Abusive Ex and DS

[Bejie01]

I'll try to keep this as brief as possible.
I broke up with ex partner nearly 2 years ago. He has custody of our DS every other weekend. He's never been physically or sexually abusive to either myself or DS. It is all emotional abuse towards me (potentially putting things in DS's head about me too, but I can't be sure).
I have a recent child arrangement order in place which has a clause in it that says he is not allowed to send me any more abusive messages. He has ignored this. He is vile to me.
I set up an email account specifically for myself and ex to communicate about DS arrangements so that I can block him on every other platform and check the email account when I have the strength.
We have tried communicating through a third party for a while too but this doesn't work as he ends up making their lives stressful and it's just not fair on them so I took the communication back on myself.
I've tried communicating through a notebook, but he ends up writing angry messages in there which has nothing to do with DS. I've called the police and asked them to tell him to stop the abusive messages. He has ignored them too.
Our health visitor has tried getting through to him that his behaviour is affecting our DS, again, he ignores the advice.
All of the above things that I've tried were prior to the court order so the courts know what I've already tried to do to get him to stop.
So I have a lot of evidence that I've tried everything, plus it's in the court order that he wasn't to send anymore abusive messages so I have an appointment with a women's aid solicitor on Thursday next week to see about getting a non-molestation order against him now that he's continuing to send abusive and harassing emails.
My concern is, if there is a non molestation in place, how will communication work?
Has anyone been in this situation before where the ex still has custody of the child but cannot contact the mother?

I must add, he is unreliable with things like school uniform and needs to be reminded of things regarding DS. This weekend I had to remind him about something regarding school 3 times and he still claims I never told him and continued to call me a b*h, f**k you etc.
Also, in the child arrangement order, it says that communication is to remain in place between us because of his unpredictable work times and school holidays. Sometimes he can collect him from school, other times he can't and he has to collect from my parent's house. So communication is needed so that I know what I'm doing too.

DS loves being with his father and the courts seem to be very much in favour of keeping their contact for DS's sake which I do agree with.
But what can I do about his behaviour and his unreliability with his weekends.

Another example, this weekend, I had to cancel my plans for this evening because he didn't tell me until last minute that he had to return DS this evening instead of bringing him into school tomorrow morning despite me asking him well in advance what his plans were for bringing him back. He didn't answer my question but he still managed to send plenty of emails being nasty to me.

Has anyone been in a similar situation who can help explain what the next steps could be? This has been almost 2 years of torment.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Is contact really in your sons best interest?

I know what you mean but the courts seem to think so. I feel helpless. They reiterated to me how important it is for father and son to have their relationship. I think that if I stop contact, it'll backfire on me because the courts already know about his behaviour towards me. Maybe now that he's ignored them telling him to stop being abusive, they'll deny him access? I don't know.

You can’t change his behaviour. Speak to a solicitor

Contact through a 3rd party? Use a parenting app?

Tried the 3rd party thing before, he gives them too much hassle. We tried it twice in fact. He will ignore the important things in a parenting app just as he does with the emails and what he did with the notebook.
Yes, hopefully the solicitor will be able to advise me on what I can do.
I'm wondering if anyone's been in a similar situation where nothing works and they've denied access to the father and what their experience was like after.

Can you do that with a court order? Don’t think you can

I was thinking that too. So I'm at a loss and his abuse has had a huge impact on me. I don't know what will happen but surely there's some sort of hope

Is the abusive message thing a recital or part of the court order?
Just ignore everything that is abusive
Non molestation order would be good - you could have it worded so that he must not use abusive words in his communication. Then if he breaches it the police will have to arrest him for it.

You need to stop reminding him of things. Keep it to pick up and drop off and if dc is unwell. Anything else encourages communication from him.

How much do you really need to communicate with him if he only ever has him EOW why do you need to remind him about things to do with school for example if he only has weekend contact?? The only other suggestion I can think of is having a burner phone that he can contact you on during contact time then turning it off when he doesn’t have contact.

iloverock, it's written in the court order 'neither party is to send any abusive messages'. I asked for it to be included in the arrangement order so they did.
I've tried ignoring his abusive messages but I've been strong for long enough, it has an impact on me and I don't want this in my life anymore.
Besides that, he makes everything extremely difficult with arrangements.
Yes, to what you said about the non-molestation order, I hope they can word it like that. If that does happen and he gets arrested for breaching a non-molestation order, does anyone know if social workers can then have an input with his contact with DS?

If he’s sending it via email, go to the police. It is likely a crime under the misuse of communication act.

I would actually want to take this back to court. Clearly he cannot cope with non abusive contact with you therefore the court order needs to be changed so that there is no contact with you required. He will need to commit to picking up his child from school or make some other arrangements such as a child minder and commit to dropping back at school or again making another arrangement which does not involve you.

School can communicate with him directly and I am sure that you can make arrangements with school for example if the kid needs something in school on the Monday after dad's visit which you know he won't bother with, that he takes it in on the Friday and its stored at school for him. Other things 'regarding ds' I'm afraid you are just going to have to let go unless they are medical issues - e.g. giving medication - in which case they should be in the court order too.

If I don't remind him of things when he initially ignores me, DS goes without. It's happened before. But yes, you're right, once is enough to tell him. I'll do that going forward and hope he doesn't mess up again for DS's sake.

His work commitments is why I have to have communication with him. If he can't collect DS from school, he needs to tell me so I can arrange something. Likewise if he can't bring him into school on Monday morning. Although his choice of work isn't my problem.
And for school holidays, we have 50/50 contact so we need to arrange when each of us can have DS. Unfortunately, it can't be set in stone because of both our work commitments in the case of school holidays. As I said before, he caused so much stress when a third party tried to help me out.
He has no family that I can ask to help with communication.

breatheinskipthegym, thank you. I think I'll do this

LittleOwl153, not a bad idea regarding the school. Thank you. I think I'll have a chat with his teacher tomorrow. She already knows a little bit about what's going on and has been helpful so I'll update her.