To think DPs ex is ridiculous?

[DrMaxwell]

So, DP and his ex have shared care of their 3 DC, a week at a time. During termtime they swap on a Friday with one parent dropping at school and the other collecting. The arrangement is to swap back around 3ish during holidays.

Last week the DC said that their mum had gone to her home country to visit her parents as they are unwell. Might have been helpful to know in case of emergency but otherwise not our business.

She emailed telling DP to drop the kids at a childminder at 3pm. He replied asking if she could confirm when she was returning to the country and he was happy to drop them home when she got back, but didn't feel comfortable leaving them with a childminder with no idea how long they'd be there. She wouldn't give any information and insisted he drop them off at 3pm. He said no and that he'd drop them back to her. 3pm came and she said she'd called the police saying he was refusing to return the children against a court order. We didn't hear any more until 8pm when she messaged saying she was home and wanted the kids back.

I know this is a really petty issue but it's been irritating me all weekend.

And a judge isn't going to say you were reasonable to withhold contact because you didn't know when the children would be collected from the childminder.

You can't just refuse to return children when a court orders stipulates you return the children.

Yes. You can. I've done it. And ended up going from a 50/50 arrangement to a shared care order in my favour.

You can have an agreed person added. You can have first right of refusal added in court papers too.

but no judge is going to put that either party cannot engage a childminder without the other parents approval. That would be open season for dead beat abusive dads (usually IME) to refuse to approve a childminder on the other parents time and money, as a means of control.

If roles were reversed no doubt the majority of responses would be different.

Well, that depends on the circumstances. It's not really a 'one size fits all' kind of thing.

You are right. It does happen. Rarely and usually for very specific reasons. You talk about controlling then drop in you had added and really unusual clause that you had to sign off all your exs childcare?

it’s really odd because after claiming that flexibility is a must in court orders (which is wrong) and pretending that situations where the parents don’t see eachother, happen. Where was the flexibility in yours?

You now have been involved in a court order regarding your ex and your own kids. Where it was so specific you both could only use childcare that is known. Not flexible at all.

There were occasions he asked me to have our child for longer amounts of time. I didn't say 'no, that's not what the order said.' Obviously.

Plus, he was abusive.

Breaching a court order when there is abuse and a genuine reason is very different to saying you can stop contact willy nilly and be fine.

Yes and the circumstances here are that the ex went to visit sick family abroad and arranged for a childminder to care for her children on her time until she returned. There is nothing unreasonable about that. She didn't go against the court order, nor did she impose a change on her ex. No one was at risk or harm.

My breach of the order was not due to abuse. I was responding to the poster who questioned specific clauses being added to the order.

I think is peculiar that she would make arrangements with a child minder before asking DC actual father, all this my time your time BS, just effectively co parent & communicate, obviously there are times when parents need flexibility with court ordered arrangements even the family courts understand that so why she wouldn’t think to ask him first before making other arrangements is frankly strange

Flexibility on your own terms isn’t flexibility.

The fact that she insisted on handover still going ahead at the 'agreed' time even though the kids had just spent a week with their dad (what difference would a few more hours have made?) despite being unavailable for it, screams controlling and petty. Most kids would prefer to be with a parent.

What if the next time he decided to keep them longer to make up for the time he lost out on before, but you said no because you have something arranged to do with them, but he said "No, I'm keeping them an extra day." Would you be alright with that? You're flexible right? He's their father and they deserve that time with him.

I'm sorry but you haven't got a clue what you're talking about in regard to my situation. You should probably stop.

He's in prison and is not allowed any contact at all so thankfully, this will never be an issue.

Maybe it's pettiness. Maybe it's necessary. We don't know the reason for the court order.

Aaand as pp have said, the responses would be entirely different if the ex was male.

Your dp sounds a bit controlling to be honest. It’s perfectly normal for handover to be via childcare / third party. Insisting that it it has to be mum sounds like he’s trying to be restrictive towards her. Unless there was a specific safeguarding concern about this particular childminder?

But yes, I would agree to 'extra days' otherwise and would hope for the same in return. That's what a healthy coparenting relationship should look like and that's what is best for kids.

And yet you assume you know all about the situation being posted about.

You brought up flexibility. You said the mother should show flexibility. You brought up your own case that contradicted what you said.

