STBX wanting more contact with Daughter

[btsmummy]

Hi,

Thought I'd post here as well s the Divorce section, hopefully it's OK.

I have been separated from my H for just over 4 years and have just started divorce proceedings.

He moved out when we split and paid the mortgage and all the bills, along with the running costs for my car as I was at home with our then 18 month old daughter.

She is now nearly 6 and he has seen her on a weekday and on a Saturday every week since, they have been on holiday together, so there have been times when she has spent a week with him. They have a great relationship and to be fair he is a very good dad and she loves her time with him.

We have always got on very well, and many times we did family things at the weekend when he came to see our daughter (i am still in the FMH), we also continued to sleep together up until the beginning of last year when it became obvious we weren't going to reconcile, thing have been a bit frosty since but got slowly better and we started having family days out again (tho not sleeping together), that was up until this May.

He is now asking for more contact with our daughter and is asking for overnight stays, one during the week so he can pick her up from school and drop her off the next morning, and overnights at the weekends, he has said he would like 3 overnight stays a week so he can spend more time with her, possibly 4 the next, amount to equal care. I have said he can't have this but I have offered him 1 overnight every other weekend, with the usual midweek after school and weekend daytime in between. I also told him I won't discuss it any further and that he needs to speak to my solicitor.

Do you think he has any realistic chance of this, as I've told him we'll have to go to court as I won't agree it?

Thanks

B

Glitter I am sure you accept every story of every client who pays your or company without question that their story is 100% accurate and truthful.

[FFS emoticon} there are children involved here, their welfare should really count.

I pity your "professionalism". I pity the children of the clients you get paid to represent.

Your assumption is incorrect and frankly shows the weakness of your viewpoint. Now whose naive?

And once again, if you "beat the system"! By getting indirect contact why promote direct contact against what the court ( and no doubt your legal advisers who are people such as myself) felt best for your child and then you go on to moan about what goes on in direct contact??

You're doing your own argument down.

Furthermore if you "beat it" for your child why on earth did you go behind the decision of a court to allow indirect contact and go on to promote direct contact? You contradict yourself. Silly ( read devious) thing

glitter spoken like a truly seasoned family court solicitor, where the importance of winning and losing is more important than doing what is best for the child as they get older.

Both my ex husband and I have actually agreed on the above after a lot of unhappy experiences.

But mitmoo YOU started a thread on here moaning about what tourney was saying to your son during direct contact and the effect that was having on him! It was you then, who brought that negative effect on your son, not the Courts, not fellow solicitors.

Mitmoo, who a you to say your Childs father wasn't capable. Are you so damn perfect? Your child is 50% their father and 50% you so that is like say your child is 50% shite on your eyes.

Maybe if your solicitor had been 100% decent she/he would have told you to grow up and allow your child to have a relationship with their dad.

I am a firm believer that society is to blame in the inequality children face in trying to maintain a relationship with both their parents. And although their maybe fathers who are a waste of space their are also mothers who treat their children like handbags and cash mashines. If the world saw both parents as equals and maybe 50:50 shared care the norm in all but extreme cases then this would be far better for the children. And for those men who do not take care of their children's every need would be looked sown apon as their uncaring attitude would be their for all to see and for those women who deny their children the right to a normal family life of 2 parents would not longer have this ability.

your ex

And you didn't "beat it" in your case. You got a result which was right for you in the circumstances. Doesn't that then follow that the profession you slag off and system you put down actually did you a good service? Make your mind up.

God, you lot, you're so tedious.
Go elsewhere to score points against one another.
You're a help to no one.
Go treat yourself to your own AIBU.

You have a point stick

Guilty as charged of thread napping. Sorry. I'm just passionate about what I do. If I was money motivated i wouldn't have gotten myself into shed loads of debt to practice in a notoriously poorly paid area o law.

mitmoos comments were deeply offensive to me. I should learn not to rise to such mindless and ill-educated bait. I shall start practising that now!

The point remains that the OP's actions in starting a thread pretending to be his XW, the premise of which is 'Hi. I'm an unreasonable cunt despite the fact that my XH is a total saint.' make anyone who isn't a dimwit think that there is probably a lot that we are not being told. Whereas if he had started a thread saying 'My XW is being unreasonable about access, here's what's happening' he might have got a more sympathetic hearing.

Perhaps, solid perhaps.

Ultimately though, he's just another Dad who wants to see his DD more, when it's his W/Ex W who's holding the cards.
Simple.
We can argue the what ifs and he shouldn't have's til the cows come home, the fact remains the same. I can't see anything else in his threads about getting one over on the ex - he just wants to see his child.

