to feel so disheartened at the family court system

[currantbunsforeyes]

Ex has been harassing me using the courts for years. He's had prohibited steps order placed on me by making up lies that I'm a flight risk, appealed decisions, etc.... This has gone on for years until I was awarded sole res due to his ongoing harassment.

Despite this he's still taking me to court for shared res. There was a stay (prevention order) to stop him for doing this for two years but now they are up I'm back in court. The judge has asked for new hearing and agreed to ex's request to leave out old judgements from bundle! WTF!!! The old judgements shows how his harassment and constant harassing using courts led to me ending up with sole res.

I feel like there is no point, no consistency. I've been doing this now for eight years. PS I'm generous with contact. Dcs have alternate weekends and mid week overnight stays with him.

Are the family law court system that messed up?

Yes spero I believe some were published but I'm not sure it's anything you would read and think holy crap that's a biggy.

It's more the type of thing that a few years ago I would have confidently guessed only an indirect contact order would happen and been right but these days I wouldn't be and I would be surprised.

the poster up thread who alluded to DV support groups being able to provide evidence for LA it is really not that simple as just attending. Usually in order to get the required evidence we would have had to have been aware of the situation at crisis point (referral from social services or the police or A&E) we would need evidence ourselves to provide anything that even had a hope of success.

I.E Debbie is brought to the police station at 1am and an outreach worker is requested we attend police station and assist Debbie through interview and medical evidence assessment, Debbie attends our group and we then become her advocate with other services and obtain other services for her. We can provide her with evidence for LA for as long as she is using our services or within 2 years of her stopping if on going abuse has occurred.

Tessa attends our drop in clinic with no injuries and only a referral from children's services about historical abuse she utilises our support group and our outreach worker for the same things Debbie has. We cannot provide evidence at any time for LA unless Tessa's ex is convicted of an offence against her during the time we work with her.

I would like to again stress that overwhelmingly my personal experance echos speros and it's still the vast majority of my cases where any contact at all is certainly not a foregone conclusion. And that is the reason I always challenge the contact is a slam dunk theory that pops up.

There is a reason why I almost without fail tell women both on social media and in RL that the best thing you can do if experancing abuse is run towards the police and social services rather than away from them and that's because every single bruise or grab mark or injury no matter how small helps to build a better picture of the abuser you will be trying to protect your children from a few years down the line as does a proactive approach to children's services.

As one of his adult victims I can assure you, these people can have you doubting your sanity as an adult, believing things that are utterly absurd, a child has no chance against him. This has been going on for years, tell a child school is boring and if they lived somewhere else where there is no school they could go skating, swimming, parks every day instead it would sound like heaven. For 4 years he has rewarded her with a sweet and affection when she says awful things about me but turns his back on her, gives her the silent treatment and refuses all affection if she asks for me or says anything nice, from 2 years old to 6 years old she has been conditioned by him in to thinking and behaving certain ways.
Unfortunately too many people think that way, oh unless of course it's the mum doing it, and children are refusing to go on contact then they have definitely been manipulated! sigh

Hard, a lot of the things you are saying resonate with me. My ex was remarkably similar. And you know what? The court saw through him. He went for residency and ended up without even contact.

What swung it for me was the first judge at the initial hearings insisted on psychiatric reports (they had to do them on me and my husband, to get the ex to agree). He delayed the whole process, maybe adding a year to it, refusing to see the court appointed psych, but went in the end and they said he was one of the worst cases of paranoid personality disorder they had ever seen. And his MO was remarkably like your ex's.

He'd record things (even phone conversations); make a nuisance of himself with the boys' nursery; do weird things like say the kids didn't need to wear nappies as no-one bothered in the streets of Naples (he was half Italian) then when the baby shat on the floor, he'd point to it as my neglect (mysteriously the nappy free baby was only allowed in my house on my brand new carpets not his tatty flat). Once, he took my son for a 'walk round the pond' opposite my house, and the kid came back with all his hair shaved off. "To look like daddy". He'd let him eat a permanent diet of cakes and sweets - did so much damage that a year or two on, my son had to have extractions and fillings on his baby teeth (none of my older kids, and my younger son never had to have as I had taken care of them). Since he hasn't seen his birth dad he has had one filling in ten years...

The thing that really rang bells though was when you said about him letting her stay up til all hours. My ex did that too. He said my strict bedtimes were 'cruel' and the same claptrap about loving the boys and wanting to spend every second with them... But then, when a random woman at nursery told him her kid's bedtime was 7 o'clock, suddenly that was gospel and they were to bed at 7 because this guru of child-rearing (some yuppy with her first baby - I had 5 kids!) told him so.

