How would you feel if CAFCASS was forcing you to send your child to an unrelated persons house?

[NewToThisButVeryConfused]

I'm wanting to garner some thoughts/opinions. I have two children who I adopted as siblings from birth, 13 months apart.

My eldest legally became mine and my husband's but we then separated before our youngest became legally ours. Despite being offered the opportunity to continue with the adoption, he refused and risked our youngest being put into foster care.

I decided to adopt on my own and did so successfully. My ex then pursued a contact order for the eldest only and refused any contact whatsoever with our youngest and maintained this stance for 6 years.

Recently, my ex agreed to have my youngest for visits but this only lasted a short period before our eldest started to refuse to go to contact again.

My ex has now applied to court for PR for my child without my permission (I had offered it previously which he refused twice). He is now happy just to take my child (no relation to him legally or emotionally whatsoever) and leave behind our eldest, making no effort to persuade them at all.

I have been fighting this through court but have a Guardian adamantly stating my child deserves to have a father figure in her life and to have that chance with him.

How would anyone else feel if they were being forced to send their child to a relatively unknown, and completely unrelated, man without their
permission?

What has your lawyer said as this is well messy

now for the adoption you did singly how can he ask for PR after 6 years thst makes no sense and very unusual for sure. What is his reasoning and why now.

So many questions to ask and to unravel for sure here

Sorry but you agreed the contact with the youngest and offered PR so what's the issue?

The judges do not always agree with the guardianship pillocks that write the reports. That’s the only thing I will say that might reassure you.

Was about to type the same thing.

Judges often get a bad rep in family court (etc) but there are also a LOT of sane and reasonable ones.

Keep the faith op.

My exh fought for 4 years to see my dc. His utter hatred towards me was his downfall and he lost his case... Can you show this? Have you any decent male friends /family who could be a suitable role model instead of exh?

Not completely unknown as it seems he was involved before? It isn't clear .
And you offered contact so at some point to it was ok for you?

I guess you need to clarify what relationship youngest and your ex had at any point? Can he say he was involved at all?

The fact that 6 years has gone by with him taking no interest till recently?

This is so unusual I imagine no one is going to be able to offer their experience as a precedent.

I can see both sides to be honest, especially if your two are full biological siblings I can imagine it could cause issues (down the line, if not now) if only one has a father and the other doesn't, however absent and useless that father is. They might feel differently in adolescence and adulthood to how they feel now (they must still be young?). This option would leave the door open for both to have some kind of relationship in the future even if it's difficult now.

I guess the guardian is imagining a future where your youngest reaches adulthood and feels bitter that their sibling has a father and they don't, especially when that potential father offered PR.

On the other hand he might not step up at all, continue to be difficult and manipulative, and alienate them both.

I don't know what to say to you. Men can be utterly peculiar about dna/genetics but that isn't the case here. Clearly the reaction to the younger was to punish you for the divorce. I do wonder if "specialised" mediation here might help you both unpick this. I've put mediation in inverted commas because beyond truthfully i'm not quite sure that any mediator exists Who could ever be good enough to achieve this? But worth a try.

What outcome are you looking for? At the start of this whole process you clearly wanted your now-ex to be father in full to both children. If you believe that is an outcome that could still have potential and be good, it might be worth working towards that. You've had a very difficult time over the last few years. But perhaps your ex has matured/grown up. Realised that actually they enjoy being a father to children.

I don't understand how your ex can get PR for a child that you adopted on your own, regardless of him having PR over a sibling. Have I understood that right?

It would open up so many future legal questions in cases where siblings have been adopted by different parents or if one child is adopted and their sibling isn't. No one should just have a 'right' over anyone else, especially not a vulnerable person.

Also, a father does not even have automatic PR if he is not on the birth certificate for his own biological child. It seems madness that someone can impose PR on a child without their agreement and years after they were born.

Can you show your child has other father figures in their life - like a grandparent or uncle? Will it be detrimental to the child's wellbeing to be 'handed over' to someone who has neglected her and refused contact. Can you prove this?

