NC as very outing. Apologies for the length.
My ‘lovely’ exh has filed an enforcement order with the courts as he says I breached our child arrangement order. In a nutshell, I took our DC out for a meal for DS’s significant birthday, the day before his actual birthday, as he had his EOW contact with exh on his actual birthday and I wouldn’t be seeing him. I then dropped DC off with exh 1hr 20mins later than his usual contact start time.
Exh originally agreed to this plan verbally on the phone, however on the day of the meal he sent an email stating that unless I agreed an earlier collection time for my DC on a specific date for an event that exh had tickets for, then the meal couldn’t go ahead and he would collect DC as usual. I had already explained many times that until I got my DS’s timetable for his new school, that I couldn’t 100% agree this. I had no problem with an earlier pick up in principle, I just needed to see the timetable. This wasn’t good enough for exh.
On the day of the meal I ignored exh’s blackmailing emails and took the DC out as they had been looking forward to it. Despite previously agreeing this and knowing our plans, exh still came up our home at the usual time to collect DC. Obviously we weren’t in. DC saw this on our doorbell app and it made us all very uncomfortable and spoilt the atmosphere of the meal. Afterwards I dropped DC off with a very angry exh.
Following this I had a threatening solicitors letter stating that I had breached the arrangements order. Exh now denies he had agreed to the meal and as it was in a telephone call, I have no proof. Before my solicitor had time to respond to the letter, I received a court date for an enforcement hearing. My exh’s solicitor statement is basically asking court to punish me for the breach with community service.
I am due in court in just over a week. So far I have spent over £2500 on solicitor fees trying to defend myself. Whilst I am aware that I technically did breach the order, this was agreed in advance with exh and was only 1hr and 20 mins for DS’s significant birthday. I have never stopped my exh having contact with DC and have been incredibly flexible with contact over the years. This is my first ‘breach’ in 7 years.
My AIBU is, I am currently almost 8 months pregnant in a high risk pregnancy. I feel exhausted, stressed and unwell and the thought of having to attend court is making me very ill. Mentally, I’m a complete mess because of all this. My DH is away on a training course that can’t be moved on my court date, so I have literally no support on the day. Wibu to just not go to court? I feel absolutely broken by all this and can’t cope right now.
For background, exh and I have been divorced for 7 years after he cheated with OW. I was left to raise our 3 DC on my own. They have always seen exh and I have always facilitated contact. Exh is incredibly controlling around DC and everything has to be his way or no way. I have never argued this to keep the peace for DC. The child arrangement order is very biased towards him as when it was made 7 years ago, I couldn’t afford a solicitor and exh had hired an incredibly expensive and aggressive law firm to deal with it on his behalf.