To ask the family court to get involved with this...

[Alohaalohaxxx]

ExH helps with coaching my DS football team which means every weekend DS is with me he has contact with his Dad on a Saturday and Sunday.

Wouldn't be an issue except ExH was and is emotionally abusive..he is trying to get DS to live with him and tells him how lonely and sad he is.
He has threatened my solicitor by saying DS wants to live with him.

We are currently going though a section 7 as DD refuses to see him.

I know a long shot but is there any way a court would say he shouldn't be coaching the team on weekends when he doesn't have contact?

Probably not. Why don’t you take your son out of that club?

Unless there are considerable safeguarding concerns they wouldn’t direct what you are asking for. That is reserved more for instances of significant harm ie if he poses a real danger to your son.

OP, we need ages of children to be able to respond

Switch football teams? I know people get attached to teams, but if he has friends that play elsewhere?

He would never be able to, even if I said it he would say he wanted to stay in the club as he likes to please his dad.

DS 11 and DD 12

No, the Court won’t direct that

Surely you just do not take your son to football on your weekends? Plenty of fathers do not take their children to activities on their weekend contact time.

You’d be told to change his team and if you did then exh would probably start coaching that team to annoy you.

They won’t direct that imo. Presuming there is no order in place preventing him from seeing the children outside of the allotted contact they currently have? Ie has his current contact been restricted / directed by the courts or SS? Or did you just restrict contact yourself?

OP, I’m sorry you are going through this. Thanks for advising us of the ages of the children.

Presumably the S7 is covering both children.

In the case of your daughter, as long as she gives the report writer cogent reasons why she doesn’t want to see her father the Court will be hard pushed to order her to see him. She is very close to the age at which Courts take the pragmatic approach of saying children will ‘vote with their feet’ and cannot be forced into doing something they genuinely don’t want to do. Court may order you to make her available but if she refuses to get out of the car/into the car, whatever then she can’t be physically forced. Sometimes one child feels they don’t want to see the non-resident parent because the other child gets all the attention. Is it possible this is the case ? She may love her father but feels as he and her brother share their football interest she doesn’t get a look in. If that’s the case it maybe she could have some one-to-one time with father.

I hope your son tells the report writer what you have said about father telling him he’s ‘lonely and sad’. You can tell the report writer your son has told you this but try not to get judgemental or emotional about it; keep it factual. Your son, being that much younger, sharing an interest with father, and being a ‘dad pleaser’, is a bit more complicated but the report writer should be exploring whether he does really want to live with his father and why. Again, he will have to give better reasons than his father feeling lonely and sad.

I advise against trying to influence Court to interfere with father’s coaching. Although father will be sharing time with his son on ‘your’ weekends it would not be seen as ‘quality time’. I hate the phrase quality time but unless he is having significant one-to-one time with father during the coaching (surely unlikely as there will be other children there) then it shouldn’t come into the mix.

In the (hopefully) unlikely even the Court orders your daughter to live with you and your son to live with father then they should also make sure the siblings spend time together.

I hope you manage to come to a good resolution for the children.