Will anything happen if I refuse to abide by a child arrangement order

[Jsiausbsk]

So my ex is taking me to court for 50:50 custody of our child

currently there is no court order in place, and I do not allow him to see our child due to abuse

if it gets to court and he does win, what would happen if I just refused to give over the child?

I think you are jumping the gun. If there is abuse (is it documented?) and he is not seeing the child, 50/50 seems unlikely. Having said that, if it's not the court might take a dim view of you refusing contact.

You should.speak to a solicitor and focus on ensuring he doesn't get 50/50. However, I think that some contact is likely to be inevitable unless you can demonstrate he has abused the child?

My barrister told me honestly refusing to abide with the cao can result in the df getting full custody. Tred carefully op. If he is abusive to you and actually hates you ime this will show and will result in nc with dc. As in my case. Follow the rules op. It doesn't mean he 'wins' at all.

To answer your question, if a child arrangement order is out into place then you will be in breach of the order if you don't comply. Your ex can then apply for an enforcement order. Ultimately if you keep on breaking the orders put in place by court, they can change primary residency of your child to your ex.
HOWEVER, there is a lot that happens in-between. If there has been abuse, the court will decide what contact is safe for the child. It's a very long, slow process and would often include professionals such a SS if they've been involved before and/or cafcass. Look at the cafcass website for lots of information.

How old is your child? If they are around age 12, they will be able to decline any contact with dad.

Be careful. The courts are a very blunt instrument and you might get a misogynistic twat of a judge. Family courts are not fit for purpose and lots of women have terrible experiences with them.

My advice would be this -

You cannot prevent contact and any attempt to do so will go down very badly with the court. You have to be able to PROVE the abuse (I know - it's terrible).

Be very clear about the father being an abuser and agree to contact through a contact centre where contact is supervised.

This way, you demonstrate that you are not trying to alienate the parent/child relationship.

You would be very foolish to do this.

You need legal advice.

Or she might get a judge who is not a “misogynistic twat” but on hearing all the evidence decides that the child’s best interests are served by contact with their father. After all we only have the OPs word that he is abusive. The judge will have all the evidence incl possibly expert reports.

This is one where experienced legal advice is essential rather than canvassing views on an internet forum. If there has been abuse, then you should qualify for legal aid.

In addition to giving the other parent a residence order, the court could also order you to carry out community service, fine you or even sentence you to imprisonment (for serious and repeated breaches of the Order) so it’s definitely in your best interests to ensure that all the evidence is before the court and your case is argued in the best way possible before the first Child Arrangements Order is made as simply deciding that you will not comply with any order which is made is unlikely to end well for you or your child.

I was very lucky and had some great judges when I went through my last round of court cases for a similar thing. From the very first hearing, they stopped contact between my DD and her father because of ‘allegations’ of abuse by me but also backed up by CAFCASS in their initial first letter. I don’t know what the outcome would have been because he dropped out of the case after about a year but if the judges believed me over him based on the evidence etc, there’s a chance there might not have been any contact permanently rather than on a temporary basis, courts are starting to get a lot better at learning about DV and impact on the children and so on. X

Friend had court agreement of a contact centre which went to every other weekend access and the police told her to stop contact and they would back her up in court (DV). She stopped it, eventually court granted no access in the end.

Eventually residency will be reversed and you risk being allowed contact at all. Courts aren't something to be messed with.

Eventually there would probably be a penal notice attached and you could get arrested which would result in him having 100% contact. You can't just ignore a court order. You need to gather all the information you can and make sure you have a good enough case.

I have read on here that abuse towards the mother isn't treated like an abuse risk towards the child. Sadly you will need proof which may be hard to obtain.

The courts will look at any COA around what is in the best interest for the child, not the parents.

You've said you are currently preventing any contact. What was any previous contact? How old are the children involved? What led you to stop the contact? Have you been offering any alternative so indirect contact, contact with a third party doing the handover so you don't need to be present, day/evening contact instead of overnights?

Regarding the abuse - was he abusive towards you or the children directly or even both? If he's been abusive towards you, you can offer to communicate regarding the children using a court approved communication app such as AppClose. This means you can still keep him blocked on your phone but make dad aware of any emergency or welfare/health concerns. Likewise he can do the same.

He won't be able to apply directly for a COA in court unless he attempts mediation first UNLESS there's something to meet the criteria of bypassing such as abuse or harm to the children in your care. If he is currently withheld from being able to communicate, they may bypass mediation but that depends on the court and what he puts in the application to them (which you will get a copy of). If you do get invited to mediation, I would attend personally. The first session will be just you and the mediator so you can discuss your concerns re the abuse and if they feel it's needed & mediation isn't going to be safe, practical or right, they will sign the paperwork for it to go right to court.

Obviously without knowing the abuse element and who it was to, it's hard to reassure you that he won't get 50/50 but if you are seen to be obstructive, you could loose them altogether and dad issued the lives with order and you a spend time with. If the abuse was to you, they will likely permit contact between dad and children but if abuse was to children, then they will look at the impact and risks.

My own DSD9 has no direct contact with her mum as per ordered because mum subjected her to emotional abuse whilst also allowing her to be S.abused by her now ex-partner. So just because he's not there & they are no longer in a relationship, the courts listened to SDs impact via the reports done and decided the risks for further harm were way too great that even a contact centre wasn't deemed safe.

When you say my ex is taking me to court for 50:50 custody of our child, do you mean he said that to you or do you mean you have received a notification from a court.

If it's just something he said, he is probably trying to scare you and may never actually do anything. Ignore him as much as possible.

If you have received court documents, you need proper professional legal advice. And you need to tell the solicitor everything about the abuse.

old post sorry, Perfect take! someone has sense, Its the non-misogynistic judge who will equally here all sides(woman or man). The poster is clearly biased and likely an ignorant person who doesn't know the statistics of custody cases.

A warning notice is attached to all CAOs and is read out in court for all the parties to hear. It basically says if you don’t abide by the order you can be sent to prison, fined, ordered to pay compensation or to undertake unpaid work.

My son was granted access to his 2 girls at a contact centre, he had to be interviewed before this was put in place, as was his wife, however she refuses to be interviewed stating that it never suits, what can my son do?

He hasn't seen the girls since November 2024, and it's driving him crazy as he did most things for them, homework, etc

She even tookthem to Italy, where she is from without telling him, we as grandparents haven't been able to see them either, it seems an impossible situation, she doesn't get penalised for not turning up at court either, if it has to go to the High Court, I don't know where the money is coming from to do this.

What kind of abuse physical or verbal and towards you or the child.

If the abuse was just aimed at you that unfortunately isn’t going to stop him being able to go for 50/50.

Do you have any evidence of the abuse and have you been to the police previously?

You would be better off starting your own thread.

Go to whatever section you want to post in, maybe legal matters, or chat if you want to her from others who have been through it, but without legal knowledge, and click on the add thread button to start one.

I think you need legal advice.

It matters whether the abuse was against you or against your dc (or another dc).

I wouldn't push for no contact, I'd ask for slow moving supervised contact so he can build a relationship and demonstrate commitment - maybe post contact, building slowly to supervised contact in a centre.

you could lose custody altogether if you refused to comply. Hopefully you’ve got evidence of abuse (to child I assume)

This is from 2023!