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Hi there,
I hope you don't mind me joining. I am a mother, in need of some advice.
I have a 4 year old daughter with my ex.
My daughter lives with my ex, As agreed in court in 2010 just before her 2nd birthday.
At the time it was best for her, And i still do believe it to be to be - Oweing to the fact she is settled and attending an ecellent school, I do not want to change that as i feel it would set her back to disrupt her in such a massive way. I was not in a good place mentally when it was agreed. Mainly due to my exs treatment of me. However, This seems to be exclusive to me. I have never seen him treat anyone else like it, And i will never say he does not provide for our daughter.
When we went to court and i agreed to her living with him (Previously i had given him 50/50 access) he pushed me to agree that i would have her every other weekend friday noon - sunday 4pm, and wednesday 11am - 5pm, On the basis that as my mental state improved we would revise and increase my contact.
I am in a better place now - I have a partner i met shortly after this was agreed, We have a son and are due another son in december. We live together.
However, Despite my asking, My ex has refused to increase my contact.
At the time of the court proceedings, There were concerns from one social worker regarding my care of my daughter - However, The judge dismissed her concerns as the reports she wrote were poorly written and entirely irrelevant to my daughters care. She was even told by one judge to 'get real' and another threw her out of court and told her to 'turn around and go back to where you came from, Miss X'. She made my life [censored] though and heavily contributed to my poor mental state at the time. After she was thrown out i moved areas to my mums for a while as i could not relax in my own home due to her threats of having me arrested if i leave my house (Literally, that's what she said, because i wasn't home for an UNANNOUNCED visit, i'd taken my daughter out for the day...I have remained in the area my mum lives in since, now with my partner obviously)
There have been no concerns from social work since or before that - I had to contact social services regarding some confusion with the hospital when my son was born, As they were under the impression that my daughter was taken from me. Social services confirmed that they have absolutely no concerns over me and that there is nothing to suggest my care of my children is substandard in any way.
My ex has since invented his own concerns as reasons not to increase contact. These have included;
That i smoke around her - I have not smoked for a long time, And when i did i never smoked around my children.
That She does not sleep in her own bed - She does, I replied with a picture of her asleep in her own bed.
That my dog must have fleas as she continually had a rash - I didn't bother to tell him that i didn't actually have a dog at that time, and the only dogs she ever had contact with were hairless. When i said i had only once seen a rash on her, which i know was from a new bubble bath i had used, He claimed the 'rash' only appeared the day after he collected her from me. When i asked him to send a picture of said rash, It miraculously stopped happening.
That i am violent and hostile - I have never been violent in the whole time i have known him. I am hostile at times, I think most would be, Usually i am hostile as he is degrading and humiliating me. I am unsure whether he expects a pat on the back for this behaviour.
He also tried to claim that our daughter had contracted salmonella from my mothers reptiles. It turned out in the end that she never had salmonella - What had happened was he had taken her to a doctor and kept the information from me, For tests as she had been reacting to some food, And they said they found a trace amount of salmonella - However, this would be present in a large amount of healthy peoples stools and was not the same as physically being ill from salmonella. He was called on this by medical professionals as it was a blatant attempt to upset and get a reaction from me in front of staff.
Anyway, Our daughter started nursery.
This makes my wednesday afternoon contact difficult and pretty much 'dead time' - By the time i had picked her up, got home, fed her and my son it would be time for her to go again, And it also tires her out as the traffic at that time can mean 2 hours each way rather than the usual half an hour - I don't want to tire her out and disrupt her education for the sake of feeding her her tea.
I asked that i have her half of the school holidays instead - He led me to believe we could come to an arrangement for months. And then suddenly said flat out no.
She has just started reception and the answer is still the same - Despite the fact he doesn't even have her in the school holidays, he sends her to his mums most of them. I think it would be better for her to be with me, as i would like to take her on holiday too, and she could spend a good amount of time with her brother, and new brother in december. She also misses out seeing my family due to the short amount of time i get with her and the distance my paternal family live from me.
Another issue is picking her up - He insists i pick her up from his mothers. I want to pick her up from school on the fridays i collect her - This is inside my contact time anyway, and i would like the simple pleasure of meeting my child at the school gates. IT sounds silly probably but i feel alienated from her. I feel as though i am being pushed further and further away.
