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my first post so hi all
ive had no contact with my daughter for 4 years for various reasons, so Ithought it was time to make amends.
only to find that her mother has moved her back to her home town in herts ,I live in s wales.
I was never informed of the fact that they were moving and had to find her on facebook,thats the only contact i have with her .
so what i want to know is how do i stand do i have the right to have her address /tel no
my daughter either cant or wont give them to me and i really dont want to push her for them needless to say i have contact with her mother.
thanks for any help in advance.
c m
Hi Colmer
I think we'd need more information to answer this fully - the child has the right of contact, so if she is old enough to be withholding this (and I think, strictly speaking, though I may be wrong, to be on Facebook, you are supposed to be older than 13), then there is probably very little you can do - you could try going for a contact order if she's under 16, but a court will certainly take your daughter's wishes into account, depending on her age, and you may not get anywhere - certainly, having no contact for 4 years is not going to go in your favour.
I certainly have not provided my ex with phone numbers or email for my older daughter - who was under 16 when I went for the contact order for my children, and the courts did not say I had to provide them as she did not want any contact as all with her mother - the courts regretfully accepted this.
Since you have contact via facebook, perhaps you could suggest that you send a pay-as-you-go phone to her somehow (perhaps to her school, to pass on to her) so that she can ring you if she wants, and that you can ring her at a pre-arranged time, and then she has the option whether to answer it or not. It's going to take a long time to build up trust, I'm afraid.
Hi Colmer
Firstly, welcome to Dadtalk, I hope you are going to find it useful. You've been given some sound advice by actd already. I can only reiterate what he has said at this stage. You haven't said how old your daughter is but the guidelines for FB is that the child should at least be thirteen, although I know a few young people who are three or four years younger than this on there!
If you have contact on FB at least this is a start. As actd says, after not having contact for so long, it is going to take time for you to build up a relationship with your daughter and without knowing the circumstances why contact stopped, she may be very wary of letting you into her life again, for fear you may abandon her again. Don't take this as criticism of you in any way, but if you can try to see it from your daughter's point of view then it may explain why she can't or won't give you more details.
I hope that you can soon resume regular contact, although I appreciate it is extremely difficult when you are so far away from her.
I hope this is helpful but do post again if you have anything else to add and we will do our best to help you.
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