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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, and also apologies for initially posting in the wrong forum.
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 Tim77d,
i am currently in the court fight now.....with the cr*p my ex has been trying this last year i can offer very little in the court battle you may face.
However, record / note down everything that your ex says and does.
Only contact her in ways that you can provide evdience for i.e. Texts, emails, letters. if you have to speak to her in person try recording the conversation but telling her you are recording the conversation for your own protection. (that one i wish i had done!)
keep a diary of events, dates times etc... with as much detail as you can. i have and am now going to need it in the contested hearing i've now coming up 25th Aug.
This is just advice to protect yourself just in case your ex becomes like mine!
whatever you do from now do not loose composure with your ex in any meeting, conversation etc... mine is now coming unstuck by her lies as i have the last 8months worth of texts, letters, emails etc... and can now disprove many of her lies and false allegations to be just that, hopefully the magistrates will also see her for what she is.
as for everything else, the childrens legal centre link at top right of page could be useful. the fathers4justice handbook is suposed to be aimed at helping you fight for your child's rights for contact with you.
Good luck.
if you have to speak to her in person try recording the conversation but telling her you are recording the conversation for your own protection.
I would try to avoid conversations if at all possible - put it in writing, and if she rings you, tell her you don't want to speak to her on the phone, but she should put it in writing to you.
There are two reasons why I suggest this -
1. It stops you from possibly losing your temper - my ex knew exactly how to wind me up (by breathing 😆 ),
2. The judges will often look through the papers beforehand so a recording is no use - if you must have a conversation, then record it and then transcribe the conversation exactly so it becomes part of the paperwork.
Ok, well i'd started recording conversations from yesterday so they're no good then? I had to block her from texting me because of how abusive the texts were, and although i had kept the worst ones, they're now all lost because of changing phones.
K went to pick ellie up yesterday, i didn't tell my ex this was going to happen. She became very abusive towards K (kids weren't in earshot luckily) saying she doesn't want her face at her door again, saying ellie's not going with her, then saying she could etc etc. Became quite embarrassing for my ex apparently. The laughable thing is that clearly the only reason she let K take ellie was because she was going out last night, so clearly her reasons for not wanting K there weren't strong enough to stop her from going out!!
So if i just document what's been said & when etc, will that be sufficient? I can't go back to texting her.
Hi
the advice of an audit trail is spot on - works wonders. If you can recover all the lost information, then try to. Try and work out questions based on 'what is in the best interests of your child' - NOT YOU OR HER MOTHER.
As for contact - as little as possible, so pick up from school and drop to school is best, that way the only way she can prevent you from seeing your daughter is by keeping her off school, and if she does that, she will have to deal with the school as well....you can present things yourself, just be calm and nice about it all no matter the provocation..
Hope this helps
Richard
Firstly, if you haven't kept a diary etc. it's not the end of the world. Start keeping one now, but also write notes of any past conversations etc that you can remember, and add to them as you remember more - but make a note that they are recollections of past conversations and not made at the time - it's better than nothing. Don't rely on your phone to store messages (if you get any more) - transcribe them exactly (including bad language, spelling etc) into a document.
One point to make is, where possible, don't take any action unless you are fairly sure you will succeed - aside from the fact that it creates uncertainty for your children, and may put them in the middle of a situation that they shouldn't really be in, if you come out on top in everything you do, you will feel far more confident going to court, so don't push for things that don't really matter.
As a matter of interest, what type of phone do you have?
Thanks for the advice, I need to go and buy a massive diary!
It's a HTC Desire, what makes you ask?
i would say to you keep the diary electronic and ensure that it isnt just on your computer..store it in online somewhere, such that you can access it from any internet computer. A paper diary can be lost or damaged, the advantage of an electronic diary is you can show an audit trail, so when you write you 1st entries, save the file as a name then the version i.e. diary v1 the next time you write something save it as diary v2 etc etc etc, this will also show the date and time that you saved it. Thus you would be able to show that the entries were fresh in your memory and not done months after when things can go fuzzy.
If you are able to download and back up your texts - do so, this applies to emails and any other documents. If you have paper documents, take a photo of them and again store as per your diary, that way if the house burns down, you havent lost it...
Michael Mansfield QC said "if its not written down, it didnt happen" . Writing things down is any recordable means electronic or otherwise...
Thanks for the advice, I need to go and buy a massive diary!
It's a HTC Desire, what makes you ask?
Good. In which case, I would recommend the Handcent SMS app. You can block text messages from specific numbers, so you don't see them in your messages (make Handcent the default) but it does actually keep the texts in your standard messaging application. This means that you don't see any messages from your ex unless you specifically look for them.
Has a few other nice features as well as a bonus - I used it on mine for exactly that reason.
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