To ask if anyone knows about the child arrangement order replacing the residence order?

[floatygoat]

I've posted before very recently about my dd's father and his questionable behaviour.

My eldest dd 11 has decided she only wants to see him supervised by her paternal grandma and not overnight, however he has form for going against arrangements and driving them to where he's promised not to etc
I would have like to have a residence order in place in case of this - however it seems that a child arrangements order which has replaced it also requires an agreement regarding contact arrangements with their father.

This is negative as far as I'm concerned because he would push for contact at his current gf residence (he's had 6 girlfriends in the last 12 months and expected the kids to stay with all of them) whereas at the moment he seems to accept she has said she doesn't want to go back there, on the surface anyway.

Has anyone advice on this or can shed a bit of light on what's involved with a child arrangement order ? Tia

I'm not a lawyer so you might want to ask MN to move this over to legal matters where one of the solicitors over there may be able to help more?

It's my understanding that a child arrangements order is more of a broad order than the old style residence order and covers who the child lives with, how much time and when/where they spend time with the non-resident parent and can also cover other important matters if these are in dispute between the parents, such as schooling or how long/when/where each parent is allowed to take the child out of the country for. Before you get to the court stage you and Ex would expected to attend a mediation meeting to see what (if any) of this can be agreed between you before it needs to go to court. If it does reach the court stage, you and your Ex would each be asked to make a statement about what you think the order should say, and your DD's views would also be taken into account (particularly given her age) - usually this is done via a court-appointed CAFCASS officer talking to her (and you and your Ex) and reporting back to the court.

As to what the court would decide, the determining factor is what is in the child's best interests - not necessarily what they say they want, as even into the teenage years children are considered too young to fully make life-changing decisions entirely for themselves such as whether and how they have contact with their parents. However as I say your DD's views will be taken into account as she is of an age to be able to showed mature and reasoned consideration. My guess is that the court would probably be concerned about ordering that she only ever sees her dad with her grandmother and never overnight, as (in the absence of serious concerns like abuse) this would probably be seen as unduly restrictive, and they would probably want to explore her reasons more and put something in place that at least works back up to a more 'normal' unsupervised overnight weekend contact schedule. But of course it will totally depend on your exact circumstances...

TBH and purely in my personal opinion, it's a long-winded, quite expensive (if you want to be legally represented) and adversarial process - personally (and it's only my opinion) if things are currently working reasonably well and you don't have serious concerns e.g. that he'll abduct your DD abroad or refuse to return her after contact, then it may be worth not rocking the boat. Even if you got exactly the order you are looking for, if your Ex is really determined to cause trouble, enforcing it could be an issue. E.g. if it was said he was only to see her at Grandma's house but he decided one day to take her off to his house, there's probably not much you could do about it immediately. You could try the police but even with a court order, if DD wasn't in immediate danger they would probably say it's a civil matter so you'd have to go back to court to enforce it anyway...

Thanks very much for your advice