Christmas arrangements with son's dad. Am I being unreasonable?

[ThatLovingRaven]

I have a 5 year old DS. I am his full time parent. He lives with me . We agreed he stays at dad's every other weekend and has tea there on a Wednesday. Fine.
No court arrangement. My ex threatened to off himself if i ever went through the courts or contacted CMS due to "everything hes been through"-backstory, he lost a few members of his family close together which obviously hit him hard. He uses this as his excuse for everything, including cancelling his days and rearranging. Which I have done with no hesitation as I was trying to help him out and just wanted a peaceful life tbh
.... He also has never done one school run. He is in bed most days until the afternoon, clamining a "bad night" due to his mental health issues. I call him at 1pm sometimes later to do with our DS and he is regularly unavailable. Late for sports days...parents evenings...generally just half assed behaviour.
For the last few Christmases DS has been with me due to his dad having other family engagements which to him were clearly priority over spending christmas with his son, and since his dad and I separated in 2022 ( i left him and was placed in temporary accommodation with DS by council due to the nature of our relationship breakdown.
DS has had christmas eve and morning with me all his life.
My proposal to DS's dad was this year, since he has now suddenly decided he wants to celebrate Christmas again, I have DS christmas eve as usual, there are plans made for DS to see his nan and grandad, and christmas morning we open presents together and I take him to his dad's place for about 11am where he will have dinner and stay until 27th or beyond if he likes

Ex has flat out said NO and this year, it's only fair that HE has him christmas eve so he can wake up with DS christmas day.

Obviously this has broken my heart.
I asked my DS and he said when I asked him what he would prefer he said "I want to wake up here in my bed because Santa knows where I live!"

So I have said No to his dad and we will stick with original plans. Son doesn't like change he is on the asd spectrum, like myself.

His dad, has no threatened to get a solicitor on me if I don't answer him by 5pm today!

What do I do??

I am standing my ground but how do I go moving forward??

Tell him to crack on,
Then go through the CMS or whatever they call themselves nowadays.
In all honesty op, the writing was clearly on The wall before you had your son. Your ex already had a child and did barely anything with that child. Put yourself and child first and stop giving this loser head space.

I love that you put 'from Mummy and Santa' on the Christmas present - go girl!!

I remember with great joy the moment my eldest looked off in another direction and said - thanks Santa - for his presents - he knew!!

Absolutely not. He doesn’t just get to have the best most fun days of the year without putting fuck all work in the rest of the year.

Also, stop letting him manipulate you, woman up. Go to court and CMS.

Honestly, you are making memories for your son. You want him to look back on a cosy Christmas with you, not dashing around and misery. Let your son have Christmas Day at home with his toys and propose going to Dad's on Boxing Day. If he can't be reasonable or put feelings aside in the child's interest, it's time for you to speak up.
He will not get a court order in time, Christmas in a loving and stable home isn't unreasonable, and it sounds as though he can't be bothered anyway. Stop pandering to a man who has no power over you.
You and your son can start making your own lovely Christmas.

THIS, first post nailed it.

He's never going to get a solicitor, the lazy piece of shit, and they'd laugh him out of court anyway.

Once you have put it in (and I totally understand waiting until after Christmas) please do keep your case open.

It’s a shit amount and I get why people feel it’s an insult, but honestly the amount of men who absolutely and utterly grudge that £364 a year is unreal. And if you set up and just have it paid into an account then it’s a wee amount you can use at some point in the year

It also keeps the case open in case his circumstances change. I had a man absolutely rant and rave at me when I briefly worked for CMS because he won a lot of money and the interest counts as income. That and a man who inherited a lot and then got caught out as he didn’t realise it counted (the interest) were two of the most satisfying cards I worked on.

plus you never know when the rules may change - the £7 thing caused an absolute storm when it was brought in. It may very well be increased in the future.

I guess the fair way would be to do it by percentage. OP has their son 26 nights a month, and ex 4 nights, so he will have his son roughly every 7 years for Christmas. That would be fair as he opts out of parenting for the vast majority of the time.

Let him go ahead and get a solicitor. Nothing will happen this side of Christmas anyhow, and it was him who wanted the arrangements informal in the first place. (By the way, threatening to hurt himself as a means to control you is a form of abuse which you do not have to tolerate. You are not responsible for your ex's mental health).

Message him "If you want to start formalising our arrangements with solicitors and courts etc you are very welcome to get the ball rolling on that. I will of course stand firm on anything that will be detrimental to (son's name) and am willing to be flexible on what wouldn't be detrimental. Meanwhile my focus is what is in (son's name)'s best interests and he needs a base level of comforting familiarity around Christmas as his neurodiversity issues make the disruptive changes from normal routines more difficult for him. He will be best able to enjoy Christmas if he is in his own bedroom here for Christmas eve night and Christmas morning and he'll be delighted if there's a second stocking waiting for him at your house."

Good luck @ThatLovingRaven it's interesting what you say about these 'special dates'. We have a similar access agreement - one night a week and EOW. Never asks for extra weekends because too busy. This week I'm getting messages asking for extra days (it's 2 weeks to go, I've bought tickets for shows etc). Life doesn't stand still nor revolve around these men (though they seem to have different ideas). I hope you have a lovely time

So often I find that in relationships, men leave all the organising to their partner. And 9/10 she considers their needs and preferences and tries to work around that (whie simultaneously resisting the urge to stab these men with a fork).

And then they leave and they are completely bemused by the fact that women are not STILL centering their needs and preferences or that plans might be made without any consideration of them if they haven't been in touch.

It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

Screenshot and print all texts / messages that refer to missing arranged visits and his mental health issues and then keep them in a folder . The way it’s going if you do go through with getting a visitation order he will be on supervised visits only .