[Solved] Where Do I Stand ?

hi,

they are wrong for stopping you. you have more rights to see your child than the grandparents. you can politely tell your ex to let you see your child, or you will have to take legal action.

legal route will cost about £300. £215 for court appliction and 89-100 for a mediation session. you would need to have a chat with a mediator. and they will need to give you permission to make a court application.

Hello Bill.

There was talk of mediation because they think i will keep him if they let me have him, and to be honest i have been looking in to going down that route, i understand it's were we talk to come to a agreement but if she pushed for minimum contact what could i expect/stand again ?

hi,

what we usually get by going to court is to have child fri-sun, every other weekend. a mid week visit etc. lot of this depends on the age of your child. if your child is under 2, then unless your ex agrees, court will not let child stay overnight with you. it would be a few hours, a gradual build-up to having child overnight.

so this is what you can discuss during mediation, and hopefully you can get these arrangements without going to court. also think of future, like having child for half the school holidays when child starts full-time schooling

you can ask for a 50/50 arrangement.

Hello 🙂

To be honest i don't want much to do with the grandparents and they would not let me in their house away, they brought a summer house just before he was born and said if i wanted to see him i had to use that, we are adults i'm 45 and the mother is 38, and yes he is under 2, would i be allow to take him out or do i have to stay in there garden ?

I will give it some more thought and see which route and what future plans we can work out ....

hi,

it is up to you and your ex. see if you can work something out. i have a child thats under 2. before lockdown, was only seeing her for 2 and half hours, with help of courts. being gradually increased now. would be expected to have her overnight from age 2 and a half. ask your ex can you spend a few hours or the day with the child.

Hello Griffy01,

It does not sound as though you are dealing with reasonable people, meaning the Mother of your child and the Maternal Grandparents.

You are on the Birth Certificate which gives you Parental Rights and as long as there are no safeguarding and / or welfare issues you have a right to see your Son.

I personally would take the matter to court to get contact established with your Son. In doing this, contact will be written in a Court Order as to when this would take place. A breach of a Court Order by the Mother would be seen as Contempt of Court. My preference would be for the hearings to be heard by a district judge in preference to magistrates who are lay people. If this is the path you choose to go down, mediation is mandatory prior to going to court. Hopefully, agreements can be reached by both parents at mediation, if so, the agreement is then written up as a legal agreement and biding. A Court Order allows you to be the parent who is in sole charge of your child when he is with you for the days and times stated in the Court Order.

It is always best to come to an amicable agreement with the other parent but in many cases this is impossible and in such cases, in my opinion a waste of time to even try. Only you know the people you are dealing with and if they have a sense of what is fair, reasonable and acknowledge you as a Father. A man who wants to be part of his Son' life and a child who has the right to have his Father in his life.

You say you are paying maintenance through the CMS. Hopefully you are paying this directly into the Mothers' bank account as you need to make sure you always have a paper record of payments so there is proof you have paid, then there can be no dispute regarding non payment.

With a Court Order the general rule of thumb for contact appears to be alternate weekends, half the holidays, alternate Christmas, Easter and Special Days. Based on this, as the children grow they have developing needs and very often there is a need to return to court to get a variation on the Court Order to be able to cater for these needs.

Personal circumstances e.g. work can influence when contact takes place and sometimes the age of a child. I know of someone who had a Court Order and were given overnight stays when their two children were aged 9 months and the other 2 years of age.

Many people are of the opinion that to go to court inflames the hostile situation they find themselves in. Others find there is no alternative but to go to court because the other parent is totally unreasonable, in many cases aided by their family.

At present without a legally binding agreement or a Court Order, the Mother can do as she pleases.

Think carefully which road you wish to go down, be child focused and refrain from engaging in any emotional turbulence with the Mother. Stay "sqeaky clean," Don't give her or her family anything that they can use as ammunition against you, should you choose to go to court.

I think this need to go to family court. your ex wants a court order which states lives with mum and spends time with father. let her have this but also say in return you would like to play an active role in your childs life. I would ask for contact if u attended mediation for example contact midweek Wednesday for example 3-5pm and every weekend 10-4 pm on Saturdays to progress to overnights on weekends once child is 2.

I could write a lot more but above would be a good start, if u can get more then go for it. If mum uses nursery whilst kids are young you can get even more contact as family courts see as a dad you outrank nurserys if you are available to have your child. its a mistake a lot of mums make when denying dads contact

Hi,
I fully agree with both the two previous commentators. Family Court is the way to go if you are dealing with intransigence when it comes to having time with your child in the absence of any safeguarding issues.

If your child is still only a few months old, you should reasonably be expecting at least to have ' little and often' - a few hours several times a week, usually determined by the child's sleeping/breastfeeding patterns. This could progress onto it being longer hours (say, 10am - 4pm) when they are on solids. It's reasonable also to expect to spend some time with your child on special days (such as birthdays). It's reasonable to expect for overnights to happen once the child has turned 2. It's reasonable once your child enters the education system either via nursery or primary, to expect to have a share of their holidays, involvement in the school run and a progression on to full alternate weekends. This was the route I took, and it was a fraught battle every step of the way (all of my previous sentence only occurred after I'd finally had enough and went down the court route, which I often wish I'd decided to do earlier).

I believe if you go to Court now while your child is only a few months old, you could put in for an increasing scale of time for as he/she grows older, till you get to the level you are wanting. This could show you are taking the mother's possible concerns on board and trying to work with her. My son was 4 when I went to court. I'd put forward a very gradual arrangement proposal that would have taken 3 years for me to get to an equal share of his school holidays. The fact that his mother refused to go with this made it very easy for the Judge to say I'd been over-reasonable, and rule that this should fully take effect within 6 months.

Some people don't want to be reasoned with, or won't see that the child has a right to know both parents safely. That's when going to court becomes necessary.

i think it depends on each situation a parent faces. if your getting zero child contact and the ex is not budging, then its better to apply to court ASAP. as the longer you wait, the more you will suffer.

for me i was seeking kids every saturday at home after the break-up. when ex refused to let kids stay overnight, thats when i started looking into taking legal route. then the hours i was seeing the kids kept on getting reduced, week by week. so applied to court. would have hated to miss the entire summer holidays without spending lot of time with the kids.

Evening All 🙂

Merry Christmas .

Just a quick update and am going to apply for mediation on his 2nd birthday and i'm hoping it will favour myself more because of being over 2 years old, i am going to push for 50/50 , when i have the meeting any tips on what else i should push for ? i'm going to ask for Fri-Sunday stay over every other weekend ...... will keep you all posted on the out comes ....

Happy New Year 8)

apply for mediation immediately. Time it goes through the whole court process your child will be 2 already.

Also if u have attempted mediation you get forms signed if she has refused and can apply to court a little while later