Hi
I really need some advice on what is best to do/request as my partner is representing himself were not to sure.
There is alot of history to my partner tryin to get access to his children, all of which I'll not bother going in to except the bits you'll need to know :)
His ex accused him of assaulting her, found not guilty but given a restraining order. At the family court she also accused my partner of being a heavy drug user and having a dependency on alcohol so she wanted hair strand testing done before contact could take place.
Their children are young 2&3 and throughout all of their short lives his ex has stopped and started allowing him to see them depending on what mood she was in, cancelling last min etc. They split very early in her 2nd pregnancy and she is still very bitter that he left her with 2 young children, despite telling her time and time again he wants to be involved in the kids life's and pays for them (he also didn't leave her for me, we started seeing each other few months later) She lied to the courts in her witness statement quite bad lies to try to make my ex out to be this vile nasty person so we did a response with evidence showing it all to be lies. She also has a history of violence getting arrested for fighting etc, quite recently it happened she was fighting her sister got arrested and social services considered putting the children on the at risk register.
At the first hearing the judge wasn't willing to not give my partner any contact so to begin with it was every other week for 2 hours supervised contact via a 3rd party (due to restraining order) until a place was available at contact centre and tests were to be done also, returning to court early nov.
The 3rd party was his ex's sister the children's aunt (the one she was fighting with as they had made up by time of court) my partner agreed to her being 3rd party purely because he just wanted to start seeing his kiddies.
4 weeks after court and 2 supervised sessions his ex and her sister had fallen out and the ex wouldn't hand the children over to the 3rd party for my partner to have contact despite the 3rd party being available and willing to do it (we have texts) it states in the court order that his ex is to find a suitable replacement 3rd party should the original one be unavailable, she didn't do that either.
The ex also didn't turn up to her pre visit at the supported contact centre with the children, didn't bother to notify them that she wouldnt be attending just didn't show. Until she goes to the pre visit my partner cannot start his contact with the children there.
My partner was already liaising with her solicitor regarding the supervised sessions and her not handing the kids over to third party and for a week and half her solicitor couldn't give us a response as she couldnt get her client (the ex) on the telephone.
Due to his ex not handing the children over twice to 3rd party and not attending the contact centre or responding to her solicitor for well over a week we wrote to the courts to request an urgent hearing, we noted that the test results were all back and all totally negative (showing her lies) and that my partner wanted to request unsupervised contact away from contact centre and so the hearing has been brought forward from November till end of September.
We also have a hearing prior to the one for contact to look to get his restraining order discharged.
We originally were expecting supervised contact to take place then at the contact centre until next hearing in November, so we could then look to request contact moves on from contact centre to unsupervised etc for longer period of times.
When we found out hearing had been brought forward based on his ex not complying we planned to request the same as we had planned for November to have unsupervised straight away instead of hoping his ex would eventually turn up to the contact centre for the pre visit.
It turns out the contact centre have allowed her another chance to attend a pre visit (last year she messed the contact centre around pulling out 2 days before contact was due to start, this had been arranged via solicitors) and she actually turned up, we believe this is because she would have been notified about the earlier hearing in September.
What were unsure about now is what do we request now in September as contact at contact centre "should"(assuming she turns up with the children) be underway, and were a little concerned that the courts may be annoyed at my partner for bringing the hearing forward now that contact "should" be taking place.
We would like to still move away from the contact centre and request for longer period of time. His children are so happy when they are with him that 2 hours isn't enough especially now that there is no real reason it should be at contact centre, his children know him are comfortable with him, all tests are negative so he isn't a threat to his children like she tried to imply and should the restraining order not be discharged then we have a few suggestions for 3rd party's to hand over the kiddies.
Do we therefore continue as we planned despite her turning up or would you recommend we do something different??
Any advice would be really helpful, sorry it's long but were really unsure what's best.
Thank you