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Hi there,
I currently have a reasonable childcare agreement with my ex about our 8 year old daughter. I work full-time and her mum has been studying part-time. I now want to move to part-time work, have my daughter more often and reduce maintenance payments as a result. Ideally, I'd like to move to a 50-50 split of time where we both work equally and share childcare. My ex is not in favour of this and says she will not "allow" me to have more time with my daughter. However, I am of course an equal parent so don't see she has any ability to "allow" this any more than I do.
I want to give my ex one year's notice on this to allow her time to make the necessary financial adjustments.
At the moment, she stays with me every Weds night, every other weekend and half of every school holiday (I'm a school teacher so have the same holidays as her).
I'm worried though that courts still have a prejudice seeing women as being "in charge" and able to "allow" changes or not - even though this would clearly be gender discrimination.
What would you advise on this?
Hi there
Unfortunately as your ex is the resident parent and I'm assuming your child arrangements are not court ordered, she can dictate terms. In theory you are equally responsible for your child but it often doesn't work like that in practice.
I would imagine the maintenance situation doesn't encourage a shared care arrangement, if she agreed to a 50/50 split that would cancel out any payments she might be receiving. Some women actually stop overnights so that they receive the full amount!
There is still gender bias in some courts although they would never admit to it and if you started accusing them you could be labelled as unreasonable.
If at all possible it's better to try and negotiate extra time between yourselves, little increases as the child gets older. That said there are some dads that have been successful through the courts and have managed to get a shared care arrangement where they have their child equally.
If you wanted to legalise your arrangements then you would need to attend mediation as a first step, if this failed you could apply to the court for a Child Arrangements Order.
All the best
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