Once a month contact enough for my son?

[DadJ93]

Hi, my little boy is 6 years old now. We live a very ling way away from each other. His mum moved back to Scotland after we broke up and I remained down in England. It took me 3 years of court battles to get the contact I currently have. Which is the first weekend of every month, I have him from school finish time on Friday and drop him back at about 5pm on a Sunday. He is also allowed to stay with me for all of his school holidays and half of his summer holidays at the moment.

In this time we have managed to foster a really positive relationship and we are close despite the distance and the length of time between visits. He tells me pretty much everything and there is alot of trust between us.

I'm not going to lie, my exes family (his mum, gran etc) are not my biggest fans, and getting any extension of contact out of them since the court order was issued has proved impossible. He knows that they don't like me, but it doesn't seem to effect his opinion of me, which I feared it would.

When he lost his first Tooth (he was with me at the time during his summer holidays) it was a great moment, and the tooth fairy gave him £20 for it! His rotten granmother then told him that the tooth fairy didn't leave him anything and that it was just me that put £20 under his pillow and that I was a liar. I was honestly absolutely disgusted by this. She does things like that often to try and make him hate me. She is an absolute monster, and hurting me seems more important to her than the happiness of her own grandson. Anything I give him or we find together she also takes away from him. We found some shark teeth on the beach (he loves nature and science etc) and she immediately took these off of him and he's not seen then since.

Anyway.....I cannot afford to take it back to court currently. I have considered moving there but I'm not sure she would even grant me additional contact. It's a really difficult situation because I want to spend more time with my son. We do lots when we do see each other and he absolutely loves staying with me. We've found found tadpoles together and they've grown into toads and newts that we now take care of together, we build things together, play online games together during the time when he is at home and I'm away. I do my best to guide him and correct on things that have happened when he's been at his mum's. He recently had a big argument with her where she called me a sh*t dad and said I don't do anything for him, and they really fell out over this apparently.

I honestly just feel like I'm doing a terrible job sometimes and want to know if there are other people on here in similar situations? What is your experience? My worst fear is having him grow up resenting me, because he honestly means everything to me. Any advice? Thanks

Hopeful bump

It’s brilliant that you want to be a good dad to your son, and that you’re here looking for advice. Sounds like you’ve got a nice relationship.

In your position I’d start by ticking the basics and make sure that everything was in a row.

Are you paying a good amount of maintenance, every month, consistently on the same day each month? Have you offered to go halves on extras - clubs, school trips etc.
Being really honest is there a reason for the animosity? Did you cheat? Was there domestic violence? Did you pull your weight with your son before you split? If so have you genuinely apologised and tried to make amends?
Do you supply everything that you need for your son’s time at your house? Or is mum having to pack bags etc?
Are you consistent with your contact, picking up and dropping off when you should do? Do you cover any childcare you need on your weeks? Etc

What a nightmare.

Would you be willing to do two weekends a months with the long journey? I don't think it's fair on the son to drive from Scotland to England (depending on actual distance) but could you afford a hotel in Scotland on a regular basis.

I really don't have any useful advice but hoping my post will bump your post.

Can you not move closer to him?

Move closer, if nothing else it'll give you more quality time rather than travelling.

You can't control what his mum or gran say. Children work it out as they grow and once he hits about 12 his thoughts and wishes are takenjnto consideration,at least they are in England, Scottish law maybe different.

If you have no other ties in England I'd be moving to be nearer to him pronto. Going to court and representing yourself doesn't cost much. You put forward reasonable contact so a day in the week and EOW, or 50:50 if you get a place big enough for him to have his own bedroom and the courts will generally sign off on it if there are no other circumstances which means you shouldn't see him.
Do make sure you are paying maintenance though, children aren't paying per view but courts won't be impressed if you aren't.

Contact doesn’t require your ex’s permission. I would personally move close to your son and go for 50% custody and brace myself for more drama from your son’s grandmother who sounds like a nasty bitch for confiscating stuff like the shark’s tooth. I guess you both know to keep stuff like that at your house.

DadJ93

I feel really sad for your son. He's caught in the middle of his parents squabbles. Not pretty. God bless him.
Nice that you care about him

This is heart wrenching. How on earth was ex-W allowed to remove your DS?
Could you at least have your one, precious weekend until school drop off on the Monday morning?
If you can't afford to return to court I can't see a good solution. The biggest influence on the LO will be the ex-W's family, and obviously a DC will cling to the people providing the majority of care.

It sounds like your son already knows who you are - keep behaving decently and as he matures he will make his own choices … if you can move closer do but don’t expect that to be a quick fix .. you may well be waiting for the teens and for him to have a say in his own residence and contact .

..

Yes I would be willing to do it, I have a fairly decent job but it isn't unaffordable. The issue is getting his mum to cooperate with anything or extend anything that's outside of the court order. It's ridiculous.