So sorry you are going through this. Its mind boggling.

She explained exactly what the issue is!. She offered contact when the older child was going there!

I pushed for him to see both girls as eldest was refusing to go without her sister. When he finally agreed, he only did so in order to get the eldest to go (and said he would stop if it negatively impacted the eldest but I thought I'd take the risk!). I offered PR so he could authorise hospital etc if anything happened. However, 6 months later, the eldest refused to go again and he disappeared off radar (again) only to apply to court for PR for the youngest and is now happily not picking up the eldest- making no effort to have her at all or persuade her to go. It feels as though he's happy to just take whichever child is easiest and the PR is just punishment.

That's how I feel. If they were biologically mine, one with him and one with another who wasn't named on the certificate, a court wouldn't be making me send the second child to his house, especially if I'd had that child after our relationship?

Legally everyone doesn't know what to say as no-one has ever experienced it before so they're just trying to figure it out. When he applied for contact for just the eldest and dropped out of the adoption, no-one knew what to do then either as it was unprecedented, so struggling really.

Ideally, I would like him to treat both children equally and be good to both of them, but I've spent years trying to get that to happen. And applying just for PR when the eldest is refusing to go, and he's happy to leave her (!) feels like a punishment of me and just a legal loophole to avoid child maintenance (he stated his reason for not adopting the youngest as "not wanting to be financially responsible for another child").

Personally, I don't mind the finances as I'm fine on my own two feet but feel in principle that someone shouldn't be allowed to refuse adoption for financial reasons then apply for only PR to continue avoiding.

So in an ideal world, he'd have them both and treat them equally, which would mean he'd adopt the youngest and I'd then never have to explain to her this mess. But as it stands currently, he'd now happily have contact with the youngest and get PR , not see his actual daughter at all, and when they're old enough to understand I have to explain to my youngest why he isn't actually her Dad, why he didn't see her and he'll have to find a way to explain why he adopted her sister but not her, which is going to be incredibly hurtful (youngest is developmentally delayed so doesn't really comprehend all this at her moment, she's just happy to go for sweets and walk a dog - she's dog mad!). It feels less hurtful to just not position him in her life and keep it as simple as "he's not your Dad" as he's still not willing to commit to being her Dad fully even now.

He now says he always wanted contact with the youngest but we obviously have the previous court documents where I state he should see them both and he adamantly refuses to have anything whatsoever to do with the youngest.

Yes, you've got that right and exactly why I'm so confused!

I would feel incredibly stressed out, worried for my kids and furious!
He doesn't sound fit to be a father tbh, he is being utterly reckless with your youngest's feelings. On a technicality, the second adoption hadn't gone through, but you had both started the process, and he flaked out big time. This confusion could have an impact on your eldest too. I sincerely hope court goes your way.

Why doesn't the eldest want to go anymore? And is the eldest happy for her younger sister to go alone? These are matters that should be explored and the reasons made clear in any court documents.
But that's by the by.
I cannot see that any FC judge will give what is, in essence, weekly PR to someone who refused it at adoption and has refused it twice since. This almost smacks of a 'get at' job towards the eldest - see, I'll take her and she'll get all the treats.

Thank you, that's how it feels. To be honest, the eldest has always struggled with it as he didn't see them initially either for a long period, and was only young when he then started to see them. They kicked and screamed from day one but unfortunately it caused such anxiety they were then diagnosed as such and selective mutism, so we couldn't get an understanding of what was going on as they wouldn't speak. They now haven't been for over a year through their choice, and the anxiety has gone and now speaks and has said they never wanted to go because they felt like their sibling was getting all the time with me - and now we're through the anxiety part and they understand, there's a huge residual feeling that they've missed out and so want to make up for lost time with me, which is really sad but I think understandable. And no amount of anything I do seems to convince them otherwise. They're happy for youngest sibling to go on their own too - tells them that they'll soon get bored there on their own, with no-one to play with and Dad on his phone constantly (who knows if that's actually true but it is what they tell their sibling). Sibling has only been two nights on their own so far.