I only ever wanted what is best for her. But i can't take this anymore. I just want to fetch her from school like a normal parent. His reason is that i might be late - We have never been late to pick her up. We are usually half an hour early, But we wait at the mcdonalds round the corner because if we are early they drag it out to ensure i do not leave with her a second before 12 noon.
twice in two years we have postponed pick up to the following day - With 24 hours notice, Due to the motorways being closed off - My ex could not have done any different in that situation, He is just lucky that it didn't happen on a day he was fetching her from me. I can't open roads that are physically closed off, And the tailbacks were hours and hours long - Surely i was being sensible in waiting, rather than risk the conditions and risk being stuck on a motorway for hours on end with a young child?
He is the only one who has ever been late or miscommunicated and failed to turn up with my daughter.
My daughter has also recently been saying strange things to me. I have two dogs at present and she comes out with things really maliciously - That they are full of germs and they are dirty and that everything in my house stinks. She says her nanny has told her this. When i ask her to forget what nanny says and tell me what she says she says she doesn't think they smell bad, that they smell like dogs (Which obviously, being dogs, they do smell like dogs) - And that they only smell bad when the lab has jumped in the pond until we get home and i bath him off.
They also spray anything she takes back from my house with cleaning solution, telling her it is because i am dirty and my house is dirty.
My ex has never been in my house so these things they say to her are absolutely groundless.
They are also religious and my daughter copies a lot of that. She told me i should be better like jehovahs people and that they would never hit her (I haven't hit her - She was behaving dangerously on the stairs during a tantrum and i went to pick her up and she resisted and bumped her head on the wall).
She criticises random things like that i hadn't defrosted the mince meat yet? I don't know any other 4 year old who talks like she does. It's always in relation to his family.
I just don't know what to do.
I've rang the headmistress of her school regarding pick up and she says to get the contact order updated to reflect her starting school. I also want the holiday time aswell.
Has anyone here done this? I have rang the courts for the forms i need to apply to vary the order.
I'm just so scared. I didn't want it to come to this. But i want a reasonable amount of time with my daughter.
I am fairly sure he will use past e-mails against me - I have said some stupid things in the past in temper, But these things are years old. He also claims i assaulted him at hospital which i didn't - I shoved my bag at him because he'd knocked me over (Accidentally) and i have PGP (A pregnancy condition) and i thought i was going to wet myself. My bag had my nexus tablet in why would i throw that?! He proceeded to video me crying in pain and begging him to talk to me. A security guard at the hospital spoke to me afterwards and said basically he could see a mile off what he was doing. My ex claims a domestic abuse team have been to see him and referrals were made to social services due to 'my violent behaviour' - But no one official has ever contacted me (This was in may this year).
IT's just such a mess.
I haven't contacted him since may and when he emailed me telling me i cannot fetch her from school he was basically threatening to take legal action over my 'abuse and harrassment' - How when i haven't said two words to him since may? and even then nothing abusive? Sharp tongued maybe but certainly not abusive and nothing close to harrassment.
Prior to that we had a disagreement in october last year where i did make a stupid threat in anger, Which i imediately apologised for extensively.
The last incident before that was the previous october 2011 - When he thought it would be a good idea to contact me while i was in labour prematurely? Who the [censored] does that and expects a nice response? He knew about it aswell - Our daughter was born prematurely and he had seen my condition being the same with my son and knew i was in and out of hospital? I did apologise some weeks down the line after the birth etc, and explained that i would have preferred him to wait to contact me given that it wasn't urgent (He was telling me he had gotten married, which i already knew, and he could have said in passing when he saw me in person the day before?) and given that he knew i was labouring.
Any advice would be great, or if anyone has had to vary an order similarly for more contact, What is the procedure? What will the judge want to know? What is the liklihood of me being refused given that there are no social services concerns, And that no complaints over my care have been raised other than things he has imediately been proven wrong on? Surely if he tries to make any allegations a court would want to know why he had not raised them previously with authorities?
Is my relationship and any disagreements with him personally relevant to my contct with my daughter? Are they even going to listen to him complain about the way i've spoken to him in the past?
Thanks in advance.
Also want to ask - Can i make his solicitor stop contacting me when she is just repeating things he has already said in email?
I really don't need bombarding with emails accusing me of 'threatening to make a scene' at school (I haven't threatened that, I used a poor choice of words and explained in the next e-mail what i meant precisely).
I am worried about the stress effecting my pregnancy - They have no need to contact me with repeated information surely?
He did these sorts of things during my pregnancy with my son to upset me emotionally - Making accusations and twisting my words when i was upset and crying. He even started shouting randomly once when i was saying goodbye to my daughter and claiming i was trying to take her back and attack him ( I ws 30 weeks pregnant with PGP i couldn't attack a flipping paper bag if i tried, i could hardly even walk).
