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Hey everyone,
I'm after a bit of help/advice really. I filed a c79 enforcement of a contact order due to my ex constantly breaking the court order that was granted in this time in 2014. it has been broken continously since Feb of this year and with no contact with my 9 year old daughter now for some 5 months I drew the line in attempts of trying to get her to see sense, I was receiving replies to text and email from my ex up until a couple of months ago since then nothing.
I have had a date for a directions hearing come back and I served my ex with the papers in my reply to the courts should I include a position statement in it? if so what should I put? and I also applied for a costs in the c79 due to a family holiday having to be cancelled as the ex didn't allow me to take my daughter, the c79 costs and loss of earnings due to stress and things. should I ask for a penal notice to be applied like unpaid hours or residency if the order is broken again?
Hi sorry to hear that you have had to apply for enforcement
Don't send a Position Statement at this stage, you can prepare one and take it with you on the day of the hearing. It should be brief, no longer than 2 pages and just give an outline of how contact has broken down since the order. Don't attach any evidence to it as you won't have permission to do that at this stage.
If the mother claims distress to the child or anything similar, it's likely that the court will order CAFCASS to carry out some safeguarding checks before deciding the way forward.
I wouldn't start asking for Penal Notices etc at this stage, orders come with a warning attached anyway and the judge will deal with that part.
Costs are difficult to get awarded, but not impossible. When I have seen them awarded, is in enforcement hearings but depending on the mother's financial circumstances, they may be hard to recoup.
Keep posting and we will do what we can to help.
whatever you decide you want in regards to contact try and get the judge to have it written as an order rather than "its the expectation of the court"
I say this as my order I now know was painfully weak in regards to this.
I had it ordered that contact to take place every Saturday 9am-6pm
a note was made that it was the expectation of the court that it would be increased to include over nights "as can be agreed by the parties" of course she refused and wouldn't agree to anything more than what was ordered.
my mistake was thinking she had actually broken the order by not increasing the contact to overnights....where in actual fact that being only the "expectation of the court" wasn't an Order of the court so therefore she had only complied with what was ordered.
and that not being an order and an incorrect application form in my penalty application is how my ex didn't end up with a custodial sentence or residence changed to me! and the judge at the committal hearing told her that she was lucky I was Litigant in person and had the wrong application made!
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