Amendments to court order

[MsColouring]

I have posted this in legal but posting here as well for a bit more traffic

Background: Me and ex split nearly 4 years ago. We have two children who are now aged 5 and 8. The divorce has been very acrimonious. We spent hours in mediation trying to thrash out both contact and money issues. Unfortunately there is no reasoning with my ex and he has made massive sweeping statements about me e.g. all I care about is the money, all he cares about is the kids and seems unable to empathise with anyone else's point of view. Mediation was incredibly stressful.

So two years ago he took me to court to try and get 50:50 joint residence. He had no case as he had used his statement to try and assassinate my character rather than put forward any case for them living with him half the time so he lost but a contact order was written up.

Unfortunately, this contact order is rather flimsy and my ex takes advantage of this. Since the court order was drawn up my ex seems to think this gives him the right to dictate holiday dates (order is for half the holidays at Christmas and Summer) and whenever I try and negotiate he threatens me with either his solicitor or taking me back to courts.

Our current battle is over Christmas. The court order states that the last few days of the holidays should be spent with me - he is trying to claim that this only applies to the summer holidays. We also clashed over an INSET day next week - he was given first refusal as per court order - he didn't reply, I said I'd made alternative arrangements, cue the threats of court.

This sort of thing seems to be happening more and more regularly and is causing me a lot of stress and is becoming hard to keep from the children.

I am starting to feel the only way round this is to take things back to court to get the court order fairly watertight so that misunderstandings/taking advantage of the flimsy wording can't happen.

If I do take it back to court, I will be looking to do it without a solicitor (though I may try and get some legal advice) due to costs. Anybody had any similar experience. Where do I start? And is it worth doing?

[foolonthehill]

unfortunately the courts tend to give contact orders as "sweeping statements" rather than concrete days and dates, If you go back to court they will do the same. the only way to nail the dates down is for you and him or your solicitor and his solicitor to arrange them and present it to the judge as an agreed contact order. I had to go to court to do this (similar mediation story to yours) but it was our solicitors who argued over the precise wording and dates.

If you decided to do this I would say that you will have to have a solicitor or barrister as you and your ex sitting in a court arguing is unlikely to get anywhere.

The courts don't seem to get that leaving the details to people who have had to go to court to get an order is a big pain ... they/we are in court because we can;t sort out these sorts of things.