He knows i am coming up to the point where my HCPs advise as little stress as possible due to previous preterm births, He knows i desperately want to avoid it. I think he's just doing it to cause me harm without looking the bad guy. I can't see how what i've asked for is unreasonable. I know he and i don't get on but thats separate from my daughter - There is no issue anywhere else.
I'm most disappointed that it's his dad who has passed information to my exs solicitor - He was the one who the email about a scene was to, And he knows what i mean by it. I don't think i can trust anyone.
Sorry for rambling i can't stop crying and i'm sore and my stomach hurts now and my back hurts and i just want whats best, I don't want to take my daughter away from him - I'd never have agreed to him seeing her if i wanted that! It upsets me that if i'd done what a lot of women do and not allowed contact from birth he'd have a hard time getting anywhere.
I did what's right by my daughter, disregarding his appalling treatment of me and i feel like i just get shat on over and over again.
Hi Missie
OK, first thing, you really need to be taking care of yourself - that's an absolute priority, even more so when you are pregnant.
There's a lot covered in your post, but the long and short of it is that you do have the right to go back to court to get the order changed at any time, and it sounds as though there is a good reason to do so. Your ex is bullying you to get what he wants, so you need to take some control of the situation. If your ex is emailing you and then getting his solicitor to confirm that, then you could email him to say that because of his behaviour, you are blocking his emails, and that in future, any communications must be made to you through his solicitor - that way you only get the message once, and it's costing him every time his solicitor sends a letter.
There are sticky posts at the top of the legal section, giving advice and videos on representing yourself in court - it's worth reading/watching these, and then asking further questions on here, and assuming you don't have a solicitor, then we can ask the CCLC to pop on here and give legal advice.
Thankyou
Thing is though i don't have any proof he is bullying me, He does it cleverly. The only things that (if anyone else saw) would be seen as outright bullying he does face to face so i can't prove it. Hence why i've not seen him since may - I told him i wanted him parents t o pick my daughter up from me in future as i don't want him near me.
He has emails from me where i've said these stupid things and i'm worried he could use them. I've never ever acted on anything i said, I made a physical threat once and apologised at length afterwards, I Was just angry and hurt. I'd never act on it and certainly at the moment i couldn't if i wanted to. He claims the hospital support that i was violent towards him but they didn't say that at the time? Surely they'd have thrown me out if they thought i was being violent? And they didn't - They refused to throw me out. He started crying and saying he was scared of me and put on this ridiculous show because they wouldn't throw me out.
I emailed his solicitor telling her not to contact me unless its to do with actual court proceedings. Probably not smart but i've just had enough i just want to do what's right, i dont want this, I never did want this.
He rarely emails me except to deny things ive asked for or to accuse me of something and he does it in such a way that an outsider wouldn't see it as anything but overly formal - Although last time we went to court he was told by a judge he was fed up of reading long winded, dull, drivel about 'what she's said to me'.
I've not even spoken to him since may so i dont get how he can accuse me of harrassing him or if anyone would even listen to claims of it?
Hi
I wasn't implying that you could use the bullying against him in court (though any evidence, if it existed, would help) - more that his bullying is stopping you wanting to do anything, and it's working unfortunately.
If you need to contact him, write to his solicitor (in fact, instead of emailing him to say you're blocking his emails, you could block them and write to his solicitor to explain what you've done, and tell the solicitor than any future communications must only be made through the solicitor). It can be quite daunting taking back control of your life, but it can, and has been done.
You are going to have to be prepared to go through the court to get more contact, but I think that it's something you really want to do and you are going to need quite a bit of strength to do it - you are in the same position as many of the dads on here, so you can read a lot of what they are going through, but also some of the successes (certainly, read Dad-i-dad's recent posts). And of course, we'll give you as much advice and support on here as we can.
Thanks 🙂
I've gone through about 50 pages on here and there is helpful stuff on here. The representing yourself i found reallly helpful as thats what i plan to do. I'm good at speaking in person i just put things badly when he makes me email him because i get all stressed and worked up.
I'm scared of going to court but i know i need to do it or im going to get no where. I think he thinks i won't too because i have said i would and backed out due to fear before.
I'm 99% certain he has nothing on me relating to my care of our daughter - And i suspect that's why he stepped it up when i was pregnant with my son with leading me to believe things, I think he thought that having another child would mean i could better prove i'm not negligent or abusive if i took him back to court. I think he thought i might try to take her back. I don't want to take her away i just want whats right. Although i'm assuming he does have grounds to worry there - He can't exactly argue that i can't take care of one child when my other child is perfectly healthy and well looked after so i guess that does take away from any plans of his to make allegations.
