Custody issues

[theworldsbiggestcrocodile]

My brother has separated from
His wife and they are currently trying to sort out custody of two girls aged 7 and 9.

He currently has the girls every other weekend fri, sat, sun nights and every Tuesday night.
This means there is a week where he doesn't see the girls between 8.30 am school drop off on a Wednesday to the following Wednesday at school pickup.
He finds this hugely distressing.

He has requested an extra night that one week or at least to pick them up from school, give them tea and then drop them back to their Mum.
His ex wife has refused this stating she 'doesn't want to change the routine as it works for her'.

Both of them work-though traditionally he has worked longer hours as in London and has the higher paying job. She has used this against him saying he was never around etc and she did most of the school pick ups in the past. This is true but I guess that was the agreement they made-they had a nice lifestyle which was enabled by one of them working more and one working less out of the home and being around more for the kids. He is now based at home and so more available.

Ex wife has refused to consider altering the current informal custody agreement. She delayed, then cancelled their second mediation session. (Nothing was resolved at the first).

There have also been issues with contacting the girls when at their mums. She won't answer the phone to him to allow him to speak to them and accused him of harassment when he messaged her twice, politely to ask her to get them to ring him.
On the suggestion of the mediator he bought them a pay as you go phone to take with them. Their Mum told them they didn't need it and turned it off.

Has anyone any experience of this? What can he do? He finds that long week where he doesn't see the girls immensely hard and I'm concerned about how it's impacting him and my nieces who say they miss him a lot.
Should custody start at a point of 50/50 and work backwards from there? (He isn't asking for that, just one extra night or even a few hours a fortnight). Why is it in one parents gift to decide the agreement?

Just a bit of housekeeping, it isn’t custody that we are taking about, that term is archaic. You are discussing residence.

Whilst I can understand your brother’s feeling, that isn’t what is important here. The children need to have structure and constantly shifting from one home to the other doesn’t help this. Imagine if every 2-3 days you had to pack up and move? Children will say they miss their parent and that is very true, but when a family separates, it is unavoidable.

My suggestion would be every other week for each parent to have residency.

//childlawadvice.org.uk/information-pages/residence/

This site might give more clarity.

As an alternative to every other week he could try 50:50 on a 2:2:3 alternating pattern.
For example
Mum every Monday and Tuesday
Dad every Wednesday and Thursday
Mum first weekend
Dad next weekend
It works well if the parents live nearby and both are near school.
Same parent does the same pickups of the same after school activities. Each parent gets a good long weekend with/without the children.

He would definitely like to do that-or either of those -but his ex wife won't even discuss it.
Is the only recourse court?

Why won't his ex discuss it? What's her version of the truth in this?

What you're describing is very close the set up I have with my ex (though he doesn't do Sunday overnight or Wednesday overnight).

Despite what a lot of people might think, this is actually right for our children. It's exhausting for me, and ex does the "I miss them" drama about not having them over enough. He could easily have posted what you just did.

But the reality is, he is way, way more involved now than he ever has been at any other stage of their lives. He's chaotic, can't manage their needs, doesn't necessarily manage personal hygiene and feeding them appropriately, can't get them anywhere on time, etc. Despite this my DC miss him, but don't want to be there more often than they currently are.

So ask yourself honestly, what's the other side of this story? And what is right for the children in the middle of this?

And I don't answer the phone to my ex, and I won't do mediation again because he was abusive and is a skilled emotional manipulator. Usually the person has to have gone to quite an extreme to get that kind of reaction from an exW.

It sounds like the best option would be to go to court if mediation isn't working. It doesn't need to be expensive, he can self represent. At least then everyone would have certainty re: the arrangement, even if he doesn't end up with exactly the arrangement he would like.

Child maintenance is tied to the number of nights at one parents home, could this be the issue? Would offering to set cm separately from access help?

Otherwise court is his best option. To be honest they are likely to dismiss a request like dinner, more important is phone calls. I would honestly suggest he requests 50/50 shared custody but expects it to be agreed lower

The setup they have is a standard court awarded setup.

