[Solved] CAFCASS Letter - Only provided to the court

no, just every other week. next hearing is next month. barrister said mid week contact is mainly given in form of phone contact, which i find difficult to believe. and said because the section 7 report made no mention of mid week contact, but only phone contact, said will be hard to get, and that magistrates will just go with section 7 report recommendations.

Hi Bill,

Sorry to hear that the hearing wasn’t positive.

Can I enquire as to what level of contact you were ideally looking for?

It’s disappointing that the CAFCASS Interview was positive, they gave you the green light yet you are still faced with restrictions.

i was after the standard contact lol. every other weekend, fri-sun. and some midweek contact. i live 20 minutes away. made mention of bank holidays, and taking kids on holidays abroad (basically a fight for another day and more court hearings! £££) . but i guess this is what happens when one party is so obstructive and unreasonable, and these courts dont have much backbone.

i was after the standard contact lol. every other weekend, fri-sun. and some midweek contact. i live 20 minutes away. made mention of bank holidays, and taking kids on holidays abroad (basically a fight for another day and more court hearings! £££) . but i guess this is what happens when one party is so obstructive and unreasonable, and these courts dont have much backbone. apparently the author of section 7 report will be at next hearing, so can clarify things and see how silly someone is behaving.

This is insanity and doesn’t bode well for my case.

I had a three hour meeting with a barrister which is the only legal advice I’ve received. They said that as my spouse had essentially’got in there first’, there was little I could do as this would get tied up in the courts for months.

The courts have very little backbone. It’s essentially a free ticket to full custody.

I’m looking for equal split custody however I’m not holding out much hope

if i want shared custody, i would have to move next door to ex lol. as only way i could actually commit to picking up kids/dropping off to school etc. sounds like i would have to switch to a part time job or become an unemployed [censored]. for me i would have to wait for kids to reach age where their able to travel to school on their own, or they reach adult age where they may decide to dump the mum and go live with dad.

i can see why in your case it would be more difficult, drugs and violence allegations. i have read a lot on other forum where fathers first started off with the standard arrangement of every other weekend. then after they have 'proved' themselves to be capable so to speak, they go and apply for shared care. i am being depicted as someone who cannot handle kids staying overnight with me. so shared care is totally out of the question right now.

I am being depicted in the same light. Despite me being their primary career until the orders were issued. The drugs thing is a past issue and only became relevant in terms of my care of the children when these applications were made which was a considerable time since I stopped smoking cannabis. The violence thing is insane, claims that I pushed her twice during arguments. I’m just not and never have been a violent person where I’ve had to restrain her on more than one occasion.

All 3 kids have been staying overnight recently but it has to be supervised. They are being very vocal about wanting to stay with me and it’s clear that they are feeling the effects of this.

hi Alanc

so you have an interim order? if kids have been staying with you 3 nights, then interim order should give you the same thing for the time being more or less. if S7 report comes out in your favour, then things should only get better for you in terms of child contact.

Is that 1 overnight a week until the next hearing?

at the time i thought to myself, maybe im better off keeping saturday every week in the meantime. will be difficult time for me until next hearing. having to adjust to waiting 2 weeks in a row to see kids 🙁

"so you have an interim order?"

Yes. Depending on my shift patterns the kids spend generally 3 hours, 2 or 3 days of the week with me, with Saturday for 7 hours and the odd overnight on weekends (usually organised when my wife has somewhere else to be). All contact has to be supervised which causes a problem as it's not always possible to get someone to suprervise as any friends I have obviously are working or have families of their own,.

ok i see. i dont know about you, but the hardest part for me is staying calm, when the other family just being malicious. its like their just waiting for me to kick them in the nuts, so they can use that excuse to block contact.

I fully understand Bill. The hardest thing to take is that her and her family gave no indication that they were capable of this. I don't know to what extent her family are complicit, but they certainly know I have never raised a hand to her. She has spun such a massive web of lies that I just don't know anymore. It's like she's a completely different person to who she was a year ago.

The worst thing as you say is the frustration and having no choice but to find new ways of controlling the anger.

The way I describe it to friends, who know both of us well and know this is all BS, is that it's like being in a playground getting spat at while the offending party hides behind the protections of their big brother. There's nothing I can do, no money to get the appropriate legal advice in a system that is designed to work against me.

For my wife who is such a massive champion of women's rights, to utilise this system which is designed to protect genuine victims of DV illustrates what a walking contradiction she has become.

All because of money and a battle of wills.

It's frustrating Bill. But a year from now there will be a new norm, which let's face it, can hardly get much worse that the current one.