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Tried to summarise as briefly as possible for ease of reply...
In recent months I was granted a court order for access to my child. As soon as the final court hearing was over I noticed an immediate remarkable behavioural change in my child. They went from being excited to see me and my partner for all our fun activities and weekends to being utterly exhausted and disheveled looking at collection, repeatedly telling me they don't want to see me anymore, telling me their maternal family are leaving them out/miss them dreadfully when they are with me, that myself and my partner are not responsible enough to help them with homework, that our child is not supervised properly at our home (which is laughable) and having no 1 and 2. accidents on purpose to avoid conversations or joining in with myself and my partner. All of which are completely new behaviours, they were always extremely pleased to see us and it was why we went to court in the first place as it's what they wanted.
This has now come to a head on the third pick-up after the court order was granted. I arrived to collect them and they were wailing crying, refused to come with me and their VERY difficult mother repeatedly stated in front of them she will not 'force them to go against their will' telling the child directly 'don't worry, Mummy won't force you to go'. My ex would only allow me to speak to my child if they gave their consent and after talking them round to a couple of hours with me they spent the whole time insisting I take them home, crying and making a huge scene in public. This has reiterated to our child that if they makes a fuss they do not have to come and see Dad as Mum will back them up and my ex has obviously been working hard to alienate them from me, my ex could barely contain her pleasure that our child didn't want to come for the visit as normal. I've contacted my ex after the event to ask why they didn't want to come as they could provide no reason and she refused to answer and said she was 'just as shocked as you were' which is frankly - rubbish.
Our child's distress is extreme and fast-paced and it's very evident to me they are being manipulated for alienation purposes by both my ex and her excessively involved parents. I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place as if I try to force the matter my ex has traditionally been verbally abusive and dramatic in front of our child and it will cause further distress. Enforcing the order will make our child feel like they are with me against their will and they will continue to manipulate him until he's older and then I'd assume they'll file for no contact. It's very hard to watch but I wanted to see if anyone has experience with their court order being almost immediately breached by the other parent and what you did in that scenario. It's such early days the final order hasn't even arrived in the post yet and whilst I anticipated his mother would do this I did think I had longer, she did this with her older son and judging by her behaviour in court this has always been her intention.
Any advice on what my options are would be much appreciated as we don't yet have more money for solicitors, we've only just paid the bill for the first round of court and my ex seems to think she's above the law and is completely blanking the order.
You can apply for enforcement, but it may be that it's so recent that you may be able to go straight back to court - hopefully someone with more legal knowledge can give you more details on this. The difficulty for any court is how they can deal with this alienation.
Hello
I'm not at this stage of contact yet but have been previously. My children cried and cried. It was at a contact centre and contact was 'abandoned'
I took it back to court but got told as their mum made them available for contact as per the court order there was nothing they could do!
Could only enforce if she was refusing to show up 🙁
Hi there
It's a difficult situation for you and distressing for your child. As the previous poster mentions, she isn't refusing contact, she is making the child available, although it's accepted that she should be encouraging contact, which she obviously isn't.
As the case has only just closed, you could try writing to the court, making it for the attention of the judge that made the final order, and explain the situation; your child's distress and new behaviours and the mothers total lack of encouragement at handover. Ask if it would be possible to restore the case for new directions.
They do have discretionary powers to restore a case for up to 12 months after the final hearing, but if the judge isn't minded to, you may just be advised to make a new application.
Best of luck
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