[Solved] enforcing and varying cao

Also, can i put my partner on the forms so she can attend the court room, we are not married....

Well contact has been going real well since getting the cao but there have been numerous instances where telephone contact hasnt been facilitated as it should be or been removed completely and now my ex is attempting to change court ordered dates for contact during the school holidays this has been done by way of dictating dates to me rather than discussing changes as per usual

My question is do I go for an enforcement order even though ultimately id like to request more contact anyway or do I apply for a new cao ?

Any advice would be appreciated

BD

Hi there

It's great that contact has been going well, just a pity your ex is still pushing her own agenda. How long has the CAO been in place? This does have some bearing when asking for it to be varied.

With enforcement orders there is no requirement to attend mediation first, but an application to vary an existing order would require mediation to be attempted prior to a court application.

As she is breaching the current order, the likelihood of her complying to an increase in contact is debatable. My feeling is to get her to abide by the existing order first before trying to increase what you already have.
Have you reminded her that she is breaching the court order and made her aware that you are considering a return to court for enforcement? Perhaps mediation might be useful in this regard?

Hey Mojo,

Thanks for your reply- the court order has only been in place for about 4 months.

Mediation potentially would not work as she is unlikely to keep to any agreements made, however we would be more than happy to try this, and maybe just ask her to attend so that she declines to give us better contact when we do apply to make a variation.

We have been in contact for the last few days trying to get her to agree to stick to the order and she claims she is not going to. We have informed her of our intention to apply for an enforcement order.

Is it right that my partner would be unlikely to be able to attend the court room unless we are married- we don't really wish to ask the mother of the children's permission as she will more than likely say no!!= don't wish to give her that satisfaction!!

We wish to extend the current contact so we drop off at school, as persistently the handover is becoming increasingly worse as the children refuse to leave with her and the idea would be to limit this distress.

The ex is also getting the children anxious about our holiday plans- as she demands to know the wheres and whens of this, and has said that the children will not be able to go if she doesn't get the information.. we have been warned previously not to give her more info, as she then requires more information if you get my drift- she always wants to know more information than even we might not know the answers to! she also continues to stalk me and we could do without looking over our shoulders whilst on holiday- however do u think the court will frown upon us not giving her this information??

Thanks 🙂

Also, can i put my partner on the forms so she can attend the court room, we are not married....

I think your partner would need to ask permission from the court to be an applicant in the case and this is done using form C2. to be sure I would suggest you give Coram a call and get some definitive advice about this.

http://childlawadvice.org.uk/clas/contact-child-law-advice/

You could also ask them for advice on an enforcement or variation application whilst you've got them on the phone 🙂