Advice on taking emotionally abusive co parent to court. Has anyone done it?

[mumofalovelyboy]

I am taking the first steps to taking my ex to court to finalise agreements over our child arrangements but there are a range of issues and lots to consider when completing the C100 form and which boxes to complete.
I went through a lot of emotional / mental abuse with him in our relationship, none of it I reported so there is no police evidence.
He is now adopting the same tactics on our son 8yrs old and my son is scared and worried about staying with his dad.
All the while my ex is trying to increase over night stays and trying to control what I do in my free time with my son.

We have been apart over 5 years, I need this nightmare to end.

BTDT.

Let’s break it out in separate issues but first and foremost if there are threats, stalking, etc then you need to speak to the police in preparation for a non molestation order.

The first one is that you need to take steps now to limit this man’s contact with you. There is no reason why you should be talking other than the necessary child back and forth. So stop face to face arguments and you need to document everything, verbal and otherwise. If he texts and emails abuse, you need to have documentation of those. Bit of a faff but you can pay and download app to print off text messages etc

The C100 needs to be entirely child focused. Be very professional and factual. Summarise who has child when, what the routines are, how you are best to accommodate the child, etc. Explain that the conflict is negatively affecting the child and that they have expressed not wanting to go there, include any details of concerns you have around emotional and mental impact.

Outline clearly what you think is best for the child and why. Also say that the parental conflict is causing you considerable stress.

As a minimum you should be asking for a contact book arrangement but depending on the severity of his emotional abuse of the child then a supervision order might be better.

The courts should arrange for conversations with both of you and you probably have to attend the court ordered coparenting classes (separately) as part of this.
The court may also chose to speak to the child and its important that you do not influence that in any way. They will do a report.

When the hearing rolls around, if you are not represented, be prepared for six hours or more with a lunch break. He will likely come on strong and in preparation you need to think about his “objections”. He sounds arrogant and will probably mess up and they will see through this.

You are able to speak to the court for advice on the form.

Good advice above I was also going to mention not discussing anything non child related with him.

What sort of things is he trying to control that you do with your son?

Great advice from @NosyJosie above!

I'm so sorry to hear what you are going through OP. What sort of things does he do? Do you have anything in writing?

I'm actually in the process of finalising our childcare arrangements with my emotionally abusive ex at the moment.

We were in court last week for the dispute resolution hearing and I have to admit it was horrendous.

I received two position statements from him in the space of 3 days (the first his own as it was all about him and how he deserves to see the children as much as I do, how if it was 50/50 custody no maintenance would need to be paid) and the second from his barrister (which was more calm and businesslike). I found out he was being represented literally 15 hours before we had the hearing.

I got to the hearing and straight away his barrister was on me, ushering me into a little side room where she was very angry about the allegations I was making against her client - emotional abuse, financial abuse and coercive control. I told her a brief outline and told her I had proof. She wasn't interested. Said that her client had allegations of his own (not mentioned anywhere in his position statement) and if I was to continue to allege this abuse against him then he might not have any alternative then to use his. I was gob smacked. Is this allowed?

We then got into the court room and I thought to myself well, he has his barrister, I'm on my own but it's a judge right, she'll know what's right and wrong... How wrong was I?! Firstly, she said she hadn't seen my position statement. I told her I'd sent it 4 days earlier. She checked her inbox and yes it was there but it had been missed. MISSED. This is the statement I needed the court to see, to hear what my ex had been doing for the last 14 months since we'd separated and how it's affecting our children negatively and will into the future if someone doesn't tell him to stop. I was waiting for her to say "oh could you just go out to the waiting room for 10 minutes whilst I read it and get up to speed on the situation". Nope... she didn't bother reading it and just let his barrister tell her about all the abuse I'd alleged and how her client was shocked and totally taken aback. I couldn't believe how unprepared and unprofessional she was and how she hadn't seen such an important document. A document I'd paid my solicitor to read over and spent hours on.

