[Solved] Her friend taking notes?

Hi and welcome

Sorry to hear you haven't been able to have regular contact with your son.

To answer your question, no it wouldn't really stand up as evidence of any sort.

Mediation might be a good option to try at this stage although the distance between your homes would make attempting this option quite tricky.

http://www.nfm.org.uk/

Try to avoid court if you can, it should always be the last option but if it becomes your only option, attempting mediation is mandatory before making an application to court and you will have to get a mediator to stamp your forms. You can possibly claim exemption due to the distance.

If you do apply to court you will need a C100 and a C1 for PR.

Plenty of our dads self rep and it isn't as daunting as it seems, have a look through our stickies at the top of this section for some guidance on the process and feel free to ask questions and we will try to help.

Have you sought mediation yet? If not you will need to before you can apply to court.

My own personal opinion on this is you need to be extremely cautious now, it could’ve been set up to get you wound up and try and get you to react to something, or it could’ve been just to scare you in to her submission showing she has control over you still….showing that she knows the law and you won’t get anywhere.
No matter what her reasons you need to start a recording if she pulls that stunt on you again. If you find yourself in that situation again, tell her that you are going to record this just as she is doing with notes to ensure you too have a copy of what has been said.

If you haven’t already start a diary of events, make notes of what happened, when and what was said etc…
If you have agreed days in writing and then she backs out of them get it in writing and or make notes as soon as it occurs.
The sooner you make notes the fresher they are in your head and will make a picture up to show the courts should you choose that route.

You mention you don’t think she’d go down the DV or abuse routes as there hasn’t been any……well you really should read some of the other posts in this forum……i, like so many here also never thought my ex would go down that route…..until she did when she got the court papers through from me! Then all [censored] broke loose, all manner of false accusations were then made at me, all false and all easy enough to prove false but took some time to do that.

Got to mention when replying to her texts in a non-abusive or threatening manner she then claims harassment! Watch out for that one….the police even though saw she being unreasonable and could see the non-harassing nature of messages they still gave me a verbal warning that is then on my record! And that sh*t sticks trust me!!!
Regardless of how much proof you have unless you get a copper who sees through it you then get that thrown at you in court and then need police disclosure to prove you’re not! Then and only then when you can prove it you can go to the police and discuss it with them but they’ll not take it off record!

Thanks for the advice both, I didn't really think the notes her friend made would carry much weight but I just wanted to be sure. Giving all due credit this person is clearly a good friend to the ex however during the at-times heated conversation I could see she was doing her best to be objective and neutral, quite a few times she could have chipped in with emphasis to back up things the ex was saying but didn't, often simply saying things like "you both need to find a way to work together on this" which felt genuine as opposed to some kind of attempt at lulling me in to a false sense of security to get me to say or admit things.

With regards to allegations of DV although you always have to be aware of the possibility, to the ex's credit (and bearing in mind how some of her behaviour and methods in all this have shocked me) I can't say I think she'd stoop as low as that. As she hopes for a career in law any such allegations would be completely false and untrue so lying like that in court runs the risk of prosecution and even just a slap on the wrist (or merely having it recorded officially) would kill off her career even before it starts. So her law background is a doubled-edged sword, it may give her much more experience and knowledge of these situations than I but it does mean she is forced to work within the law.

As for mediation it's something I'm aware of and have looked in to in great depth however before I go down that route I still have one or two other ideas I want to try first. If it turns out to be my only option then I want to have exhausted all possible alternatives, I really really don't want to put her or myself through the whole process, it won't be pleasant for either of us and more importantly neither will it be for our son.

The distance involved certainly doesn't help but if I'm required to travel to reach a resolution with her then there's simply no question: I'll do it.

Just as an update I've since been to the initial mediation meeting, I was surprised to find out I do actually qualify for legal aid for use with them which was positive.

I explained all the above to the mediator and she quite rightly reminded me it wasn't really for her to comment on incidents like that however she did say she'd be very surprised if anything written was even brought up in any potential court action.