You don’t get to then say ‘you can comment back because I involved my own experience’

Your partner is BU but this is a textbook case of why 50/50 co-parenting can only really work well if it's an amicable separation and there is some degree of flexibility and cooperation. If there's any need for court orders or rigid times/dates then co-parenting is not going to work, especially in times of emergency where there is no flexibility.

We have no idea what the back story is but if you're at a stage where there is a court order and rigid handover times, even in holidays, then there is clearly some issue with one or other parent somewhere, whether it's unreasonable or not. In this case it seems that your DP isn't bothered about his DC going to paid childcare, it's that he is being awkward about it because he doesn't know what his Ex is doing and she is refusing to give him a detailed itinerary of her movements, which on the surface looks unreasonable but could be perfectly justified (eg if he has a history of trying to be controlling via demanding this information and then holding it against her if she deviated from the plan, so now she just tells him "Drop the children at X place at Y time" as there's no need for discussion or negotiation)

If he'd come at it from the angle of "Hey, if you're needing childcare then I'm happy to keep the kids with me till you're back, can you just give me a ballpark idea of your itinerary so I know timings and what to tell the kids?" then YWNBU as his concern for her information is child centric - what information does he need to know in order to shape the day for the children? - as opposed to just wanting to know information for his own nosy reasons and because he disagreed with her decision to use childcare.

It might have been that she didn't want to tell him her exact itinerary because she didn't know, and she didn't want to ask him to keep the DC longer in case he tried to use it against her so arranged the childcare with a known CM so that she had the flexibility she needed - perhaps she knew she was flying in at X time but couldn't guarantee the exact time she would be home due to potential flight delays, airport delays, traffic/transport from the airport etc so rather than having to keep giving her Ex extra information and possibly changing plans she decided to keep his involvement to schedule (or drop off at 3pm) and have the flexibility with the childminder instead.

ExDH and I have a similar set up but the difference is that we split because we just weren't working as a couple but we're happy to be friends and any parenting is done jointly and amicably. DD spends every other week with each of us, she goes to school from one house Monday morning and home to the other house on Monday evening and has a full week with each parent. Holidays we will generally sit down and discuss our specific needs/wants so that we both have roughly 50/50 but we are happy to change the blocks to accommodate each other so for the six week holidays we both get 3 weeks each but in staggered blocks rather than EOW eg if ExDH wants to take DD on a 2 week holiday in the summer then I have no issue with switching my weeks to accommodate that, especially if he is happy to take those two weeks during a time I have unchangeable plans wherever possible.

In this situation - IE if one or other of us had to leave the country as an emergency then we would happily inform the other of our plans and general itinerary (eg flying out Friday, back home Sunday night but not 100% sure on exact times) and there would be a discussion as to whether the resident parent was happy/able to flex their arrangements to accommodate covering for the other parent, and only if they couldn't would the other parent make childcare arrangements.

So in this situation if ExDH was going abroad he would tell me "Hey, I have to go away this week, not 100% sure on timings but I'll be back Friday evening. Are you OK to have DD till I'm back?".

If I didn't have plans then I'd just say "No worries, let me know when you're home and I can drop DD off or if it's too late then I'll drop her off in the morning".

If I did have plans then I'd say so but offer to try and figure out childcare for him if it was easy to do so "Sorry, I have theatre tickets in <city 2hrs away> for Friday and I don't want DD on her own all day and night as Im going early to shop/have dinner and won't be back till late ... Do you want me to see if my parents/siblings can have her sleep over?" and only if that wasn't an option, or ExDH initially responded "No worries, I'll check with my family first and get back to you" and then it didn't work out, would either of us look to the paid childcare route.

Your DP had no right to overrule her childcare arrangements

You can still answer it though. What would you have done? You'd already been flexible with the court order with an abusive man, so it's a bit hard to then turn around and say "no you have to return them to me".

People who co-parent well don't generally need a court order to do so. Court orders are essential when dealing with abusive or unreasonable people. It is there to protect everyone. When you're dealing with an abusive or unreasonable person, being flexible with the court order is a stupid thing to do.

Look if you're going to keep responding to someone, at least stop making things up.

You're the one who is adding things to OP's posts.

I never said 'the mother should show flexibility.' I said 'flexibility is the way forward.' I don't see how you can actually argue with that but each to their own.

Finally, you're also adding things to my posts about my situation and you are literally getting everything wrong. Which is why you should probably stop.