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hello I am new here .
I am looking for some advice for my brother .He was living in uk for 14 years and was married with 3 kids .He came home here to ireland after his marriage broke up 3 years ago .
He has been struggling with Alcohol for the past 3 years .He has had contract with his kids over this time but is wife would never let him visit them. His wife passes away in january 2015 he is in rehab now trying to sort him self out. and he is doing great, His sister in law has the kids and will not let myself or my mother any contract with kids or even their father .we have been sendind cards ,rining every night and nothing .we attented the cremation the kids where fine with us but the woman who has my neices and nephew was very cool .The family do article in a local new paper and was saying that now the kids are orphans which is not true . Iam looking for some advise on what to do Thank you
Hi There,
.
I really don't have any experience of this sort of thing, but I would think that your brother needs to get himself off the drink to start with which he is already doing, hopefully with your support he will manage to kick it and get into a good place, once he is, and I would say he needs to be there before starting any process towards gaining access to the children or his ex's family will just use the driking against him, he should be able to apply to the courts, I don't know which order he would need to apply for I will message another mod and ask them to comment as they have more experience than me and I'm sure they will be able to answer some questions for you so keep checking back.
.
GTTS
Hi there
This is a very sad situation for the children and for Dad, who has obviously struggled since his marriage broke down.
If it were me I would write to the newspaper that ran the article and state that the children are not orphans and as a family unit you have been trying to establish and maintain contact with the children for the last three years and that you did indeed attend the funeral and have been trying without success to start a dialogue with the mothers family since then. Just keep it brief and don't include any personal details. This may be a ploy by the relatives to back up an assertion that fathers whereabouts are unknown prior to applying for Guardianship.
If the mothers death was sudden and unexpected she may not have made legal provision for the children's care, or stated her wishes in a will, or made arrangements for a family member to make an application for Guardianship for the children in the event of her death. If the family have applied for legal guardianship through the courts, because your brother has parental responsibility, they would need his permission and if they are making out that the children are orphans, they may be trying to get an order by stating that they don't know where the father is.
Mediation is usually the first step here in the UK, but because your brother lives so far away that is obviously not an option and because of this I'm unsure on the legal advice to give.
Because of your brothers problems it will make the process more difficult, but not impossible. I would advise that you get some legal advice and because the children are resident here, I would say that any proceedings would have to take place here and for that reason it would be a good idea to contact Coram for legal advice, its a free service and they will be able to advise you about what you would need to do.
Here's a link
http://childlawadvice.org.uk/clas/contact-child-law-advice/
As your brother is in Ireland you may also be able to get some advice from Reunite, although they are known for dealing with international abduction cases, they also give advice in situations like this, it's worth giving them a call, here's a link to their website
www.reunite.org
Best of luck with this and let us know how you get on.
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