[Solved] My Ex has stopped my access again

ur story sounds very similar to mine. my ex keeps constantly stopping me seeing my daughter who is 13 yrs. It been anything up to 5 weeks and she does it to discipline our daughter. she constantly throws it in my face that i have no parental responsibility, so therefore what she says goes. including abt wat i do with her or where i have her. just because i said im not happy abt her keep stopping my contact or when she having a go at me in front of our daughter or threw her phone. this has now led to her stopping axcess untill we do mediation or court. as i cant do court till we tried mediation. so now just started to prepare for mediation. mediator reckons it will only take one session and if we cant agree then i should take it to court. seems as she says her way all the time and i dont have a say i can see it going to court to go for parental rights and a contact order. im hoping to represent my self to save costs. looking at other post i think you find this site very usual full there be loads willing to advise you all the way (some just dads like ur self who have been through the same thing) And if they cant help they pass u onto people who can legally advise you x

Hi Darko

I would say it's not uncommon, though in such a situation as you are in, you are actually getting a surprising amount of contact, which is good.

I think it would be worth looking at mediation - perhaps you can sell it to your ex on the basis that if she agrees to mediation, then you'd wouldn't have to go any further and take it to court.

As for cost, have a look at yoji's "guide to representing yourself" at the top of the legal section - if you do this, you are only looking at the application cost, which is about £200.

Hi Darko,

Although its wrong that your ex does this there is actually nothing that can actually prevent this. What i would say to consider is that, should you apply for a Contact Order (to specify Shared Residence on the days you have already agreed) then there will be an expectation that Mediation would occur.

Remember, if your ex refuses Mediation from you, it may be that when a Court Orders the Mediation (which can be quite costly) then its usually considered by the Respondent (your ex).

In direct answer to your questions:
- It can cost from £0 (your time) to £200.00 if you go it alone to raise a Contact Order. If Mediation goes ahead then it can cost hundreds. If Solicitors become involved, very easily £1,000's. Actd has himself spent a vast amount. I've heard other cases where £10's of thousands have been spent (a guy sold his house to fund his 5yr access battle!)
- The time is a tricky one to estimate. If she agrees to the Contact Order it will be 6wks when the application is heard. Mediation can often take a while. If Mediation is unaffordable or unproductive, you can request a bench hearing (aka Final Hearing) which a Court may entertain. This can from start to finish take from 5-10months if there are no concerns (with a solid base).

How to see your Son. You will need to somehow get into contact with your ex to have her re-instate access immediately as it was before. If she fails to do this, i'd just go straight for Court, its obvious that this is a recurring problem for you. Mediation may be requested/ordered along the way, but at least then your are hopefully on your way to guaranteed time with your Son. Any problems with raising the Contact Order, the guide at the top of this section (C100 Guide) explains all the things you need to do 🙂

Thanks for the replies.Re Mediation - I cannot afford this and I do not believe that it would help as she constantly goes back on her word all the time which is why I want shared residency so that she cannot does tha again.Frustrates me the way dads are treated as second rate.Im just writing out the contact order now, do i write down what i want as in holidays, xmas etc ?

I'm not sure that shared residency would necessarily help - what you do need is a defined contact order and for it to be made clear to your ex that there will be penalties if she doesn't comply. However, yoji is better equipped to answer this, so keep checking for his reply.

Hi Darko,

Its up to you how you would like to approach this. I believe either a Shared Residence or Defined Order would be applicable. You have your Son 6/14 going off my count. Thats comfortably in the quota for a Shared Care arrangement.

Mediation
The process of Court is that:
i) Mediation will be looked into and questioned (why you will/will not [be able to] attend)
ii) If you cannot attend permanently, they may recommend you going to an Initial Assessment meeting. I stress that this is just a circumstances related meeting, its usually free and no Mediating takes place. Its more to find if the Mediation is something that can support you both to come to an agreement

Its always worth pointing out to the Court that you don't have the funds to go to Mediation, but would like to go to the Initial Hearing in case they can offer Mediation through their Legal Aid... its slightly (but not much) different from Solicitors (or so i was informed quite reliably).

If you cannot afford it however, you will need to explain in detail (off the top of your head) your income and all of your outgoing finances to prove that you are not able to afford this. If you have a couple of hundred pounds left at the end of each month... a Judge/Legal Adviser would expect this to be used a a contribution toward Mediation (costing from £75+VAT through to over £150+VAT). A steep ask i know.

C100
Page 1 you need to specify by Child 1 (Order Applied for iirc) Shared Residence Order or Defined Contact Order

Just to highlight your C100 Application would "define" under Section 7. Use the guide to see the relevance:
Every Wednesday [TIMES]
Every other Monday [TIMES]
Every other Friday [TIME] until Sunday [TIME]

Mediation can be a bit of a throw back too, but in the interests of amicability, its always worth stating your openess to it. As always... any agreement reached in Mediation, should be brought back to Court to be put into a legally binding order.

Any other problems, just message and plenty of dads can give good advice here 🙂

Hi,

Thank for your reply, I put my contact order for shared residence last week.She also told me that she had seen a solicitor and sent me her latest agreement which is that I can have him from school every thursday until saturday 9-10 am each week.So basically i have gone from having him every other mon, every wed and every other fri, sat, sun.Its ridicolous! It means I dont get any weekend with him whatsoever and each week have to wait 6 days to see him.She allowed him to stay last thursday and my son said to me ' i forced um to let me sleep tonight' how sad is that coming from a 7 yr old.
When she sent her agreement i informed her that i would agree to it for now but that i have put a contact order in.She unsuprisingly did not reply so Im guessing she will contest the order.
What will happen if she contests it ?

thanks

The simple answer to your question is that it goes to court and a judge makes a decision, and that gets written into a contact order. I would say that she will have to give a very good reason as to why contact should be reduced, and if she has a reason for changing the times, then she should be suggesting alternative contact, not reducing it. I would say you have a good chance of getting a lot more contact than she is suggesting.

Hi darko,

I'd go out on a limb here and say that provided your Contact Application (Shared Residence) reaches the Court fairly soon, you should approach it from the position that Contact has decreased considerably and you want the previous contact to be re-instated immediately and for things to then progress from there.

Good luck and keep us posted 🙂