possibility that they were either an emotional reaction to her involvement or an inability to involve in the process, or alternatively they were purely strategic and designed to damage the X’s case.”

Lord Justice Thorpe allowed the couple’s appeal, and the young girl’s future will now be decided at a second hearing in Chelmsford.

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