What happens with custody of older children

[immergeradeaus]

The thing that has held me back from separation is my children. I have thought about it for years, and always come to the conclusion that everyone would be made less happy by me telling DH I wanted to separate.

I would be less happy because now I am with the dc 100% and if we divorced I would have to send them away for part of the week to allow him to have custody. DH, who is a reasonable person, would be upset by me wanting to divorce him and upset by not having the children around. And the dc would be unsettled by having to shuttle between us.

So I have waited. Years. The eldest is turning 18, youngest 13. What happens with custody at this age? I imagine, although DH is a reasonable person, that he might be inclined to oppose me at every turn if I inflicted a divorce on us, and I worry what that would mean for me and the children.

Your nearly 18 year old would be an adult by the time custody is sorted, so will be their decision where they live and visiting ex and although your ex may get 50/50 custody of the 13 year old, they might not want to go to ex’s house and in reality it will be difficult to force them to go.

They both get to choose what they want.

Thank you. How old would my youngest have to be before it’s entirely her choice? Is it when they turn 18? I can probably hack it for another year at most.

As you might guess, I am scared of how my DH will react, and just don’t think I can deal
with conflict which will hurt the kids. I have a middle child as well who would be very unsettled by this. It’s just grim, but I need to give my head a wobble and just get on with it, and not let it drift and drift.

She'll probably be 14 by the time it was all sorted , so she'd have a very big say.

What do you think she'd want to do?

If you think he might block you all the way and you're scared about this, he doesn't sound very reasonable?

The eldest is an adult so it’s entirely up to them. At 13 the younger one would definitely get a say in where they want to live and what pattern of contact they’d be happy with.

What’s their relationship like with both of you?

No one's going to force teenagers to go anywhere they don't want to go.

Even if he did go to court to try to force them to stay with him, if they don't want to he can't physically drag them anywhere. They won't be jailed for not going to dad's.

So in practice they will decide where they live and how often they visit the other parent.

We divorced when dc were 8, 6 and 3.. I'm theory 50/50 but ex was a twat about keeping to it and I had to fight for every hour. At 12 The youngest came to live with me full time. Never saw ex. Didn't even go see a solicitor or even text me. His 14yo db came too. Not a peep from anyone official.

The youngest and eldest would want to live with me. The middle one would find it very hard to deal with any conflict and would be driven to do what he felt he had to to minimise unhappiness. He’s a sensitive soul. He’d make himself miserable to try to make me and DH happier. (Apple hasn’t fallen too far from the tree in his case.) So it’s harder to say, and I would do what I could to protect him from feeling torn between us.