Application to court for a holiday

[Elektra1]

Anyone have experience of applying to court for permission to take a child on holiday? Parents previously agreed to have just one week each for holiday with child, in summer (separation fairly recent and child is young so long periods apart from either parent considered not in best interests). Both parents have PR and divorce is not finalised yet.

Parent A now wants further periods of a week each, for second and third holidays. Parent B doesn't agree. If Parent A were to make an application to court, how long would it take to be heard? Would it make a difference if the holiday was already booked, notwithstanding lack of agreement?

Holiday abroad?

Yes abroad

Are holidays in a Hague convention country?

Are they short haul flights?

Where will the child be in between holidays?

Basically if there is a way of avoiding Family Court please avoid.

Why doesn't Parent B agree?
Being controlling or has genuine concerns about child being away from home for so long?
Could you arrange FaceTime calls while away?

I went to court and got a specific issues order for this exact reason. but my ex was being an arse so i had to force the issue and hence court.
Also got a CAO with me as resident parent so no ongoing issue.
But that was my situation. It's not right for everyone and it was quite stressful at times,

I would think timescale would depend on court area and back log.

So they are seeking 3 separate full weeks, over the summer, instead of 1 full week.

So the argument would be that 1 x 1 week would be ok, but not 3 x 1 week?

It might be better to consider the year as a whole around school holidays now. Either face to face or mediation.

Eg, share half term
Week each Easter
Share may
One week on, off over summer,
One week each Christmas.

Usual contact residence arrangements term time.

Even if child not of school age it makes sense to think about it now rather than another change later.

The judge all but laughed when I applied for a specific issues order to take my dc to Spain (a decade ago, I applied and represented myself) and my ex refused.

It's not an unreasonable request, on the face of it. Why is the other parent objecting?

Seems reasonable enough to me, why are they objecting unless it's just to be awkward.

dC is 4 and current shared care arrangements involve no more than 3 days apart from each parent. Parents previously agreed that more than that would be too much for DC, who really misses the "absent" parent after a couple of days. So parents agreed just 1 week each for holiday in summer this year. Parent A now wants a whole half term, week at Easter AND week in summer. Parent B thinks Easter and half terms can follow the normal shared care pattern and in summer each can have a week, with rest of summer in normal pattern.

Both parents want a holiday with DC, the difference of opinion is over whether they have only one one-week block for this or 3 x one-week blocks.

So your current shared care means a switch every 3 days? That's tough on the kid tbh.

I'd probably see to compromise on a week each at Easter and the summer, but not the half term as that would reduce the other parents time.

In terms of family court do you have a child arrangement order? If you do who does the child 'live with'? That order automatically gives the 'lives with' parent I believe it is 30 days abroad without other parents consent so there may already be arrangements in place.

I think parent B is being unnecessarily difficult and most courts would agree.

There's no CAO as we agreed 50/50 shared care. It's on a 2-2-3 pattern. I think because no order, we each need to agree with the other re foreign holidays.

I think any sheriff I have appeared before would grant this without hesitation.

Save the money, look at the bigger picture, focus on long term.

Ask parent b to think about contact on holidays. A screen call or whatever.

It sounds like both are really focused on child so try and continue that. Court will destroy it.

I might even go a step further depending on the initial consultation with a client here.

Scottish coil it or, but duty to consider child's best interests and overall purpose of court action.

I would be saying to parent b let's agree the finer details and to parent a keep your child out of court and give parent b a chance to discuss.

We do a lot of " round table meetings " here. Sit down with both solo and discuss it without the decision falling to the sheriff.

At four, for a child with such a good level of contact with each parent, this would not be refused by a court.

Scottish court solicitor. iPad one finger typing. Apologies.

Given there is already an agreement for a week, it would suggest that the parents have agreed that a week would be manageable. Assuming these weeks don't run consecutively and the child is seeing the other parent plenty between weeks, I think it would be difficult to persuade a court that one week is just fine, but 3 spaced out weeks are not.