Hi, feeling pretty low and anxious about this, wondering if anyone knows the family courts better than I do and can give any advice. Will try not to make this too long…
ExP and I have a 4 yo DD due to start school in Sept. Been separated since she was 15 mths. We were a same sex couple & this is probably irrelevant but she’s biologically mine but we both have equal parental responsibility on birth cert. Since we’ve been separated we’ve had no court involvement and have parented her 50/50. We started looking at schools early - around April last year because I wanted to move out of the town we both lived in for a fresh start. I found a really nice village 15 min down the road. I looked at houses with
exP (we used to have a v amicable relationship and she was v enthusiastic about the move, saying it’d be great for DD) then we visited the small local primary school where I was moving too. As DD loves the outdoors & nature the school was perfect for her, plus it has an excellent reputation. We visited with her twice, spoke to teachers, and visited another one close to exP’s house. Both preferred village one & agreed she’d go there. I never thought I’d need a formal agreement or to get it in writing, I trusted exP - realise how naive I was in hindsight. Soon after I found a house, sold mine & put an offer in. Told exP multiple times I was due to exchange by last Xmas (turns out house didn’t exchange till first week Jan but I’d already exchanged on old one plus exP assumed I exchanged before Xmas.) Then on NYs Day I get an email saying she’s changed her mind and she no longer wants DD to go to that school and would be applying for a school close to her. Felt v betrayed as I was now stuck with this house and obvs relationship deteriorated. I informed her I was applying for the agreed school & she told me she was applying for one (one only) in a town a 10-15 min drive away in an area neither of us live in but in a place that she keeps telling me her new partner & partner’s kids will be moving to together (they don’t live together currently) but she has no concrete plans at all to move.
A week later I get a letter from a solicitor she’s hired to take me to court over it. Also found out she applied for 2 more schools without my knowledge. Anyway today DD got offered 2 places (schools are in different LAs) so I had to get my own solicitor - who is v experienced & told me arbitration (a private, faster court as far as i understand?) for a specific issue order is the best way to go, but after everything I told her, she still tells me it it could very much go either way and will simply come down to which school is better. AIBU to think there should be more to it than that? I live a 5 min walk from the school, exP lives a 20 min drive away - the other school DD got a place at is a 15 min drive for exP & a 20 min drive for me. It’s also on a busy road and not in a nice area. However both are rated Good and both have good reputations. DD loves living in our new area & we pass the school daily, she constantly says “there’s my school!” (Ex & I told her she was going there months before) and DD talks about how excited she is to go there & how much she loves the playground. I stay silent when she talks about it. I worry if she doesn’t go there she won’t make friends in our new area, as we don’t know many people here yet and there are no activities in the village where she could meet other kids as it’s such a small place. The only way for her to integrate into the community would be to go to the school. She already has lots of friends in her other mum’s area.
Anyone who’s been through this - are they likely to consider the previous agreement being gone back on? Or anything else I’ve said? Does it sound like I’ve got a strong case or not? I asked exP multiple times to go to mediation, instead of saying no herself she went to a MIAM meeting without my knowledge and they deemed mediation “inappropriate”. I think this was a deliberate move and believe she may have lied about some kind of abuse as I can’t see why they’d deem it inappropriate otherwise. In fact she was abusive, coercively controlling, emotionally abusive and manipulative, and is currently behaving in the same way she used to when we were together. My solicitor says all this is irrelevant (as not provable) and the judge will only care which the better school is. Ex wants to keep custody 50/50, issue is only the school. Problem is they’re v similar reputation-wise.
Sorry this is SO long, thank you for reading, really appreciate any advice anyone has.