I stand by my first post on this topic OP - play fair, encourage your ex to play fair. Your DD comes first.

glitter. 'Tis good to be passionate.....
I understand where you're coming from.

There is usually a lot that we aren't being told on most threads. That doesn't automatically equal the poster being a bad person or hiding some dark personallity trait. Not automatically seeing the worse in everyone does not make me a dimwit.

Wasn't there a guy on here a few weeks back who's wife was denying him spending time with his daughter. Although he got some support there was also an awful lot of people saying he should listen to the mother, mother knows best, it is not fair on mother to not see her daughter for a day and night.

There are plenty of examples of men not getting support on these boards.

Fontsnob I totally agree. Not automatically seeing the worst in someone certainly does NOT make you a dimwit. I'm the same. Been called naive and stupid even . I'd rather think that I've a healthy, realistic and positive attitude to the human condition. We are, I'm afraid, in the minority. Anyway, I digress...

Instead of seeing the OP here as devious, I tend to think of it from my dear old Dad's point of view (at the time when I was a wee child - LOOOOONG time ago), in the sense that OP knows that it's the Mum who generally holds the cards and calls the shots. Who can blame him for a bit of innocent masquerading? To get another viewpoint on the whole thing? Poor bugger. Words on a screen to us yet a major crisis to him. I'd sooner help than cast stones.

Ah yes, women generally hold the cards. That's why women in abusive relationships stay in those relationships because they have been told that the abusive man will get custody, throw them penniless in the street or get them locked up for being mad. That's why women who have escaped from abusive relationships get told that they have to be nice to the abusive man and allow him into their home despite the fact that he's abusive and dangerous to the children as well as to the woman,because he's got a good lawyer and if he kills the children or the woman or all of them, well it was probably her fault for not being sufficiently compliant and submissive and for Having An Affair even if the relationship between her and the abusive man had been over for years.

And it's why women get poorer after divorce but men get richer, don't forget.

solid you posts suggests you think that generally men are abusive and will leave their wives in the street. It's like saying 'all men are rapists'

You're just giving weight to the op posting as a woman to circumnavigate a bias.

solid you really do start with the presumption all men are violent controlling bastards don't you?

Your post is as wildly dramatic, inaccurate and hysterical as suggesting all Muslims are terrorists who will blow up your bus.

And let's not forget that the burden of proof for injunctive remedies and findings of violence is only the balance of probabilities. The lowest standard of proof applicable in uk courts.

As one who suspected the OP of being devious and manipulative, I'd like to clarify: I'm not sure the post was even real- I know few fathers or mothers who, in the midst of a dispute over their children could conduct an experiment in comparing responses like that.
Even if he is real, my view is the same; he is the child's father and she deserves a full relationship with him.
Lastly, family law is no gravy train for legal professionals and while I have encountered a few who have behaved as badly as their clients, they are in the minority.

Solid - you obviously feel strongly about that, I can see, but it's not relevant here. There has been no mention of DA or violence, so let's stay on track here.

Glitter yes we got the right decision in the end, but that took two and a half years for the courts to come to the same conclusion that I had told them was the right conclusion two and a half years earlier. If that is a success to you then I truly despair.

Family Court Solicitors represent which ever parent pays them - FACT.

Children have lost their lives as a result of these contact orders, it's a disgrace.

Our system is an adversarial system and when children are the "prize" that makes it an extremely poor, weak and badly damaged system. You may throw out your wooly insults, it doesn't change the fact that the family courts are deeply flawed and it's the children who pay the price.

Mary I am not against fathers, (though the OPs sex change has meant I can't trust a word he says now so will question it).

I have no problem with anyone in our family court system taking offence, perhaps I'll be called "solicitorist" now, God forbid we shouldn't have is "ist" to cry [rolly eyes emoticon] Our family courts are absolutely flawed, they let down children, fathers and mothers. Very few will have gone through it and found it to be an experience where they found the result to be a right or fair one, that's mothers and fathers alike.

There is no follow up, until recent years CRAPCASS CAFCASS didn't even have any training on domestic violence. In the majority 99% was quoted to be by my solicitor a judge simply rubber stamps CAFCASS recommendations as they are the only ones to have met the parents and the child which the judge hasn't. Some of these people have less training than a traffic warden but can make decisions about our children.

Once you have met enough people damaged by the family courts as I have you will view it with the same despair that I do.

It's just that the men who make the most noise about 'Wah, women get more sympathy than men, life is Unfair to Men etc' usually turn out to be sexist if not actively abusive. Like this OP, who clearly can't get his head round the idea that his XW might not agree with him and not wish to obey him and that there might be a reason for her not wanting him to have more access.