to think mothers who stop contact with their fathers for no good reason other than they need to control are sad jealous manipulative f*ckers who need to get a grip and move and stop giving every other mother who have moved on a bad name

[jojostar]

it makes me so mad AAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHH

Misi you have made agreat point there they want you to deal with the shit bits but don't want to give up child benefit, child tax etc, the ex bloody moans about having to pay for childcare, uniform, swimming blah, blah blah but would not even consider letting my dh do it because she would lose the extra money and the control..She totally takes for granted waking up every morning with the girls and kissing them goodnight everynight because she's never not had it. We would gladly pay for everything to have that more than once a week and I think the good dads out there would to.

I don' tthink it shoudl be allowed to mvoe the children away from a parent either for that matter. If my children were moved away from where I was I'd move right near them., There was a mumsnet poster whose husband did that - moved right into the same village the ex wife had moved the chidlren too -very funny and why not? Then you get to see them much more.

Also if the ex wife earns huge lots more than the husband then a lot of these issues disappare so the moral is for men to stop marrying lower earners perhaps.

By the way I do know men who have the children. One waited until the youngest child was 13 (an extra 2 years of pretty awful life at home) just so that when it came to the children choosing as they can when they are older they decided to live with their father. Another that was because his wife just left to live with her lover.

Then new CSA system when in force theoretically may improve things a bit because I think there will be more remedies for not obeying a contact order. What we really need is jail sentences or a system where if you breach the order then the child goes to live with the other parent automatically. Even that won't solve those cases where the child decides it won't see one parent or cases like mine where the father refuses to see some of them. I bet everyone thinks I've denied him contact as it's so unlikely he'd just choose not to have it but that's not so.

I suppose for all of us we probably just see one side. I often wish I could read my ex's mind - he may have an entirely different view of things than I have of the same facts.

Know a fantastic father that is not 'allowed' to see his child, despite taking his ex to court and getting a court order. She simply refused to follow it, when he went back to the courts he was told the case was closed? and if he wanted to take it further he would have to pay agin to take it back to court to get another order which she wouldnt follow. From what I understand there is nothing the court can do if people dont follow the order so WTF is the point in giving them out??!

She has poisoned the childs mind against him saying he doesnt want to see the child and refused him access when he has travelled a long way to pick up his DC.

She doesnt realise that although she is hurting the father (which seems to be her mission & BTW she is doing a very good job!) she is also hurting her ouwn DC and messing with DC head totally!

There are enough fathers out there, like my own for example! that dont want to see their kids - wont pay a penny for em and basically dont give a shit. Its soul destroying to see those that do care, do pay and do want to spend time with thier kids to be refused so.

I know this works both way rounds and everyone has thier own experiences but parents need to realise that just because thier relationship has ended doesnt mean that the parent/child relationship ends and no matter how much they might hate thier EX and want to hurt them they are doing more damage to the kids by using them as a weapon in thier games.

God Xenia you must be having a bet with yourself to see how far you can go with the nonsense. "the moral is for men to stop marrying lower earners perhaps". Yes, morals must always come back to money, that's the only measure imaginable. I still think you are the most successful troll in the history of mumsnet, because not even the most avaricious of bankers thinks like that.

As for sending women to prison if they deny contact - that's really going to help their children isn't it? Are you also proposing to send to prison the men who emotionally abuse their children by constantly letting them down about contact, or using the contact as a weapon against the ex wife, rather than as the opportunity to maintain a decent relationship with their children, which in so many cases is the reason contact is denied in the first place?

It is such a stupid, simplistic way to talk about family relationships. My xp is one of those blokes who never bothers to have a relationship with his children, for reasons best known to himself. When I'm feeling unreasonable about it, I think he's an irresponsible twat who should be forced to have contact with his kids, but when I come to my senses I realise that he is a man who is probably in an awful lot of pain, completely unable to engage with the world as it is, and that forcing him to have contact with children he is unable to engage with, would be horrifically bad for them. Sending him to prison for being inadequate, would be ludicrously cruel to him, a waste of taxpayers money, and absolutely distressing and horrible for my children if they were old enough to find out about it. Nobody who thinks about this with any level of seriousness for more than 30 seconds, can possibly advocate such a damaging policy.

