Co-parenting

[Lottiexx3]

Hi, so I have 4 children, 3 from my pervious marriage and one from my most recent relationship. This concerns my youngest child. Me and his dad have recently split after what I would call a very difficult relationship. I want my son to have a relationship with his dad and see him, however I want routine and constancy around it, I also don’t want my ex to continue to think he can show up or demand to see him whenever he wants. The reason for this is the accusations that come when I can’t accommodate such as stopping him from seeing his child, controlling him etc. Due to this ongoing behaviour from him I want as little contact as possible with him. He has asked to have him for two hours on Monday however we are not here and have plans and I know he’s going to start. Am I right with wanting routine and consistency? I don’t want to cause any harm to my son and ruin his relationship with his dad, however he’s 9 months old and needs routine. I also don’t want to have to continue to drop everything to accommodate him and want to avoid further accusations. Does anyone have any advice?

A court order would help you. You can ask court to rubber stamp an agreement, or to iron out what you cannot agree on. Wanting consistency is a good reason to ask court to do this.

1. Write a plan for regular contact.
2. Ask him to do the same.
3. Download AppClose, ask him to do the same, then block him on all other channels. It's a court admissible, non deletable coparenting app.
4. Sit down with both plans in mediation.
5. Ask court to rubber stamp what mediation was able to help you agree on and/or work out for you what contact should be.

Once you've got an order you will know exactly where you are, as will the child. You can communicate via the app about contact and child's welfare, and just completely ignore anything that isn't that.

If your income is under 1K a month, or something around this, then your court application will be free of charge. If not then it's 250 for an application but a few hundred first for a mediator. Mediation is a requirement before you go to court.

You can just represent yourself in court and say exactly what you've said here about wanting to foster their relationship but wanting routine for the child. That attitude will be welcomed.

Tje contact schedule court will work up to as the child gets older is he picks them up after school every other Friday and drops then off Monday. One night in the week overnight and half school hols. Christmas and New Year could be chopped up. They could also order Monday to Sunday with you then the same with him, but this wouldn't be now, becuase it's a young baby.

Great advice above.
Be careful whst you agree to, setting a precedent means a court is likely to order that so if dad isn't a safe parent just be wary.
Mediation- try it. Might work! You can get legal aid if you don't earn enough, but there's also a government voucher at the moment to go to mediation as they are trying to encourage it so not everyone ends up in court.
App close- definitely. Everything in writing. If you want to pay for an app, or you are on benefits you can apply to get Our Family Wizard for free. It's worth it, calls, calendar, messages are all tiem and date stamped, nothing can be deleted, can upload documents. Hugely beneficial when the coparenting relationship isn't easy.

I'd suggest sharing a reasonable contact, sample plan with dad and say that you want to go to mediation. Explain that it is a calm environment to work out a plan for baby, however until mediation has happened and an agreement reached, you will be sticking to the plan you've sent over. And then stick to it. Get in touch with a Mediator and get the ball rolling with your initial MIAM meeting and get them to contact him.

Reslly hard, especially as you ahve to olan for your other children also. Wishing you luck.

Thank you. I got an app, he’s since refusing to use the app and is emailing. I told him about mediation so we can agree a schedule and he’s not happy. He’s continuing to demand Monday despite me explaining we are way.

Send one final email saying you will only use the app, send him the link. Then block. Don't reply to him at all!

Don't give in about Monday, enjoy your day.

You can do this, stay strong. Focus on your kids

His behaviour will not be looked well upon in court.

You need to get stronger here.

Email back saying you are away and Monday won't be happening.
You want them to have a good relationship and think it's a good idea to get a court order. Ask him to book mediation.

Block him on all channels and ask that you use the app.

Send him your proposed schedule and ask him for his.

If he doesn't engage then you will hold more cards in court.

Thanks @BookArt55 but FYI you can't get legal aid any longer unless you have domestic abuse involved. Anyway, a legal aid team will not do you any favours. Either you pay through the nose for a team who are going to say the correct things, or you do that yourself. (you already are)

A legal aid team who half arse things and chop and change representation will get you a terrible deal in court. Judges really listen to representation.

But a parent saying 'I want my child and their dad to have a relationship. I want it structured that's all.' is going to be viewed in a similar light to a brilliant solicitor because they are saying all the right things. Judges are extremely busy and have to act on cues and tells and can't delve into each case's complexity themselves.

I went through absolute hell with my ex, but the court order and app turned him into nothing more than a digital presence confined to an app in my phone. We got handovers sorted in court too and he has to do them without approaching my front door.

It enabled me to get on with repairing my mental wellbeing. Had I not had these official things in place my mental health could be so shot today that I may not even have been writing this.

I feel for you as we are in the same position and it's really not helping my mental health.

He doesn't get to demand.
Offer up times that's best for your dc. Like not too tired ie bedtime /not when you have plans that benefit dc.. Keep records of him showing up /not /any abuse.