I also don't have an NHS midwife - There is a new service where i live which is comissioned by the NHS, And my midwife visits me in my home for all my appointments so i have a regular, professional person in my home, i'm sure she could back me up if he tries to claim my home (Which he's never been in or seen) or my children are dirty.
I'm going to talk to her about all this when i see her too, I was meant to see her today but she is sick so she is coming on monday now.
IT's just so silly really, I'm not looking to take ANYTHING away from him. It's not time he spends with her. He isn't there.
I will have a read of Dad-i-dads posts x
The bullying/threats may be because he is worried that he doesn't have a strong case against you, and if you've done nothing wrong, then he can't have one.
Don't feel pressured into replying to emails when he says you have to - as I said above, you could write to his solicitor instead, but however you reply, don't just type a reply and send it. Write it and then save it, and go back to it again and amend it when you've had time to think. Also, remember that anything you write could end up in front of a judge - if you think it wouldn't help your case, then you need to re-write or amend it until you are happy that it will not do you any damage.
If you think you ex is worried that you might get more than just contact, he might be willing to go to mediation (where they can't order anything) - it might save you a lot of time and aggravation if you can agree on contact without going to court.
I'm not going to speak to him i don't think. I really don't think i can. I don't want to be ill again. I never felt so out of control as i did back then. My friends all thought he'd been hitting me or something because of the states i'd get in (He's never hit me).
I'm not even willing to speak to his Dad at the minute which had been the one thing we did have. But after he's used what i said and twisted it knowing damned well i didn't mean it like that i just don't want to know. I give them the benefit of the doubt and everyone tells me not to and i always look a fool when they turn round and [censored] on me from a great height.
Most of the things he has that would look bad that i've said in writing are from almost a year ago, and a year previous to that. I don't think any judge is going to be interested in that? And it's not relevant to my daughter. I never do anything in front of her. Even if he did sway someone at the hospital to stick up for him, That's one incident in almost 3 years. It's usually him doing things in front of my daughter to try to get me to react.
The only recent thing he could use is i guess me telling his solicitor to go away but i've just had enough. I think most people would understand that. I'm generally not malicious either, I am honest and blunt though - If i think he is acting a prat i do tell him, not in an abusive way, just in a straight 'grow up and get it together' way, And i always explain why i feel the way i do as i am a big believer in communication and being open and honest about feelings. I don't like keeping things in.
I think he would look a bit, well, soft to be honest if he used most of what i say to him because there's nothing malicious in it - Just that he doesn't like what's being said.
Can you get an order at all through mediation though? It's my worry that he'd just go back on it. He does that. Before he took me to court the first time he withheld my daughter from me. He had her for the week as normal and just didn't bring her back, and tried to enforce supervised contact on me of his own ruling (He or his mum supervising was what he said, the day i went was him and we went to the zoo for me to see her). I ran off with her from it. My friend was waiting outside and had a carseat in the car. The court knew about that, The judge actually went mad at him for it and not me for running off.
He also agreed last week when my mum confronted him face to face. My mum said i wanted to pick her up from school and he started with his 'what i shes late' and my mum said 'she wont be late, i will drive, when have we EVER been late?' and gave him a bit of a talking to about how much i already miss out on too and he wouldn't argue then, and said i could pick her up from school and just asked that i text when i'd got her.
Then changed his mind and emailed me telling me so.
I was really excited about picking her up too i'd been looking forward to it since last weekend i thought we were getting somewhere. I should have known it was too good to be true.
That question came up in the last couple of days, and we used to advise that any agreement reached through mediation should be rubber stamped by the court, but that seems not to be the case now. If you think he won't stick to it, then you are probably just best going back to court to get the existing order varied. It might be worth considering a contact centre for your own sake, at least for the handover, as it means there is someone there independent and you wouldn't need to see or speak to your ex for the handover - it would limit the times when you could have contact, so that's the downside, but it certainly is worth considering, at least in the early stages until you feel more confident in yourself when your ex is near. If you do use one, make sure you put in the order a timetable for phasing out the contact centre - that way you won't have to go back to court for another variation in the order.
Handover is simple - If i'm fetching her from school that solves it. No contact between me and him/his parents then. Which is why i don't understand why he is being funny about it - it seems the sensible option to me.
My mum is happy to fetch her from his parents for me for any holiday contact - Theres never been an issue there, they don't do anything if my mums there, only if i go on my own.
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