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Hi,
Am after some advice if anyone could please help.
So according to the ex our daughter is ill and will not be made available for contact, fair enough. I have asked for the contact to be rearranged for when our daughter has recovered, as per court order. However her solicitor has informed me that she will not rearrange contact as even though the order states contact should be replaced if missed, there is nothing in the Order to indicate that contact should be re-arranged if is due to illness. They are obviously taking the order to the letter, ok fair enough, my mistake for not including every scenario!!!
This is where it gets interesting, they included in their letter an order amendment form as if written by me asking if i could sign it as they believe a mistake made when they wrote up the order. It relates to weekly cycles of contact where, when it was written and signed by both me and the ex (order by consent), the numbers were mixed up which has given me an extra full weekend. I notice this a few weeks ago but decided not to pursue it. However now they are taking the consent order to the letter should i also do this and in turn get and extra full weekend of contact?
Thanks
Keiran
Hi kieran,
First off, please could you tell me exactly what it says in your court order relating to that instance. If the order does indeed state:
"Any missed contact is to be re-arranged" then this should be followed. The circumstance is actually based on this statement irrelevant. Its not a mistake and for clarification i would suggest you contact the courts where the application is made to get confirmation relating to this.
In this instance i would say the solicitors could potentially be trying to underhand you. You should never sign anything from the other parties solicitor without sorting legal or court advice. In my opinion this seems highly improper.
I would honestly say that if an order has been granted it should be followed to the letter (where can be reasonably possible) however any ammendments should be made through the courts, and i would strongly advise that you return the letter direct to her solicitor and state clearly that if there is an error it will be the courts who make an ammendment and you would only sign an ammended order that has been sent directly from the courts to you, that you can verify as having been sent by the courts.
In the meantime, i would generally say enjoy the extra time until the ammendment comes through. Just because you are willing to be amicable does not mean she will be mind.
Hope this helps.
This is exactly how it is written in the court order:
Both parties accept that inevitably there will have to be flexibility and accommodation in replacing missed contact.
They claim this only relates to contact missed as a direct result of mum and since being ill is no ones fault then she is not obliged to rearrange contact.
I am more than happy to follow which ever path they take, if they want to follow the order to the letter than so be it will technically suit me better as it would mean I get 3 full weekends out of 4. Or we could look at the order but apply some common sense and not take everything literally, obviously this would suit everyone better. What’s frustrating is switching between the two as and when it suits them.
In my opinion, if your ex's solicitor is refusing to allow re-arrangement of contact and that it needs to be stipulated that "if sickness occurs then contact needs to be made up" i think that the Magistrates would have some very harsh and unpleasantries.
In my opinion missed contact covers every reason for missed contact. Therefore it should be re-arranged. They are clearly being quite condescending.
I understand that yes this is frustrating, but all i would say is try and be the good guy in the situation. Until the courts arrange for the variation i would stipulate to the solicitor that until this variation follows through, "as per the situation regarding missed contact owed to sickness, up until the variation i would appreciate that the court order not be deviated from" and i would definately bring about if they are willing to make a change for their reasons, you should or would be best stipulating that missed contact/contact missed because of illness to be included within the order.
Many solicitors approach court orders differently, however many actually abuse the system purely on technicalities.
Keep us posted 🙂
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