My dh walked away from his children after fighting to see them for six years - AMA

[Katypp]

Family courts about 12 years ago - things hopefully will have changed by now

Essentialimbrella. It is not any different.

My DH is going through this now. The children’s mum simply doesn’t like him and doesn’t want the kids to see him.

He’s been to court and got a court order for contact. He always pays maintenance (as he should). There are no welfare or other concerns.

However, mum is absolutely intent on obstructing the kids’ relationship with their dad and it’s working. They now sulk and are miserable when they’re with him because they’ve been made by mum to think dad is this and dad is that - and they’re completely team mum. They’re constantly waiting for the time to tick by so they can go back to mum - and this is despite DH making their contact as fun and enjoyable as possible.

It’s really sad to see.

The question is how much longer can you force the kids (ages 9 and 11) to do visits to dad when they’re not interested? Mum is poison but who will stop her? It’s hard on DH and I really feel for the kids as their relationship with their dad is suffering due to mum’s own insecurities and bitterness.

It's the same here wombat. It's awful

And anyone who thinks that this is unusual is kidding themselves. There are many reasons why a father shouldn't see a child. However, there are also a large number of women who will simply drip feed their negativity to their children despite the father being perfectly adequate and the children will stop wanting to see the father because of either how the mother speaks about them or because she has planted ideas in their minds that he's not a good person or because the mum is the primary carer who gets upset / aggressive / asks lots of questions when it's dad time, the child feels guilty having a nice time with their father as it upsets their mum and the easiest solution is to decide not to bother seeing dad as it upsets mum

I don't think it is.

AMA means Ask Me Anything.

Although I have no idea why OP thought it was a good idea for a thread. As she said, it was 12 years ago, there's been no positive outcome, and now she's upset by responses because she chose to tell a story that isn't really hers to tell.

It would be quite difficult to experience it myself unless I stopped DH seeing my child, which I am obviously not going to do.

What a pointless AMA 🤷🏻‍♀️

An OP who doesn’t answer questions

There is no reason for him not to try to see his children and if he only stopped paying maintenance 1 year ago they can’t be that hard to trace not with the resources available today.

The question is how much longer can you force the kids (ages 9 and 11) to do visits to dad

You can't. On one memorable occasion dh collected his kids for a 4 hour visit. As they were leaving the house their mum shouted "Remember I'll be just round the corner, you can come and get me any time, you don't need to stay if you're sad and missing me" or words to that effect.

We then realised later that she'd been sitting in her car just round the corner from our house the entire visit. We could see her car from our upstairs bathroom window. We couldn't understand why dsd was spending so much time in the bathroom. She was hanging out the window waving to her mum. Total madness.

She did this parking round the corner thing more than once, and the kids left ours more than once to go to her. They were never given a chance to be happy with their dad, and later with us. It's such a shame. It's had lifelong effects on all of us.

And so hard to understand if you haven't actually experienced it.

(I was so tempted to go round and take her a cup of tea but dh was so scared of her that I'd never have done it)

Yes I know that
that’s why I said the CMS would never order this as he was young way more than they’d ever expect him to

if someone chooses to pay 80% of their salary towards the upkeep of their children that’s a different matter and a private arrangement.

I’m puzzled as to why he had children with a woman who stopped her first husband from seeing his child.
Surely the warning signs were already there?
I know hindsight is a wonderful thing and all that but seriously.

We have similar essentialumbrella-and the constant calling and messaging when they are here-and clear instructions they must ring her twice a day. DS1 forgot once as we were out somewhere having a nice time and when he realised he descended into a Nervous wreck and made us all come home early so he could sit in his room and ring his mum! God knows how she has put the fear of her up him like that. Poor kid.

If You have 3 kids op, what do they think about their father walking away from their siblings?

@warofthemonstertrucks this all sounds very familiar. Mum even drove 120 miles to 'rescue' the children when they were on a court-ordered holiday. She had resisted a week, saying two days, was enough, and the oldest one was obsessed with finding a reason to be collected after two days. He smacked his baby sister, was told off, and then phoned his mum to collect them.

@ZeroFuchsGiven I saw he had no choice. In your case, the child was in danger from an alcoholic mum. In our case, things were more subtle.

Absolutely, totally this is a common reason. It's about not losing.

That's not what @ZeroFuchsGiven asked you.

@Katypp smacked his baby sister ? Er ok, unlikely but let’s pretend it did happen, in that scenario you why did you then let him phone his mother ? If My ex-husband he disciplines the kids the first thing he does he take the phone off them so I wouldn’t know anything about it.

My daughters phone died when she was with me once. Her mum sent a message that wasn’t delivered (while we were out buying a new one) and next time we were in court the story was that I took the child’s phone off her so she couldn’t use her “safe word” to her mum if she was scared.

Honestly, unless you have dealt with this you have no idea.

And yes, be m wise she had a hot lawyer and I was self representing it went in the final judgment that I had withheld phone access from my daughter, when actually she had dropped her phone and I had taken her straight into town to buy a new one.

People have no idea what some mums/dads/parents will stoop to, and after a while it is really just better for sll
concerned to walk away because a court will hardly ever accept that a mum is deliberately keeping her kids from a relationship with their dad.

OK I am not going to come back now as I am wasting my time. @Angeldelight81 s thread is the final straw. There's really much I can add when everything I say in not believed

Exactly.

It’s really bad isn’t it. I’m afraid that the majority of the posters on here haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about when it comes to contact arrangements and alienation.

Contrary to popular mumsnet belief, there are a lot of women out there who are very far from blameless in family court proceedings.

When a mother is dead set on stopping a father seeing his kids, it’s virtually impossible to maintain the relationship as she will just destroy it from the inside out.

You can point out that there can be two sides to a story without calling the mother a liar. And again, you show them that you love them unconditionally. My mum was very dismissive of my paternal grandparents to put it mildly, did it prevent me from loving them? No, because the few times I saw them they showed they loved me.

Unfortunately this usually isn’t about simply being “dismissive”. Some of the posts above give excellent examples of the depths to which the resident parent will often sink to undermine the relationship.