No one seemed interested in the abuse. Both the judge and his barrister were trying to get me to drop the allegations, saying that the fact finding hearing is such a long, drawn out process and it'll affect the children by doing so. They weren't taking me seriously and were trying to convince me to let it go for the sake of the children. I told them that that is why I won't let it go, because of the children. Thankfully he lied about something and was found out and that's when the judge finally agreed that she would order a CAFCASS report. I honestly don't think she would have ordered one if that hadn't of happened.

Honestly, I think that if it's not physical abuse (and sometimes even that) they're just not interested. It doesn't matter if slowly they chip away at you with threats and harassment and you literally become a shell of a person. It doesn't matter if you are going to get blacklisted because he's refusing to pay the mortgage on the home he lives in alone because you've applied for child maintenance. It doesn't matter that he controls mine and the children's lives by using childcare arrangements to do so.

It's absolutely shocking and I feel the justice system is really letting so many families down.

I hope you have a better experience OP and I wish you well.

@Emsy999 that sounds almost reverse of mine, have you discussed this with your solicitor? My process was financial resolution to get divorced, with a parenting plan outlined. Then down the line Mr Control decided to ask for 50/50 because I am a bad mum and he is the best person ever.

We had a fairly casual hearing with a magistrate who ordered the CAFCASS report and sent us on the parenting course while we waited for the court date and filled out the C100.

I had a solicitor look over the form and paid 5k for a barrister and it was money well spent. Then we had the court hearing which was awful, took all day. He tried to introduce new allegations of parental alienation at the last hurdle but as we had the cafcass report where he had made zero mention of this it was shot down by the magistrate. He had also consistently lied about his working hours and other things on the form and my magistrate picked him apart step by step. It became clear that his motivation was control, his stalking my whereabouts and questioning the children was taken very seriously.
The net result was that the arrangement stayed the same as it was and my barrister got a court ordered contact book. The order also said he had to ensure he was a school contact etc to keep himself informed.

This was several years ago now and I’ve had to send him two reminders via my solicitor as he has overstepped the mark (I can’t go into details here).

He is still a dick. It has taken a lot of effort to ensure the negative talk around my children is diffused and he keeps tabs via findmyfriends on my daughter’s phone.
He also rarely writes anything of value in the book. I got the smallest book I could find.

He has tried to control finances by refusing to pay for anything outside of child maintenance which is self arranged and just uses the calculator. The girls haven’t gotten cheaper as time goes on and he won’t chip in for things like clubs, school trips and his line is that “I pay you child support and you got most of the house”. He is incredibly bitter about the financial settlement and I think he always will be. I wish I had pressed for a more detailed parent plan that addressed the child maintenance better but I’ve been able to manage without him fine.

He also reported me to social services twice when our daughter got in trouble. The social services lady was clearly influenced by him and his authoritarian manner as she used turns of phrases he uses so I called it out and was very calm and said to her I’d like to arrange for a visit to my home so they could speak to me and the girls and that this would also be a good time to review the hundreds of messages I have received and “start a file” to ensure the children are protected and also so they are involved now as the way things were going we were looking at a future court date to deal with his harassment, including wasting social services time to intimidate me. So I’d like to know what social services would do to protect me and my children from now on and in the event this happened. She got really flustered and I never heard from them again.

As my daughter was misbehaving at school, I also made sure that school knew what was going on so they could support her and keep him away from me. Her head of year clearly thought he was a knob as well so I have no doubt he tried to speak to school without copying me in.

Through all this I have never slagged him off to the kids and as they have gotten older they see through his nonsense.

I have a count down timer for when my youngest daughter turns 18 😂

Thank you all for the replies so far.

My experience of him when we were together was the typical silent treatment for days, isolating me from friends and family, tracking my every move, letting me spend all of my savings just to afford to cover my half of the bills even though he earned twice as much as me. He would lash out at objects, throwing things punching walls and doors. I was a shadow of my former self. Scared of every little thing. Finally plucked up the courage to leave him when our son was 2.

