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Hi,
I'm new to this site and so hopefully I'm in the right place for some advice. I'll try to explain the situation and see where that takes us! Apologies for the length of this post.
My daughter is 9, I split up from her mum back in 2005. I applied for and got parental responsibility towards the end of last year. I’ve paid maintenance from day 1 and also make a payment towards my daughter’s social activities, such as brownies and swimming, every month.
For the first 4 years we got on fine. We had an agreement for me to have our daughter overnight once in the week and then Friday evening to Sunday tea time every other weekend. On the interim weekend I have her from Sunday tea time and take her to school Monday morning.
In 2009 she met someone else and he moved in after a couple of weeks. He was married at the time and I was concerned what effect this would have on my daughter and so I made my feelings known, and probably went about it in the wrong way. After a few months I realised I had judged it wrong and accepted that it would be a long term relationship, and so I let things carry on as normal. Having said that, they recently split up.
Towards the end of 2009 I met my partner (K). We now live together and are engaged. She has a 7 year old daughter and things are great. The only problem in our life now is my daughter’s mum. As soon as I met K, my ex became almost unbearable. She made demands on me to change access at the last minute, forced me to cancel family days out or face the consequences and also became abusive towards K (via texts & emails to me) even though they’ve never met. All the time she uses our daughter as a bargaining tool ‘if you don’t do what I’m asking then you can’t have her for the weekend’ that kind of thing.
I’ve been living with K for nearly a year now and she gets on well with my daughter and my daughter gets on well with her. However, my ex won’t accept that K is part of my daughter’s life and is effectively her step mum. She won’t let K pick her up, and if I’m at work on the weekend I’ve got my daughter, my ex will find a reason for me not to have her that weekend, which is blatantly to prevent my daughter being with K.
In all of this, my daughter has recently started displaying signs of struggling with it. She often asks me questions that I can tell mean that her mum is criticising me or telling lies as to why I didn’t have her when I was meant to have her.
I’ve considered taking it to court previously and even went to a solicitor last year who sent her a letter saying that if she continues being unreasonable then I will have no choice but to go to court. That solicitor encouraged me to get her to come to mediation. Although she attended the initial assessment (separately), she refused to attend the further sessions and so I had to cancel them or risk losing money (she made me agree to pay for the mediation and if you cancel at the last minute you still have to pay).
I mentioned earlier that we had an arrangement where I had my daughter from Friday afternoon to Sunday tea time every other weekend, and then on the interim weekend I had her from Sunday tea time and took her to school the next morning.. Because my ex refuses to drop my daughter off or pick her up and won’t allow K to pick her up or drop her off, I asked if we could trial me just having my daughter every other weekend but from Friday afternoon until Monday morning. This seemed like a logical solution because it would:
• Allow me to pick my daughter up on the way home from work on the Friday and drop her at school on the Monday
• Allow us to do things as a family on the weekend rather than having to cut things short to get my daughter back for 4pm on the Sunday
• Avoid conflict because I wouldn’t have to see my ex and K wouldn’t have any need to pick my daughter up/drop her off
However, after 1 weekend of me having my daughter for 3 nights, she refuses to do it any more, yet still refuses to pick our daughter up/drop her off and still refuses to allow K to pick her up/drop her off.
Tomorrow is my Sunday night with my daughter and K is going to go and pick her up to see what the reaction is. I fully expect my ex to refuse to let my daughter go with her. Next weekend is my weekend with her, and once I’ve picked her up I’ll be telling my ex that she needs to come and collect our daughter and I will refuse to drop her off if she doesn’t. A risky strategy I think, and I must admit I’m really worried that it will backfire. Any thoughts on this?
It’s now got to the point where I feel that I have no option other than to get a court ruling for access. She’s often threatened to deny me access to our daughter and as mentioned before, unless I bow to her every demand then I worry that she will carry these threats through. Naturally this causes me a lot of stress and is also putting a huge strain on my relationship with K.
I’ve sent the forms off to the court to arrange a contact order, and as I have no money I have no choice other than to represent myself, so any advice would be much appreciated.
Hi,
A tricky situation - your ex probably does feel that K may be a threat to her relationship with your daughter, and it's also human nature for her to be a somewhat miffed that you could possibly be happy with anyone but her, even though she doesn't want to be with you. If you read through the forum, you will find plenty of examples when things were fine until the Dad met a new partner.
You have said that you are going to try a couple of things that are risky - my advice is don't. Firstly, there is little to be gained by pushing things if there is no reason, and as you say, your daughter is the one starting to feel the strain. Secondly, if you do go to court, you have to show that you have been as reasonable as possible - anything else will give your ex more credibility in court, which will make your job much harder.
Is there any chance you can sit down with your ex (not mediation - just over a coffee or something) to see if there is a way around this?
Hi,
A tricky situation - your ex probably does feel that K may be a threat to her relationship with your daughter, and it's also human nature for her to be a somewhat miffed that you could possibly be happy with anyone but her, even though she doesn't want to be with you. If you read through the forum, you will find plenty of examples when things were fine until the Dad met a new partner.
You have said that you are going to try a couple of things that are risky - my advice is don't. Firstly, there is little to be gained by pushing things if there is no reason, and as you say, your daughter is the one starting to feel the strain. Secondly, if you do go to court, you have to show that you have been as reasonable as possible - anything else will give your ex more credibility in court, which will make your job much harder.
Is there any chance you can sit down with your ex (not mediation - just over a coffee or something) to see if there is a way around this?
No chance of meeting up at all. We can barely even communicate with eachother at the minute, let alone have a proper chat.
I know what you're saying about pushing things and being squeaky clean, but i've had 18 months of giving in to pretty much every demand and i just feel that it's time to stand up to her.
Hi,
I can fully understand how you're feeling - I'm not saying you shouldn't stand up for what you feel is right, and a court won't penalise you for doing so, as long as you act reasonably. If you are sure it's going to court, then you have to ask yourself for each action you intend to take, how will this look in front of a judge. Anything you do in the short term to push the situation will come back to bite you (and your daughter) in the long term. I can say from a lot of experience that not reacting, however hard it seemed at the time, felt so much better in court when my ex had absolutely nothing she could say against me or my actions.
Since you don't have a solicitor acting for you, the Childrens Legal Centre can give you advice, so give them a call.
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