A MOTHER devastated by a judge's "draconian" decision to take away her two children and send them to live with their father, won a reprieve at London's Appeal Court on Friday.

The court granted the mother an 11th hour stay of execution after considering a child psychiatrist's report that the children - aged under 10 - would be devastated by the move.

The mother, from Wyre Forest, was granted leave to appeal against a decision of Miss Recorder Wilson at Worcester County Court in May that the children should live with their father.

Miss Dorothy Seddon, for the father, argued that the mother and her new partner had brought trouble upon themselves by their "parenting style".

Against the father's wishes they had tried to adopt the children and change their surnames and were, in effect, "attempting to supplant the father with the step-father," she told the court.

Lord Justice Ward accepted the father's attempts to exercise his legal right to have contact with the children had worked out "very unsatisfactorily indeed".

But he said a child psychiatrist had reported the impact on the children of moving away from their mother could be serious and that "contact to the mother might be just as bedevilled as contact to the father has been".

He said of Miss Recorder Wilson's decision: "This is a draconian order to make although it may prove to have been justifiable at the end of the day."

Recognising the vital importance of the case, the judge ordered the mother's full appeal should take top priority in the court list and be heard as a matter of urgency.

No date was given for the full hearing of the appeal.