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Just wanted some advise re. saving texts.
I've posted before about difficulties with seeing my son who will be 2 in February. My ex and I seemed to reach a plateau and I was seeing him on a Saturday 9 to 5ish at my Mum and Dad's. All of this a massive compromise on my part as I would love to see him more and have him at my own house so he can start staying over but I was happy to be patient, firstly in order to maintain the peace for the long run but also because when I pushed for more time in the past access was stopped all together and him being so young it is impossible to maintain a relationship without his Mum's direct involvement,
Anyway the other day he had a parents evening at nursery and my ex said all had gone well. I rang the nursery myself just to see how he was getting on, not even thinking it would be an issue and she has gone ballistic saying I don't trust her to make decisions for him. This is totally not the case,I had no concerns about him at all, was just trying to get some first hand updates about how my son is getting on. Had I thought for a second it would of caused an issue I would have told her beforehand.
This has all resulted in threats of me not being allowed to see him. I am hoping we can sort this out by me being apologetic but I think the time has come to hope for the best but plan for the worst. To that effect I want to start saving texts between the two of us. I have a company contract and they are not willing to upgrade my phone which is about 5 years old so I would need to buy a handset that will accept a Vodafone sim. Not interested in any posh features but what will store the most text messages in the best way? Alternatively I have found a website where I can send texts for them to be archived...could these then be used in court??
I am wanting to save texts I send her and ones she sends back and I was planning to save every text so there can be no come back of me being "selective" in what I am saving. A classic example is me texting the other day and saying... "S, do you think I could start seeing E more? I was thinking I could have him for two days at the weekend instead of one, not every week if that seems to much but maybe when you're working both days. Am open to suggestions though, let me know what you think." The reply was..."No, one day a week is enough for now." [censored]...he is nearly 2 years old and one day a week is enough to see his Dad. I really worry about what I am going to say to my son when he's a man and asks why I wasn't around more when he was young.
Hi Lac,
Most phones will now save high numbers of messages however Nokia phones with Memory cards will allow you to save them to the memory card so you can save pretty much unlimited numbers, the only down side to this is that when you use the memory card for text messages it does slow the phone down a lot. Nokia's will store as many text as you like up to about 1000 when it can cause issues even without a memory card and will also allow you to create folders to move both the recieved and sent messages into so they aren't there in the inbox all the time to see.
Another option is to create back ups on your PC again Nokia's have the easiest to use pc suites allowing back up really easily.
I don't think your alone in the whole wanting more time but when you push you get the fear of getting less, I've had the same, do you have any kind of court order in place?
In my oppinion it would be worth considering as there doesn't seem to be any reason for there not to be overnight contact.
All you can do is be consistent and be there for him as and when you can he will see and know you were around.
Darren
hi LAC
The easiest solution is to transcribe your texts out, letter for letter into a word document, along with time and date. Ultimately, if you go to court, you are going to have to get them onto paper anyway as a court won't want to see your phone, Certainly, when I was in court and included my texts, there was never any question as to whether they were genuine.
As Darren says, most phones will store lots of texts, you could go for something like a secondhand HTC Touch Pro or Palm Treo Pro- these are windows mobile phones (windows 6.1 professional) which should be relatively cheap on ebay and will allow you to easily sync between the phone and your PC, but there are plenty of other solutions.
Thanks for your suggestions guys. I think if transcribing is OK for court I'll do that but save the "key" messages too. We don't have a contact order in place for two reasons really. We had our first mediation session just over a year ago which went OK and established the current arrangement of one day at the weekend, seeing my little boy at my Mum and Dad's house. My ex then refused to go to the second mediation hearing and said if I pushed for it she would stop me seeing our son until she was forced to do otherwise. At the time my son was 8 months old and I was frightened if I pushed and it took months to sort he would forget me and I had little faith I would end up in a better position after the court process anyway.
I am hoping in the New Year he will be allowed to come to my house so we can move towards him staying over. The reason for collecting evidence is that she flies off the handle with me about the smallest thing and I live in constant fear of being denied access (for example, I gave him a bath half an hour ago and put him in some PJs coz he got messy doing some painting and he looks tired so I thought I may as well do it before he got picked up, she just picked him up and this trasnlates to me thinking she doesn't bath him apparently?!?) I just want to have some proof that I have asked for more contact and have been refused for no reason and also that he is very happy when with my and my family in case I am forced to go to court.
My ex has openly admitted to me that she stopped taking her pill in order to become pregnant without telling me and I am grateful she did or I wouldn't have my son but how can women continue to get away with this manipulative behaviour...it disgusts me that the law in this country seems to allow our children to be used as weapons by their spiteful mothers...Rant Over!
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