When we split I still drive the 200 miles to London to take the boys to stay with him (with me there - they were very young) for weekends, etc. One trick he'd play was he'd "Just take son outside to 'play' in your car" - the play always involved my son turning on all the lights, etc which he'd ;forget' to turn off. Resulting in flat battery. Pissed him off that I just rang the RAC to get me started. All blatant attempts to make me not take the kids home. He did that more than once.

Seriously, your ex is mentally ill. Mine was so far gone he was unable to con another woman, and remains alone but the fact your's has remained credible enough to go on to have a second family, doesn't change the fact he is probably badly mentally ill.

Make sure the Family Courts run a psych evaluation on him. It may go in your favour. The psychiatrist in our case told the courts my husband and I were totally normal, and he was so badly mentally ill, it would be damaging for kids to be around him. All those manipulative behaviours were tried by him and the courts saw through it all.

I used to wonder why the only thing he ever did for our oldest was take him to a mtoher and baby group once a week. Of course, when it went to court there were the yuppy mothers writing testimonials to what a fantastic daddy he was, and how I was so indifferent I didn't even bother to go. He had set me up all along. Those 2 hours a week were when I was heavily pregnant and exhausted and I thought he was being 'kind'.

The judge saw through the 'evidence' he amassed - inf act recording conversations etc made him look even more paranoid and mentally ill.

You might be surprised how used the system is to idiots like this.

I agree that mental illness is a massive problem.

However, the court cannot force an adult with capacity to be assessed. They have to agree to it.

There is then the problem of funding. Even if your child has a guardian, it is most likely that only 1/3rd of the costs will be paid for on your child's publicly funded certificate - the remaining costs will have to be met by the parents. So if you can't afford to pay for a lawyer, I am not sure how you will meet the costs of a psychiatric report - they usually run into the £1,000s.

this is probably another reason why the family court system is open to criticism - there are a lot of quite seriously mentally ill people in it, who remain undiagnosed and untreated because no one has the money to fund either.

"The problem remains that these men are one half of the children's genetic identity and it can cause real problems if the children don't have any real sense of who they are. "

The problem remains that abusive ex partners use the system to continue to control and dominate their ex partners. This CANNOT be the actions of a loving parent as behaving abusively towards the other parent of your children automatically makes you a poor parent, in terms of modelling relationships etc.

The other issue is that, children who have been treated abusively MAY still want contact with that abusive parent, especially if their boundaries have been completely messed up and they have been tricked into believing that other 'trusty' adults will 'take them away'. This is very common in abusive situations. Think of the story upthread about the poor child in the supermarket thinking the Policeman was 'going to take her away' for saying the wrong word re 'daddy'. Heartbreaking.

An abusive parent (and it is usually a man) may want to see his children. A child in that situation may still want to see their father.
But this does NOT mean it is in the best interests of the child.

If there was any REAL concern about children needing to know their genetic identity (which is important, I agree, but doesn't trump abuse) then the UK would not allow the explosion of IVF using donor sperm that it has done - it is big business and has been allowed to continue.

The Law is, as ever, an ass.

I don't think the law is an ass in this situation. Its doing the best it can, which admittedly is not great.

But that is because of the enormous problems caused by the parents and their own baggage.

The issue around sperm donation is causing unease - hence the change to the law allowing children to find their donor fathers via a register when they are adults, and the consequent massive drop in men willing to donate sperm...

You can't just dismiss the genetic argument as unimportant. For many children it isn't. That is why the court has to investigate allegations of abuse. It is not as simple as men = perpetrators, women = victims. I wish it were that simply. Be a lot easier to deal with contact disputes without all these pesky court hearings and tedious insistence on our rights not to be condemned without a fair hearing.

oops, I stand corrected. It seems that the HFEA don't agree that the changes to rules around anonymity did impact on numbers of men willing to donate. But the numbers still don't seem huge.

While the number of men registering as a sperm donor has increased gradually since 2005, 2013 saw a slight dip in new registrations. In 2011, 541 new sperm donors were registered, and this rose to 631 in 2012, when the HFEA introduced new donations policies [6]. However, last year 586 donors registered

Spero - re sperm donation - yes, having had IVF myself (though no donor required in my circs) I am well aware of the issue around donation.
My point is that, if society were really concerned about children knowing their genetic heritage they would see that, a child being able to find records 18 years later that give them a name of a 'donor' is not remotely adequate. It is a silly half way house - donations have dropped because 'fathers' will be traceable, but that is by no means adequate for a childs need for genetic heritage. I have a 'need for genetic heritage'. My father died when I was 12 weeks old and for complicated reasons I have no contact with his few relatives. Imagine, if that is not 'enough' for me to feel I know the 'other half' of me, how much worse it might feel to have a bare name on an IVF clinic form, for some children.
I hope you can now see more clearly that I did not dismiss the genetic argument as unimportant, as I have a personal interest in it.

