Coparenting difficulties with abusive ex

[Midlandsmum23]

I'm at the end of my tether with my abusive estranged husband who I separated from 2 years ago. Our 10 year old son is on the autistic spectrum and has been at a mainstream school throughout primary school so far. However, he has really struggled in the past year and, together with the professionals, we have now made the decision to send him to a special school.

All well and good but the difficulty is that my ex currently works extremely erratic and unsociable hours in retail. There is no rhyme and reason to his work schedule and the hours vary wildly from one week to the next. This in itself is unsettling for our autistic son and his siblings that their contact time with their father varies from one week to the next.

However, things have really come to a head now as our autistic son will be travelling to his new school by local authority minibus. Obviously the minibus driver will need to have a set schedule of the days when he is picking our son up from my house and the days when he is picking our son up from his father's house. I brought this to my ex's attention and told him that he would need to find a way of working consistent hours to enable a fixed transport schedule to be drawn up.

However, my ex refused to cooperate, saying that "it might be difficult" and "it may not be possible" for him to get fixed hours at work. He said that he can ask whether he can get fixed hours at work but there is no guarantee of success. I then asked him what was stopping him from applying for other jobs that were actually compatible with family life and he said that there were no other jobs out there!

He just seems to be burying his head in the sand about the whole situation and pretending that it is not actually happening. But our son will be starting at his new school in the next two to three months whether the ex gets his working hours sorted or not. He seems to be putting his work commitments before the welfare of his children. And I shall be the one left to pick up the pieces once again if he hasn't sorted his working hours by then and that is also really frustrating.

Has anyone been through similar? The thoughts swirling around in my head are stopping me from getting on with my work today so any advice would be much appreciated.

[Starlight456]

I would think if he can’t commit to been there for taxi then he may need to see Ds at weekends when he isn’t working or evenings .

He should apply for flexible working hours .

[Midlandsmum23]

Starlight 456
My ex works in retail and can be required to work any time between 6 am and 11pm from Monday to Saturday and any time between 7 am and 6 pm on a Sunday.

We have a Child Arrangements Order in place stipulating that he sees the children every other weekend and 2 evenings during the week. However, the vast majority of the time his erratic working hours prevent him from abiding by the court order. He works a long shift on both a Saturday and a Sunday most weekends, with the occasional Saturday off. He also works a lot of evening shifts and, ironically, is rarely at work while the children are actually at school.

He put in a request for flexible working but it was refused as they are too short-staffed to accommodate it.

[Starlight456]

Can you bat it back to him to find a solution...

Would an option for him to be to collect from you on the evenings? However obviously that wouldn't resolve the 6 am issue.

Even a childcare arrangement I am imagining doesn't resolve the issue.If he is in special school I imagine any sort of childcare is extremely difficult.