Without the risk of assuming to much, could it possibly of been a controlling relationship? And now he’s using the dc to continue to control you?
I spoke to a solicitor just to understand my rights and got some guidance on what to do and went from there based on knowing his personality and finding some sort of strength to battle on. Solictor kept the details incase an emergency court order was needed and he failed to bring dc back - which provided me with the reassurance I needed. (I wanted to avoid a court order)

I initially balanced being overly accommodating with a firm no if I felt his behaviour or intention wasn’t in the benefit of dc. It would be then no contact until he’d calmed down and showed me and dc respect.
Being accommodating took the fuel away but being firm and fair sent a message that his priority should be dc and not controlling me. Eventually I took some of that control back, set days/times but framing it in a way that it’s a benefit to him and dc and ensuring there was still flexibility on his ‘none’ days. Tbh once he realised I wouldn’t bite and he wasn’t causing an inconvenience in my life he moved on pretty quick, I don’t think he ever did ask for dc on his none days after that but dc knew both homes were free for them to come and go without conflict.

My only real advice is it’s sounds like it’s still new and emotions are high just start building a good support system, then set your boundaries - be consistent and fair with your yes and no’s, if you say no and he lures you into an argument or to respond, hel do it again next time, it’s tiring draining and unfair but it does get better and easier.

Just adding to this superb advice
Check out BIFF for co-parenting (perfect for grey rock) it helps with deescalation with high conflict people.

It means Brief informative Firm Friendly (or friendly firm) it's a Comms tool for written that can really help reduce justification, apologies, excuses. And just cut to the facts with less emotion (I.e. less conflict) they still might be unreasonable but especially with a parenting app court admissable, you will seem child centred, fair, and reasonable. It also takes the emotion out for you following a process and less triggering.

Only ever respond to the action in the email don't get in to the accusations or drama, don't take the bait however much they try and create conflict, back and forth etc

For example.

(Baby name) Is not available on Monday, due to pre-existing plans. (This is brief summary of the issue)
Can you suggest a couple of other options for this week instead? (This is informative about the action needed)
Next time please give me as much notice as possible as I want to make her available to you, but it's not fair to rearrange plans at the last minute. (This is your boundary firm)
Let's get something booked in this week, if the time works we could make this a weekly thing at the same day/time if it's easier to plan for? (This is friendly/helpful).

If there's accusations of controlling/ keeping my child/demanding, the next biff would be.

XX is not available on Monday.

What other times would work his week work for you to see (him/her)?

(Date and time that works), date and time that works)

Let me know if either of these work as XX is free.

Don't engage with the noise just keep it factual. Don't be there on a Monday.
Sometimes they have to learn the boundaries and know you're not going to buckle under the pressure.

Just adding to the brilliant advice above. I've been there. Can I suggest that you mute rather than block. You may need the aggressive messages as evidence later. Archive the chat on WhatsApp and look up how to set a rule to divert emails to bypass your inbox.

Also see a solicitor before you do mediation. I did mediation first and was bullied into things that caused me problems in court, ten years later, it is still a problem.

Find out what is reasonable and offer that on a regular schedule.

I was harrassed too. Something I did in my court order was stipulate that if my ex requested to change a date, I was responsible for offering two alternative dates and if my ex was unable to make them work, contact was cancelled. This was after a NINE month argument over one date. My solicitor had to threaten to call the police because he was still threatening to turn up with 30 minutes to go. Good luck.

Don’t race straight to court they might order 5050. Continue to email him, I advise starting a new email address just for him so every thing is in one place and use the ‘subject’ line to label things like ‘health’ and ‘child arrangements’ or ‘schedule.’

remmeber you call the shots here and you can say no. Keep saying ‘I support your relationship and having time together it’s best if we are all in a good routine though so that we can make nice plans for our time with him’ then keep offering time.
mediators (and court if you get there) will agree with this principle.

Court will order 50/50, but court will order that now or later if he takes her to court. And she would endure years of this possibly to end up in the exact same situation.

But becuase baby is young it won't be 50/50 straight away, it will build up to that.

As someone who went from no contact to heavy contact for their child, that's harder than the child being used to it from day one.

If you truly do not want to be apart from your baby for that much time then you can probably hold it off for a while and if he never takes you to court then yes, you can call the shorts, but at the same time he can simply not return the child and you could do absolutely nothing about it, aside from wait for a court date yourself, by which time the court will say 'well the child lives with dad now and I will order that to continue so as to not disrupt the child's routine'

A court order means that you have a chance of getting help to get the child back with help from police if you go and get the child as per the order.

A court order and court-ordered communication via the app means you can work on your mental wellbeing without being harassed.

I am only here today because I had that breathing space, and that included time to heel while my precious child was with someone I could not trust. It almost ended me, but I used that time productively and instead of ending me it elevated me beyond what I even thought possible.

I was terrified of the court order, but in the end it has been what saved my life.