I also never said 'men=perpetrators, women=victims'.
My understanding is that the greater number of murder/abuse/abduction cases are perpetrated on women and children by men. Perhaps if I am mistaken you could link to the data for me?
This is relevant as we are discussing the potential for abusive ex partners to use the legal system to continue to abuse their victims.
This generalisation does not apply to each and every case, nor did I imply it did.

As for the law 'doing the best it can' - I must beg to disagree.

As for that being 'because of the enormous problems caused by the parents and their own baggage'.

Two points:

1. It is clear that the legal system itself can be responsible for exacerbating problems and actually creating them for the next generation.

1. The Legal System is supposed to be there to serve people - to meet a need - that is what you are paid for. To them blame the poor service that can be offered upon the needs you exist to serve is both illogical and morally repugnant.

The Legal System is supposed to be there to serve people - to meet a need - that is what you are paid for. To them blame the poor service that can be offered upon the needs you exist to serve is both illogical and morally repugnant

The legal system exists to uphold the law. The law says that there is a presumption that it is in a child's best interests to have contact with both parents, if safe to do so. The Judge's role is limited to examining the evidence and deciding what is in the child's best interests.

The courts do not have psychologists or therapists on standby. They cannot be expected to manage successfully the many and varied levels of dysfunction that exist in the families that come before them. Particularly not when the system is being further stripped of resources and vulnerable parents are denied legal representation.

to expect a system to meet needs it was never set up to meet and couldn't even if it wanted to because there is no money and no time, is pretty illogical.

Society, as I think we can see from recent events, doesn't give a shit about children. 'Society' seems to focus on the cult of the individual and profiteering. If we really gave a shit about children I am pretty sure we would be investing our taxes in services that would actually help them, rather than cutting such services.

I think it is easier for some people to blame 'the courts' but not have a think about what is actually going on in 'society'. We get the politicians and the laws we deserve I think.

I'm not so sure psychiatric reports would help, he's like a chameleon, he's incredible at fooling people.
Plus he also knows that what he's doing is wrong, he won't admit to his behaviour and he does it in secret, it's not like he does these things bold as brass in your face, he's extremely secretive.
His poor girlfriend is just another victim, she has 2 very young children from previous relationship, when my DD met them they were just 1 and 2 1/2 I do not know how long they were together before he introduced them to DD but even so, this poor women was clearly in a vulnerable position and emotional crisis when he targeted her. my DD said that once when Daddy had left her alone with her to go collect something DD asked why she's not with their dad anymore and she simply said "he promised to love me forever but he broke that promise". He has come along while she is in a truly difficult time in her life, trying to care for 2 extremely young tots all by herself and she thinks a knight in shining armour has come to rescue her, all she really got was a tosser in tinfoil determined to take advantage of her.

This might be an interesting case for people to read if they want to get a sense of how the court approaches a no contact order.

www.jordanpublishing.co.uk/practice-areas/family/news_and_comment/re-j-m-a-child-2014-ewca-civ-434#.VTZU8Vv4tFI

Spero that boy in question is an adolecent, and yes he is old enough in the courts view, to have his say, which formed part of that order. Joffery in your situation, you were extremely lucky that the judge could see what was going on, I wish they were all like that. Unfortunately it is down to luck and should not have to be.

Yes, but the Court of Appeal set out quite clearly (or at least I thought so!) the principles that they would apply in any case.

But of course, the older the child, the more weight is attached to their expressed wishes and feelings.

Hard my ex was a professional actor, so 'fooling people' and being different things to different people, was actually his job! Trust me, the court saw right through him.

Aeroflot, I agree it is down to luck. I got this sensible old Yorkshireman who had probably seen it all before, and a million times. But the different judge, the one I had at the initial hearings, also almost winked at the over ex's head when the penny dropped that this man was batshit. So maybe I got lucky twice over. Also 'my' judge reserved it to himself. I hear he is now retired and ex long exhausted every court in the land, not because he even cared about the kids, but because he hated being beaten at his own game.

All anyone can do in similar circs is trust to the courts and have a go.

I had no intention of even stopping my ex seeing the kids when he wanted to - but the police told me to go to the Family Courts, to protect myself and the kids, so I did it reluctantly. And I cursed them when it wa going on - putting me through about 3 years of hell. But am so glad, in retrospect, they told me to do it. I also thought of all the horror stories you read of mad judges (one of my friends' sister was beaten up on her own doorstep by her ex, to the point she was hospitalised - and in front of the kids. But a Family Court gave the 'dad' access - etc etc...) I was certain I was going to lose.

On the day, I didn't even have to give evidence. I just sat there and watched the canny old judge dismantle my ex. It was brilliant.

joffery I wish there were more of them out there. Babynamechange judge was not good, he was not, her ex dident even disguise who he was for the court. He told the judge he had rights as ds dad, he çoukd touch him anyway he wanted. Your canny judge would not have entertained that, might probably have issued a supervised contact at the very least. But her judge did not, he still let that evil B have unsupervised contact with a very vulnerable child, abusing him sexually and emotionally. same with poor hard I wish that they would all open their eyes to the bigger picture. yes I will cast my vote very carefully.

