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I have recently walked out on my wife and 16 month year old son after 10 months of [censored]. Nobody else is involved. My wife and I have already made a private agreement for child maintenance but we are already in deadlock over contact. For reasons of financial hardship, I have had to move back in with my mother and am unable to get my own accomodation until March of next year. When we initially discussed contact, I feared that I would get minimal access due to my son's age, but instead my wife has told me that I will have to have him every weekend (unless she takes him on holiday or it is a public holiday, i.e. Christmas), with her dropping him off on a Friday evening and picking him up on a Sunday afternoon. I was also told that I would have to take 3 weeks holiday with him to coincide with the childminders holidays and that I cannot have any weekends off unless either my mother, son or I are taken ill. This was her final offer !! After much ranting and raving by my wife about my lack of knowledge about raising children, I managed to negotiate a transition period for my son so that he would come over for a few Saturdays and get into a routine before moving onto an overnight stay, but now I have reached a problem with my mum saying that she will only allow my son into her tiny 2 bedroom flat 3 weekends a month and that the Friday dropoff is unacceptable as my mum works long hours in the City. I am terribly confused as to why my wife is dictating my contact arrangements with no regard to our son, my current situation and would like to know my legal position. I am perfectly happy to take my son every weekend when I have the means to do so, and would like to have a framework in place to decide about holidays. The welfare of my son is of paramount importance to me. Should I go for a contact order to formalise everything ? I have also now seriously considered going for custody as my wife leaves my son with a childminder all week (including school holidays despite her being employed as a teacher), but cannot do so for at least 9 months, again due to financial and work commitments, and am sure that I would need to wait 2 years to go down this route.
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