Alcoholic father threatening to take wife to court

[Lucyjb93]

Hello can anyone please give my some sort of advise.
My wife’s father is an alcoholic he has been for the last 40 years during this time he has self harmed on a lot of occasions.
He’s caused my wife to have a lot of childhood trauma which still effects her to this day.
We have a son who’s going to be 6 and he’s only met him about 4 times when he was 18months old which in that time her father started drinking around our son again.
He’s now threatening to take us to court because he’s been sober for four months. What are his chances of being granted access

Zero.

He had no rights. Grandparents only really have rights granted by courts if they did regular care and it was deemed that not seeing the grandparent would be harmful mentally. Get a lawyer, tell him to jog in and change your contact details.

Well I'm not an expert but I'm guessing he's talking shit?

He can threaten all he likes and if he wishes pay ridiculous court fees!

But reality is that he won't get far and extremely unlikely to have any case. The court backlog is also pretty massive!

Pretty much nil. I bet he’s saying it to upset and unsettle her. Grandparents have few rights, especially those who have had little to do with the child and have alcohol issues

Zero, and he also isn’t going to do it. Just block him, if he’s threatening to take you to court there’s obviously no relationship there to salvage. He won’t take you to court, no solicitor worth their salt would take on such an obviously vexatious case.

No chance. Let him waste his money on a lawyer. Stop all visits and have as little contact with him as possible.

No rights.

We are NC with DH Mum for similar reasons and she threatened courts for access to DC. She couldn’t get anyone to represent her anyway as there was not a cats chance in hell. If he’s minted maybe he can throw money at it but he won’t get anywhere. Don’t worry.

Nil. Absolutely nil.

Zero. None. Nada.

Literally zero. Don’t worry about it. As pp said contact is only awarded to grandparents when they have a loving and established relationship with the child, and the child will suffer if contact is stopped. Usually only in cases where the parents have stopped contact through spite rather than a good reason. An ex alcoholic who has no relationship with the child, whose parents disallow contact due to safeguarding reasons will get laughed out of court, if it even makes it that far

No chance in hell.

Zero chance. He'll find a unicorn before he's granted access to your child. Ignore the delusional idiot, and I certainly hope you've block him on all channels.

Go completely no contact as he’s found a new way to abuse your wife.

Zero my mother had an established relationship with my daughter she was still told she would have no chance because she put her boyfriend above her grandchild repercussions that still effect her to this day

Fuck all.

Nil. Not happening.

Thank you everyone for your help.
We've been worried sick so just wanted some reassurance as today has been horrible.

Your wife needs to take control and do the sensible thing of blocking her father. He is toxic.

Rightly or wrongly, it is very unusual for courts to grant grandparents contact contrary to parental wishes, where there has been a solid, pre-existing relationship: it's absolutely unheard of in a situation like yours. Where I represented grandparents in the past, I can say that, while they were never refused leave to apply to the best of my recollection - they were also never granted contact. In your case, I'd go as far to say that I sincerely doubt he'd be given leave to apply.

Please do not worry about this. It won't happen.

Block him. He has zero rights and the only power he has over her is any attention she gives him. I hope your wife is able to move on from this - she'll be much better off without him in her life

Iirc they firstly have to apply to the court for permission to even apply for contact. That is the point at which this would fail because there is no historical relationship.

@LetHimHaveIt

Rightly or wrongly, it is very unusual for courts to grant grandparents contact contrary to parental wishes, where there has been a solid, pre-existing relationship: it's absolutely unheard of in a situation like yours. Where I represented grandparents in the past, I can say that, while they were never refused leave to apply to the best of my recollection - they were also never granted contact. In your case, I'd go as far to say that I sincerely doubt he'd be given leave to apply.

Please do not worry about this. It won't happen.

X posted with this. Leave to apply is what I was trying to remember.

Just ignore him, don't waste money on getting legal advice. No chance whatsoever that he will be successful. Even if he manages to get into court, you can self represent. But it seems unlikely to me that he will even follow it up

I’m a lawyer in a different area of law but it sounds incredibly unlikely.

Maybe @Collaborate is around and kind enough to comment, she’s a family lawyer and I’ve seen a lot of helpful advice from her over the years.