I can only repeat - if you think a child is being sexually abused you must go to the police. This is a crime.

But you are going to need good evidence. the longer ago it happened, the less back up you have from other sources, such as GP for e.g., the more difficult it is going to be to prove your case if the other side just denies it.

And if you can't prove your case the Judge can't make the rulings you want. This isn't the Judge being a misogynistic bastard, its the Judge applying the law - as we would all want him/her to do if we ever found ourselves in court accused of something serious.

Like in any professions, you get the good and the bad, that is no different here. That is why I told hard that she must go to the Police, baby did, they stopped contact whilst they investigated. Contact was resumed as it was under the threshold, good thing her ex never showed for contact.

But this is what I find hard to understand - why the family judge gets it in the neck for NOT finding sexual abuse when the police have investigated and taken no further action.

What is a judge to do? He/she has considerably less opportunity to investigate than the police so if the police say no case it can be very difficult to try and argue otherwise in a family court, even though the standard of proof is lower.

I suppose it may depend on the reasons the police have given for not proceeding.

I accept that some judges will of course be better than others. What I am finding hard to accept is that a Judge would simply ignore clear and compelling evidence that a child is being sexually abused.

No Police investigated well after Baby's court order. I think baby went to the Police before, but as he was so young he was not confident to speak to strangers, now he is older, he does. I think this is part of why her ex is not showing for contact, as her ds is now more open with professionals. With the Police it was under Police threshold, for them to charge him or something. I think he realised that he could not get away with doing what he is doing to her ds for much longer, that it would come back to him in the end. So I guess backed off. I feel that The Police investigation and SS involvement in Baby situation, and contact being suspended kind of spooked him.

(By the way Radio 4 Moneybox live (on iplayer) is about divorce today - although it's the financial side; still quite interesting).

The Court of Appeal handed down judgment in a contact dispute case yesterday which is well worth a read for anyone interested in how the family courts can struggle with the problems of dysfunctional adults. I will see if I can find the link, but the President of the Family Division made this comment:

68. There are occasions, though I hope that the introduction in 2014 of the Child Arrangements Programme will make this increasingly a thing of the past, when a parent can truly say that they have been failed by the family justice system. Shaming examples include Re D (Intractable Contact Dispute: Publicity) [2004] EWHC 727 (Fam), [2004] 1 FLR 1226, and Re A (Intractable Contact Dispute: Human Rights Violations)[2013] EWCA Civ 1104, [2014] 1 FLR 1185. This is not such a case. With all respect to those who might seek to contend otherwise, the stark truth is that responsibility for the deeply saddening and deeply worrying situation in which J and K now find themselves is shared by their parents and by no-one else.
69. My Lady has already set out the words which His Honour Judge Wildblood QC used in his judgment, but they bear repetition: "The guardian in this case describes the conduct of both parents towards their children in relation to the issues before me as 'inexcusable'. In my opinion that adjective is at least apposite and is, if anything, unduly mild. This case represents one of the most abject failures of parental responsibility by two otherwise intelligent parents that I can remember in 34 years as a family lawyer. In my opinion the mess that these parents have made of their shared responsibility for their children is a disgrace." That such language can be used, and in my judgment justifiably used, by a judge of this experience and, if I may say so, a judge not known for extravagance of language, is striking. Both parents need to ponder long and hard.
70. They also need to consider very carefully – both of them – the judge's next words: "I predict that it will only be in later life that the manifestations of what these parents have done to their children will become apparent as the children struggle to function as adults following the skewed childhood that their parents have both chosen to give them."

Here is a link to the full case. It is worth a read if you think that the problems in the system are down to the judges alone...

www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2015/389.html

Thanks for the link to the Judgement. I did see a DM article on this case. The Dad allowed the Step mum physically assault the children apparently.

I don't hold much opinion of CAFCASS officers opinions after dealing with the fools myself. They totally twisted events to look dysfunctional when years later it has been medically proven that CAFCASS and their opinion had no relation to proven fact in our case.

O yes, the dad behaved like a complete arse - allowed his wife to tussle with the 9 year old, briusing and frightening her - then refused to apologise and admit he had let them down! (Wonder what happened with the wife?)

But the mother then encouraged the children to make allegations of sexual abuse against him, which the court said were made up.

The language this judge uses against the parents is quite extra-ordinary as I agree with the CA, this is not a judge who goes in for 'extravagant' language!

But its a horrible example of how the court threw everything it had to try and help the situation but in the end it failed because the only people who could have made it better were the parents and they obviously decided to hate each other more than they gave a damn about their children.