Hi everyone, i'm having a really pants week and could really do with some advice.
I've been a SM for a couple of years and have 2 DSS's. We have them 3 weekends on, 1 off, 3 nights at a time. My OH absolutely adores his kids and our current contact arrangement isn't enough for him, it really gets him down that he can't have them more and it breaks my heart to see him tearing himself up over it. We have been toying with the idea of going for 50/50 residency because that is his dream. However, as you would expect, my DSS's BM wasn't keen on the idea (because she doesn't want to lose the money my OH pays her) and loosely agreed on the basis that we cannot swap any weeks with her to miss things like half terms, if half term is on one of our weeks then tough, that's our problem. This obviously would never work for us at the moment because we don't physically have enough annual leave between us to cover taking weeks off for the major holidays AND half terms, so she knew we'd never be able to take her up on it. On the face of it, this is a very fair way to do it, but we both work and she is a stay at home mum (she has 3 other kids beside DSS's).
So this leaves us with one option if we wanted to go ahead and that is that one of us gives up work. We can't afford for my OH to give up work because he's the breadwinner by a long shot, so then that leaves me giving up work. This makes more sense as we're ttc ourselves so (with any luck) in the near(ish) future I won't be working anyway. I get on great with the kids and I love them to bits (even though sometimes I want to run screaming from the house with frustration lol) and they love being here, they cry every time they leave and beg me to let them come back during the week. Not that it is all rainbows and sunshine at our house, I like to think I run a tight ship and there are rules for them and expectations of behaviour that they are, for the most part, happy to abide by. They are really good kids in that respect and i'm super lucky that we haven't yet run into problems.
Yesterday, my OH and the boys BM got into an argument about maintenance from the christmas period where my OH didn't pay as much because the boys had been with us from boxing day til 4th of Jan, it's escalated to BM calling the CSA and opening a case against him and her saying he'll never get more time with them than he has now. He's hurt, angry and frustrated by the whole thing because BM spits the dummy about all manner of things fairly often, he feels he has no control and that he's being painted as a dead beat dad when in reality he fights tooth and nail for his kids. Again, the idea of 50/50 residency has been brought up and we've got an appointment to see a solicitor, but he's convinced it's a waste of time, that the law isn't on his side, that it's 100% up to her how much he gets to see his kids.
I don't know what to do or what to tell him other than 'we'll see what the solicitor says' - it's not like he wants to wrench the kids away from their mother, he just wants an equal amount of time with them. But then he gets frustrated with me because i'm trying to be positive and counter his doom and gloom approach and we end up arguing.
Has anyone else been in a situation like this? Or seen a solicitor about this kind of thing? Am I being too optimistic that a father should have as much right to his children as their mother?
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50/50 residency
75 replies
ktt512 · 05/01/2016 12:21
OP posts:
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