He has offered to sort the finances separately from child arrangements-and has offered her £400 a month more than what CMS calculations say he should be paying in maintenance. (Plus 70% house equity, half savings, half pension). She has refused that because she believes she should get more equity in the house.
He is currently paying for all bills at their family home bar council tax and any food she buys or things for herself which she pays for from her own salary, as well as his own separate house costs and has been doing so for a year. He is overdrawn at the end of every month. She approached CMS to get him to pay child maintenance which was actually set at less than what he is currently paying for the family home costs . He can't pay for all her and the children's living costs as well as the CMS figure on top as he doesn't earn enough for that.

The backstory to their split is that she had an affair. They tried to work it out, couldn't, and he moved out.
She has been verbally abusive on several occasions that I've heard and he alleges other occasions that I haven't. I absolutely recognise that there are three versions of any marriage split up-his, hers and the truth somewhere in the middle-but there is no suggestion or evidence that he has been abusive in this case. Of course there were arguments when her affair came out and raised voices on both sides (as he describes it) but that's probably a human reaction to a marriage imploding I would think and doesn't in my view give justification to her actions re unilaterally deciding he can't see or speak to his children for a week every two weeks).
Or does it? I genuinely don't know how this works.

Divorce is not fair and back story is generally irrelevant unless proof of abuse, but let me tell you it would have to be severe abuse to make any difference.

Also going to court you are at the mercy of differing opinion of judges and unknown effectiveness of solicitors.

He could try going to court, but as @CelestialGalaxy said the set up he has is a very common one and there's no guarantee that it would change. He might get court ordered phone calls, but will his ex allow them? The girls will have phones of their own soon enough anyway.

It's also quite a long process going through the court for a child arrangement order and then it's hard to change later.

I feared that might the the case but it seems hugely unfair. He hasn't done anything wrong in this situation so it doesn't seem right that he shouldn't be able to see or speak to his children for half the time just because his ex wife has decided that.
I thought we'd moved on from the assumption being that the mother should have more access just because she's the mother.
Think it will end up in court which is a Shame for all involved.

I dont work in courts so my comments are purely from personal experience, but I dont think it would be worth going to court. If there is animosity and parents cant work well together i can't see courts awarding 50/50. The world may have moved on, but from what you have described, the mother has always been the main carer anyway and are unlikely to take that away for no reason. As it stands i assume he has half of the holidays? That would give him more quality time and is pretty standard unless one parent cannot commit to it so that would mean at least 6 weeks (30 days) holiday from work to care for children. Plus in a year or two the children will be wanting more of a say in where they stay due a to friendship groups/clubs etc. As painful as it is to be away from your children, it is the same for all divorced parents. It was certainly the most painful aspect for me, it made me very down and feel.sick and without purpose for a long time and I am resident parent. I would try and encourage your brother to look forward not back, as it is a very painful place and as i said before, divorce only tries to be fair to the children (which includes not moving them around too much). The courts dont really care about parents. I would however say that he should take independent advice about splitting the finances.

I don’t agree that a father should be satisfied with seeing their child so much less than the mother purely because he’s their father. How many women would be happy for that to be the other way around? Not many I’d like to bet.

OP when me and my eXH split we had a 50/50 arrangement based on 2/2/3, so one week he would have DS Monday and Tuesday and I would have him Weds/third and he would go to eXH on the weekend. Then we would switch iyswim.

I don’t agree with one week on one week off and my DS would never have been happy with that arrangement. But we did all that amicably between ourselves because I have never been of the view that a woman should be able to dictate the access on her terms as children are not property to be bickered over.

@AlternativePerspective that is great and you have your views and opinions as does everyone else, but if you go to court, you have already shown you cannot agree and therefore in my view unlikely to enforce your kind of split unless both parents show it will work for them eg with work etc and supporting clubs attended etc There are many factors and if either side doesnt support it, you will probably find the standard format they already have is applied.

I've got a similar arrangement for my own kids alternativeperspective-but like you my divorce was more amicable than my brothers.
He can show it will work with his own work etc to have them one extra night a fortnight. I just find it a bit awful that his ex wife (or in any divorce I guess whichever party it is) can just decide what's happening on the basis that that's what they want. I wouldn't choose to be without my DC but I recognise that they need to see their Dad. Just seems a bit archaic in cases where there is no abuse, no concern re parenting, no geographical issues (they live 5 minutes apart and same distance from school), that one party is given more weight than the other.
It's all very sad for everyone involved. I wish they could agree.