[Solved] Taking children on holiday.

hi nicholas,

when you wrote court order says you can see kids all day during holidays, is it more specific than that? length of holidays?

the stuff you mentioned about taking kids away 1 month. all that only applies to the person that lives with the kids, e.g. if order says kids live with mother. even if you did take kids in uk for 1 month, you will be seen to be breaking order rules, of the time you take them, clashes with the ex's times.

i would recommend you make court application, specific issues order. you can make it a urgent hearing. but i have heard cases where judge will only consider if its very urgent, like going in holiday in 1-2 weeks. others on here may be better informed to advise you.

my order says i am allowed to take kids abroad for 1 week at a time, for maximum of 2 weeks in summer, and ex must hand over passports. not sure whats in your order, but it should be very defined. if you dont have something in place like this, get your order changed to have this.

Thanks for your reply Bill, my court order just says all day and overnight Tuesday’s and Thursday’s during the holidays it doesn’t say what time or anything. The children don’t stay overnight though because she made such a fuss. It doesn’t say anything about taking the children away either. Think I’m just going to bring the children back for the night this year and not make any fuss which I think is what she wants. She likes to be in control.
I’ll e-mail her when the children go back to school and suggest mediation then apply to the court for next summer and possibly Easter.
Do you know if I’ll have to go through mediation and then appear in court again?

hi Nicholas,

its my understanding that if you want to change/vary an order then you have to go through mediation first.

but as you mentioned, your order says kids can have overnight stays with you, but your ex is not allowing it. thats a clear breach. you can enforce your order using form C79 and no mediation needed. I have read other cases, where dads went to enforce the order, and judges end up making changes to the order. so in that sense, you can aim to have a more structured holiday plan for future written up, including trips abroad, passport issues etc.

check out https://www.gov.uk/looking-after-children-divorce/change-or-enforce-an-order

Hi there

Have you had your children overnight at all yet? Have they expressed the wish to go on holiday with you?

Did the children’s mother agree to them going with you on holiday, before you booked it? If she had agreed initially, but has now backtracked, I would say that you have a good enough reason to make an urgent Specific Issue Order.

Perhaps you could try mediation to get her to agree.

Best of luck

Thank you for your replies. My children stay overnight with me, my fiancée and her daughter every other Friday and Saturday and are very comfortable doing so. I’ve told them about the holiday and they have spoken positively about it. They haven’t expressed any concern.

Did your ex know/agree to the holiday before you booked It?

I asked her but she objected. The children were with us for the first weekend so I booked it anyway and asked if they could stay on the Sunday night but she said no. Think she’s expecting an argument so I’ll do what she wants this year then ask her about mediation when school starts in September. I’ve asked her about it before and she said I’d have to pay for it because ‘she hasn’t got a penny to scratch her [censored] with’. She can afford new sofa’s and carpets though. I guess it would be cheaper to pay for her to go to meditation than it would to pay for my half and then pay to go to court?

If she receives benefits she may be entitled to legal aid funding for mediation... problem solved!

I think the fact that she objected initially, might go against you this time, but I do think you will need to be a little firmer with her, she’s already in breach of the order and seems to think its ok to do so. Have you pointed that out to her?

We’ve had the court order for about 18 months and she’s breached it 7 or 8 times. I’ve e-mailed her each time and copied the court in but they don’t do anything. She called the police when I showed the children a video of her on YouTube from when she was at school aged 13 and has threatened to do so again twice, when I took my fiancée to her house to pick the children up and again a couple of months ago. I drop the children back at a neutral location now and asked if I could drop them back half an hour late one Sunday. She agreed but didn’t turn up. I rang her and she said she was at home but would meet me halfway. I said no but she drove halfway and rang me again saying she had been drinking and asked if I could ‘help her out’.
I wanted to see the children on Friday before they went away and the court order said they were supposed to stay with me. I pointed this out saying she told me she was taking the children away on Saturday but she said I couldn’t see them. The school have a copy of the court order but I don’t what would’ve happened if we would’ve both turned up to pick the children up. If I would’ve called the police she would’ve told the children I was trying to get her arrested.
Technically I haven’t agreed to her taking the children away. I said as long as I can pick them up on the Friday she could take them away. She works in child protection, ignores anything she doesn’t want to hear and thinks she is above the law. I don’t think she’s entitled to legal aid because of the equity in her house.

mediation doesnt cost a lot. you can get a session for less than £100. video calls. nice and easy. emailing court about breaches wont achieve much. better to take official route and make enforcement application.