dd refusing contact time & ex banning me from communicating w/him

[hodgehegs]

Hi

V short background - divorced 6 years, shared parental responsibility, child living with me but having regular set contact with ex.

2 issues in 1 here....

My ex has regular contact with dd, but this weekend refused to go to see him because she wanted to see her friends. She is 11.

We tried to contact ex by phone and email to let him know there was a problem and try to resolve it, however discovered my phone numbers and email have been blocked by him. I, and therefore also dd, now have no way of contacting him directly should a problem come up.

dd refused to go, despite my trying to persuade her, and stayed the weekend with me.

We have previously been to court regarding contact, so I am now threatened with disregarding a court order by him. However, I was quite happy for dd to go and did my best to persuade her to. It was her decision not to go, not mine.

Anyone else in this situation and/or know what happens next when a child refuses their contact time?

Other issue is his blocking of all of my contact. How am I supposed to engage in shared parenting with someone who rejects all of my communication? He insists that messages be passed through a relative of his and I am not to contact him directly. This seems silly and ineffective and means that in an urgent situation, such as dd refusing contact the morning he is coming to collect her, the only way I can get in touch is to contact 3rd party, wait for them to contact him, wait for him to reply to them, then wait for them to reply to me!

Anyone have any experience of this? Can an ex in a shared parenting situation refuse to communicate directly with the other parent?

Thanks for your thoughts!

[Celynfour]

Sounds very upsetting.
I don't know the answer but will be interested to hear views of others.
I have a dd , 11, they know their own minds.

[nomoretether]

Yes they can refuse.

What would you have said if your daughter didn't want to go to school or a medical appointment? Are you saying the court order has been breached as a result of this?

[hodgehegs]

Hi, thanks for replies.

If my daughter says she's not going to school (as she did this week, when she decided her lunch box had an embarrassing design on it) I said I would tell her headteacher. If she refused an appointment I would say she would be banned from playing computer games for a day.

This is bigger than that, though, and got the "I don't care, I'm not going" response. Ultimately in the case of the scenarios you suggest, if she really dug in, I couldn't force her to do them either.

I don't know if a court order has been breached. I know this is a situation which does come up for other people. There is a court order saying I must make her available for contact and I have done my best to do so. If she refuses to go, that's not me saying he can't see her, it's her choice, but just wondered if there's some sort of age threshold where it becomes their choice, or if as a parent, I am held responsible for her decisions.

[FreeSpirit89]

Best bet would be to speak with your solicitor, or court and explain the situation.

Sorry no more help thsn that

[hodgehegs]

Thanks FreeSpirit, I have now spoken to my solicitor. She says it is not my fault, as I have made dd available for contact, but it was her choice not to go, not mine. Now I just need to wait and see if he chooses to take me to court and if so, my solicitor will put that across to them and we'll have to see what they say. Certainly can't be an unusual case, so they must see it fairly often.

[wheresthelight]

Can you call him from a number he doesn't have (do phone boxes still exist?) so thannthe number won't be blocked?

I would document every time you have tried to ring/email and present them to court/solicitor and let them deal with it.

At 11 the court will take her wishes into account and I suspect that they wouldn't force her to have contact butthey vcertainly need to intervene on the contact with you issue. Wtf would happen if he was needed in an emergency and dd was critically ill or something happened to you and dd tried to ring him for help?! What a selfish pathetic arse he is!!

[hodgehegs]

Thanks wheresthelight. I tend to text, so that there is evidence of conversations, so I'd feel less secure phoning directly as no proof of what's been said.

In utter emergency I would have to find an alternative phone, but that wouldn't work more than once as he'd block every new number.

My point exactly - if an accident etc happened, or something happened to me and I couldn't get home in time for when he drops her off I'd have no way of letting him know.

Have my texts saved and sent a copy of my email to him to the solicitor, so wait and see time now.