Those who exs have buggered off and left the kids....

[woodenleg]

How many chances did you give your ex to see your kids?

How did you handle it?

When did you realise enough was enough?

Also how do the courts handle parents who dip in and out of a child's life?

I'd always leave the door open At the end of the day the ex is still their parent if you're busy or have plans say it's inconvenient. If not, then dc can see ex. And thrn they get to an age where they make their own mind up.

My ex messed our kids about for about 6mths. I told him to stop pissing them about and see them properly (ie regularly and turn up when he was supposed to not call me when he was an hour late with some bullshit excuse) or leave them alone.

He saw them once again after that and hasn’t seen them since. That was 17th December 2005!

He went on to have 3 more children with the woman he had an affair with and left them to move to overseas (to be with his new affair partner) in 2019 and hasn’t seen those kids since then either.

He’s been in Australia (where I now live with our kids) since 2021 and hasn’t made any attempt to contact them.

Now the kids are adults (28-24) I’ve explained to them what I know and my perspective of what went down. They’re naturally upset but remember how much it hurt when he didn’t turn up and how they knew it was bullshit excuses.

My abusive and violent ex husband stopped seeing our four year old son after I told him off for taking him out without telling me.
DS1 was playing in the garden and he just opened the gate and took him. The little girl he was with came and told me, otherwise I would have had kittens.

When he returned, I gave him holy hell and he didn't know what to do, now that he couldn’t beat me up any more. He left and never came back.
He never paid a penny maintenance either. Nothing at Christmas and birthdays.
To be honest, I am delighted that he was never in my son's life growing up, as he would have been a pernicious and destructive influence.

DS2's father decided he was too upset to carry on seeing him after we split up. I was surprised by this, as he was actually a nice bloke, but there you go. It was about his feelings, apparently.
No maintenance from this one, either. Nothing at Christmas and birthdays.

DH2 is a far better father to them than their birth fathers.