Single parent wants to change career into medicine, but has no support.

[Puzzledbyart]

Just out of interest. Let's say we have two primary aged school children (on the younger side of primary). Is it feasible for their single parent to go through the medical school (with a foundation year, they are in 40s, so long out of school), whilst retaining 100% custody of the children? There is no family help nearby, and no substantial savings to pay for the childcare either. Is it realistic at all?

Being late to pick up because you have little local support is easily resolved by throwing money at a childminder who will provide a contract to say that she'll do emergency pick up for you for a retainer. Or you pinky promising you have a neighbour on stand by.

And of course you could ask to see what his back up is for when he gets held up on placement...

I don't know anything about studying medicine, but I do have an ex who tried (unsuccessfully) to get residence changed and my view is that even if your ex managed to set himself up in an ideal arrangement, this would not mean that he would succeed in getting residence changed. The courts want children to be settled, and they don't like disrupting the status quo, providing the status quo is acceptable. Being late once because you got stuck on a train is not a parenting fail.

The best approach is to emphasise how well the dcs are doing under the current arrangements (assuming they are, of course!) . Your exH's living arrangements are, at best, unproven and unpredictable. A court will not be impressed by the fact that he voluntarily disappeared from their lives for a while. His proposals are speculative and massively disruptive to their established living arrangements - it would be pretty extraordinary for a court to think that this sounds like a good change for the dcs.

I was once an hour or so late picking my daughter up from primary school because my friend's nanny who was supposed to be collecting her forgot. I was a SAHM at the time! No long-term effects, fortunately. It can happen to anyone.

I know nothing about the family courts so won't attempt to second guess what they might think about your ex's pie in the sky plans, but what I would hope is that everyone concerned will see what he is saying is utter nonsense and not in the children's best interests at all. He has no track record of involvement in the children's lives to point to - from what you've said they can hardly know him. He has no experience of the day-to-day grind of juggling work, childcare and all the other stuff of life. He has nothing of substance to accuse you of to justify uprooting them and moving them a long way off, massively reducing their contact with you. Surely it's a non-starter?

Being an hour late once Due to a broken down train is not a reason to change residency. It really isn’t. What you need to do now is set up an arrangement with a neighbour/other school parent/family member/childminder to be your official back up person. Give their details to the school as your back up and make sure it’s on their system so you can get a print off and bring to mediation or court to show that that situation will never be an issue again. If that’s what his application for residency is based on then it falls apart right there and then.

What i suspect is that his application for residency is reliant on him gaining a place on the course but his application for the course is reliant on him getting residency of the DC (for the dependant financial support).

Whereas what a normal sane, child focussed parent would do would be to first establish them self in new location, settle into the demands of their course, source childcare and schools and then ask for his children to join him.

The best thing your friend can do is look on her area for an Athena Swan accredited University that does Medicine, call them and have a frank conversation about what the Clinical Placement years and Junior Doctor years will be like.

That’s what I did. And no, it wasn’t possible.

Instead, I’ve studied Biomedical Science and will hopefully be working in NHS labs. Close enough to what I originally wanted to do.

Sorry, didn’t read the whole thread.

No he won’t have any spare time, he’s full of shit

The train thing was not a massive parenting fail, it was an unlucky unexpected event beyond your control. You'd rung the school! As a pp has said, in this never-gonna-happen scenario where he is a full time single parent AND trainee medic, this would happen all the time - including times that were unsociable when it would be almost impossible to work around. It won't make this less likely for them to be with him. Quite the opposite.

I can virtually guarantee that there will be plenty of times when your ex is late to pick up children if he is successful in his crazy plan to study medicine. I don't know a single doctor who has not had this kind of problem on multiple occasions.In fact I would think most working parents have something like this happen at least once, whatever their job. It isn't a massive parenting fail, it is just life. You probably need to put an alternative fall back plan in place in case something similar happens again, but if we all lost custody of children we were late to collect once, I doubt there would be a lot of children left with their parents. Learn from the experience and move on.

@puzzledbyart if the children loved mainly with him (ie. He claims child benefit for them) he would be eligible for dependants allowance, parent learning allowance and the childcare grant. He would also be more likely to get a higher rate if he were to apply for his university's hardship fund.

Op being late isn’t a massive parenting fail and is not a strong basis for him to be granted full custody.

If he has barely been involved then the only parenting fail is on his behalf.

Did you do it 👀 I’m 35 and have 3 daughters and just beginning the path to study medicine so would love to hear what happened! Hoping you had success and are now in the thick of studying!!

I trained before I had my son(single parent) and found being qualified AND working in a hospital hard going … I would never have coped with training , placements, etc so good luck if you think you will be ok. 🥹

It’s a lifelong dream and I’m very passionate about it. It’s never been the right time to try so I’m just going to go for it and see what happens now! I’d love to hear from any other single mums who trained as (very 🤢) mature students to hear about that kind of experience. If it doesn’t work out at least I’ll know I gave it a go but I’m pretty determined 🤣