At first my son enjoyed spending time with his dad he stayed around 8 nights per month. All the while he guilted me into sending him pictures of our son every single day as I'd taken him away. I was too afraid to stand up to him so every day I'd send a picture. This progressed into him saying our son needed a video of me saying goodnight every night he wasn't with me. At the time I didn't realise he was doing it to still keep track of me and what I was doing.
He conditioned our son into believing he was only safe with me him or nursery and that he should be left with anyone else not even my mum and siblings and my son would freak out if I even so much as left him alone in a room with my family.

The problems really started when I met my new partner 2 years ago.
He told our son he could only love mum and dad and nobody else. He would punish our son for talking favourably to him about my bf by shutting him in his bedroom and not talking to him for the rest of the day.
He would send me angry messages questioning basic decisions I'd made such as joining our son to sports clubs. Saying I should have got his permission.
He started slowly demanding more access and over night stays. Again I was too afraid to stand up to him so I allowed it.
About a year ago our son started reporting his dad acting erratically around him punching walls, throwing items, not talking to him if he wasn't happy with something he did or said, exactly what he used to do to me. At the time our son still said he wanted to stay with dad. I made a call to social services to voice my concerns but as he wasn't physically harming him they weren't interested.

At the start of this year he started pushing for more access again this time to almost 50/50. The more our son spent time with him the more upset he was becoming and clingy with me at home and the more he was reporting erratic behaviour his dad had displayed when he was there.
Everything my boy has told me I've written down and dated it over the past 2 years.

The final breaking point came in May when my son was in floods of tears telling me he was scared of his dad and worried that he would punch him like he punches walls and doors. He said he didn't want to stay more than one night a week as he was afraid.

I found a solicitor and got myself some legal advice and was told to apply for a court order C100 on the grounds of urgency and domestic abuse.

I’m so sorry you’re all going through this with your children. How a parent can do this to their own child I will never know.

I’ve got my first hearing coming up and not sure what to expect. Sounds like I need to invest in a barrister as he’s every bit as awful as what you are describing here.

If you can drum up the cash to invest in a barrister then I recommend that but as a minimum you should speak to your solicitor and ensure provisions are made so he can’t get to you before the hearing, outside the room etc. My ex is not a violent man but tried to corner me and “sort things out” during the financial hearing and my barrister had to physically turn him around and push him out.

Different from the financial hearing, where each party presents addressing the judge/magistrate, in the family court hearing about 50/50 custody it works the same BUT there is also parts where each party can effectively cross examine the other and if you have a barrister they are the ones who does the questioning and answering. My own barrister gave me absolute HELL when we did our preparation together but it was tough love to ensure that he could find any holes in my arguments and on the day itself he was amazing. He had a shit list of a bunch of stuff my ex had done (stalking, coercive questioning of the kids etc) that my ex has clearly forgotten about and when he asked him about each of them, ex acted like he forgot or he was only checking the kids were safe and ok and he ended up looking like a fool. My ex represented himself (why wouldn’t he, he is always right and knows best 🙄) and behaved like I was on criminal trial, must have watched too many TV shows, and used my daughter’s troublesome behaviour as “evidence” of my bad parenting which went down like a lead balloon. My barrister very cleverly engineered it so that there was a couple of specific questions where he said “perhaps we should hear from Mrs X about that” as he knew from all the prep work that my answer would come across very well.

The divorce itself cost me 18K including the barrister for the financial resolution as we ended up in court. He spent about 15k I think and fell out with his solicitor. For the additional nonsense about 50/50 and the barrister for that cost me 5K. I feel like I could have saved a few thousand of the 18k as there was a lot of unnecessary back and forth arguments that my solicitor should have put a firm stop to but then he was making money from that but all in all, I got both a financial resolution and for the later one, the outcome that I wanted and I also got the contact book order. In hindsight I should have maybe tried to extend that to a barring order but the days where he can take me to court are rapidly running out.

Thanks so much for this. Good to know about what to expect in the hearing. We have a final hearing coming up for finances and luckily I do already have a non-molestation order so he can’t get near me.

That’s excellent news. The fact that there is a non molestation order in place already will help.

This is horrible but it will get resolved so keep your wits about you and come prepared.

I wish you every bit of luck in sorting the mess. Please protect your child

@mumofalovelyboy how did it go?