No, on the weekends that I have him we stay somewhere local from the friday to the sunday afternoon. I may just have to ask his mum if she'd be willing to allow every other weekend rather than just the one I currently have. Thank you

I pay maintenance on the same day each month and have never missed it, I've actually recently increased it. I've never missed a single visit since we split up 4 years ago. Whenever he is with me I pay for everything, days out, clothes, food, travel, hotels etc. I don't ask her or her family for a penny I always have his bags packed, all he is sent out with are the clothes he's wearing that day.

The animosity was due to a bad breakup, it was an unhappy toxic relationship that was taking it's toll on both of us and a bad environment for our son. I did some questionable things leading up to and after we split up. But I have done everything I can to try and make amends, show his mum that I am willing to be there for him whatever it takes. I have tried genuinely apologizing but it hasn't cut any ice at all with them.

Thank you. Yeah exactly. It's a big decision to make if it ends up making absolutely no difference to the situation.

She just left, nothing I could do short of physically stopping her. I will be asking to have him until the Monday morning, I've been planning to for a while. She has said that next year, she will be extending the school holiday contact but that's a big "if" and "when"

Yeah definitely, they do seem to have influence over him (naturally) but he is always very open with me about everything and says that I'm a good dad and that he loves seeing me etc. Sometimes he even seems sad about the way I'm viewed by his mum and her family. He's only 6 but he is bright enough to understand the situation and he knows that he loves his Dad despite what anyone else thinks/says. But sadly that may change over time, hopefully not though.

Thanks. I didn't realize you could represent yourself in family court. Do you have any more info on that? Sounds interesting.

I regret not going for 50/50 custody during the first court proceedings, but I honestly didn't think I would even get that if it came to it, and my solicitor was quite bad, so..

Why do the members of her family despise you so much?

Having read your updates and thinking about it I think asking her for extra time is going to get you no where, she isn't going to agree.

I would still email and ask so the courts have records but I think your only option is court.

How long ago was the original order made?
What did contact did you ask for?

Like others have said you can represent yourself, so the cost will only be the initial application. £250 ish I believe.

You've written "I did some questionable things leading up to and after we split up", and I'm going to assume that refers to behaviour that would come under the broad heading of domestic violence/coercive control, because that makes her house move and her current behaviour towards you make a lot more sense. If I'm completely wrong feel free to just ignore this post.

I appreciate that you can't turn back time but this is why domestic violence is so so so damaging for families. Imagine that you went to the pub and a stranger behaved to you the way that you behaved towards his mum. Now imagine the stranger applied to be his childminder. You wouldn't accept because however great a job they did when childminding, you would know what they were capable of doing so they wouldn't feel like a safe adult. Now imagine a court forced you to accept that childminder - you would behave in the way she is now - limiting contact and trying to limit the relationship with your child to do the best you could to keep them safe.

If that is the case the thing which I would recommend you think really really hard about what you can do to make the mum feel safer; that's the most likely thing to allow more contact.

Things I would suggest are:

• making sure you live at least an hour away and never turn up at school or house or clubs etc unannounced. If you do decide to move let her know in advance what you're doing, where you're moving to and that you will never turn up unannounced.
• Do some work on anger management and let her know once you have done it. Do a perpetrators course for the same reason.
• Even if she is restricting phone calls, allow her to call unrestricted when DS is with you and let DS know he can call her whenever he wants to.
• Think very carefully about everything that you say to her, text her, email her. Look at the language and make sure that it is not at all angry or forceful; and that it is not at all controlling.
• Acknowledge when speaking to her and her family why she has made the decision to move and to restrict your contact instead of acting as though you can't understand it. Acknowledge that as a mum its her job to protect her son.

But it could as he gets older and can have more say when he sees you. Just even being closer proximity shows him you're there if he needs you. It might down the line make it easier for your ex to allow more time during weekdays. She's not going to want to give you full holidays forever so negotiate then

You have ove advantage. Seeing him once a month means he gets 100% of your focus, you can make amazing memories. Don't give him stuff to take home, let him keep his treasures at your home with him.
You were crass about the tooth fairy though £20 is a ridiculous point to start it with.

Was there aggression in your marriage @DadJ93?

i feel for you m8 but id be thankful for the contact u have. im jn a situation whereby i get 15 mins per week with a 19 month old daughter. no violence or any reason except spite

It's always difficult when such a distance is involved, and even harder when one is hostile.

I was a Scottish family solicitor for many years.

I would say think about the following
You say you have 12 weekends, ALL the holidays and half the summer.
Map that out.
So are you talking
Two weeks Christmas
One Feb
Two April
Three summer
One October
Long weekend November
Plus the one a month weekend.

Then from a quality time point of view, what would shared residence improve for him. At this moment.

Would moving necessarily improve your quality of life, his? Would you be able to find work. Would her behaviour increase? Ie would she agree to more time but then seek more holidays back?

Is the court action finished and where was it? The general principle here is you go back into the original order and seek a change based on change of circumstances. When a child moves I've seen it go all ways, sheriff keeps a new action here but asks to see old papers, sheriff dismisses it and sends it back to original court, original court sends it back here.

Remember that as he grows his views become more important, by high school certainly he can be voting as well.