Misi - so to read about your situation. The CSA nearly bankrupted us with their ridiculous calculations. We were always on the old system and it was a complete nightmare. DH's ex moved to the other end of the country and there was no allowance made for contact costs whatsoever. Even after we applied for a departure it was refused because there was no established pattern. Of course there wasn't because there was no chance of affording the 1000 mile double journey, plus overnight stays, more than two or three times a year. No help was forthcoming from the ex of course, and she refused to allow the teenage children to go part of the way on the train. It made DH's blood boil.

With regard to fathers who don't maintain regular contact. My DH nearly went down that route for a while. The reason was that he couldn't cope any more with the pain of only seeing his children once every couple of months, and thought he'd be better off not seeing them at all. He worked through it and he has a good relationship with them. But do bear in mind that, for some men, cutting themselves off is a protection mechanism when their lives have fallen apart.

Agree TM. But their protection mechanism can also be seen as a self-indulgent method of putting their needs before those of their children. If children need to see their fathers (and the current thinking is that in most cases, they do) then fathers simply have no right to do that self-protection thing, because the children need to see them... however, that would be very simplistic and uncompassionate thinking and life and human beings are complex, so it's not what I believe except when I'm feeling completely pissed off and uncharitable.

No, I agree LB and so does DH which is why he got over it and continued the struggle to maintain regular contact. I can well imagine though that if he hadn't met me and found some happiness things may have been very different. I know for a fact that he was seriously contemplating suicide at one point.

It's very self indulgetnt. Those of us "lumbered " (and sometimes if you have children 365 days a year, support htem all and work full time it can feel like that) with the children with no help don';t have the convenience of protecting our little feelings like these grown men who can't cope with the stress to themselves of contact that may not be exactly as they choose or threaten to kill themselves as my ex did. If did that the children would be in care. It is a cowardly thing and if they have mental problems they shoudl get help not just cut contact.

Easy to say Xenia, easy to say. But men who have lost everything, literally everything, including their children - I don't think any of us can even begin to understand what goes through their minds.

I have by no means read all of this but just wanted to give my experience.

I also thought that this could not happen. A mother could and would not act in such a selfish way with their own children. My best friend for many years is a single mother who has struggled to enable her DD to have a relationship with her father.

Then I met DP. His ex, over the last year or so has dramatically cut his contact with his DCs from around 50% to 1 or 3 days a week. This is for NO reason other than her having power over him and more money fron the CSA. She is extremely irrisponsible when caring for her children and has an issue with alcohol.

Luckily it really is the minority that do/ would behave like this but it does happen and it is totally shocking. I believe that this is the main reason why the family court system is so biased towards mothers. Because they just can't believe that a mother would do this. It is completly against how most mothers behave, but unfortunatly it does happen.

Janni - your dp's situation sounds so like my DH's. He too has found himself completely helpless and without a voice as he hasn't wanted to bad mouth his ex to his children. So until recently they didn't even know that she had an affair and threw him out! They thought it was all his fault and that he didn't care. We used to get messed around something chronic by DH's ex, including having plans cancelled at the very last minute. I really do sympathise with you both.

jammi the reason it is damaging because it's not just mad loons who would be jailed, it would also be mothers who have been driven to the very limit and have at last stopped contact because they are sick of the emotional abuse to which their children are being subjected by the NRP who is using contact as a weapon instead of what it should be - the maintenance of the relationship with the children. Unfortunately, courts aren't good at recognising emotional abuse and do not listen to resident parents who complain of it, assuming that they are simply harpies. Hell, they don't even support LP's when domestic violence is documented, men are still being given contact rights with known violent abusers, why should the courts be able to cope with the far more nebulous problem of emotional abuse, when they can't even deal with the physical type?

I'm a bit gobsmacked that anyone would think it's appropriate to tell a child that her father would have killed himself if he hadn't been able to see her. That is a piece of information that a child should not be burdened with imo, even if it is true.

I actually don't think i can comment on this.

I am sure Op is having a bad time with her Dh's ex but i get way too angry about ignorant people who tar all single mothers with teh same brush.

I am the exact kind of woman the OP is portraying...to my ex and his family.

Im not even going to start thinking about all the reasons this is not true.

but sorry OP yabvu

Where did the OP say she was talking about single mothers though? IME this kind of situation can arise when the mother has a shiny new family and she doesn't want her ex interfering with the children's relationship with their "new dad".

ah right, yes, thanks for clarifying