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New to all this, site's fantastic by the way.
I currently live 50 miles away from my kids due to circumstances. The agreement is in place that I see them on every second weekend where they will spend 2 nights with me. I also see them on a Tuesday.
This is not court ordered, nor has any legal agreement been granted in favour of the mother.
My questions are quite simple:
1. I think it's only fair that if I travel 50 miles to collect my kids when it's my weekend with them, that their mother travels the same distance to collect them from me.
2. I think their mother is lying to the authorities to claim additional WTC and possibly my oldest child's school to keep her there as she has moved away to another town. She also thinks she does not need to disclose full details of the address, and her new partner, which i think is going against my rights as a father.
What should I do? The mother refuses to speak to me and all communication is through her father (she did attempt to have contact only through her new partner but I refused this)
With the situation as it is, I can see that if you try to enforce that she does part of the travelling, then she might become less cooperative over contact, and it's entirely possible that if you went to court in the future, that a court would't impose the splitting of travel, so my personal opinion on this one is that you let this one go and concentrate on the disagreements that are more important.
It sounds to me that the travelling issue is causing you to be annoyed about some other things that under normal circumstances you might not be bothered about.
With the sharing of travelling for pick ups, some courts will order this and some won't go near it, preferring the parents to sort it between themselves. Yo could try mediation to sort this out, if that fails you could make an application for a Specific Issue Order...but as said, there are no guarantees of success.
As far as the mother lying to the authorities, I wouldn't get involved in that... the only option you have is to use the fraud line to report her, but getting her into trouble is very likely to impact on your kids too....better left in my opinion.
The same can be said for the school situation, the only one to suffer would be your child, if they decide to take action. I'm pretty sure that once a child has a place at a school, even if they later move out of the catchment area, the child's place at the school is safe.
Whilst it's annoying that she will not reveal her address, if you have an adequate form of contacting her, i.e. through her father, which works well, it might be better to leave it ntil an issue arises because of it.
I can understand why you want to know more about her new partner, if he has moved in with her and the children.... again you must attempt mediation to try and get further information.
You could write to her formally and request that you be given the information you require, stating that you have taken advice and if she is unwilling to meet you on these matters, that you will initiate mediation, failing that you feel you have no option but to make an application to court.
Try and keep it civil and non threatening but explain where you are coming fro, especially about knowing more about the new partner as he is living with the children and you are in need of reassurance, as you are worried about this.
All the best
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