Legal buffs

[nottonightjoesphine]

Does anyone know if inset days are included in school holidays? MIT child's are always tagged onto the end of her school holidays and my ex wants to include them as part of the holidays. This isn't always helpful though.

We have a standard contact order by the way....EOW weekend etc

I would have thought that the ones at the end of school holidays do count as holidays. It seems to me you need to look at it from the other end - what is term time? You will presumably have had details of term dates from the school showing that the beginning of term is, say, 10th September even though there were two inset days before that. If the beginning of term is 10th September, then the period up to that point must be school holidays.

Thanks for the reply. The thing is, even though our CO is only 18months old, it's pretty restrictive and I think we will have to take it back to court to ask the judge some things. For example half term holidays are out of the question for us as the order states that contact time runs from 10am one Saturday to 10am the next saturday. It's impossible to build a holiday around that unless he gives me permission, which as you've guessed, he often doesn't.

The reason I am querying inset days is because this christmas he has included one when calculating the division of time. What this means for me though is that the time im allocate includes an inset day and so doesn't leave enough time to allow us to go away for a full week.

Dow anyone know how this kind of thing would pan out at court? He made the application last time but it may well be me this time. I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that the point of a contact order isn't to restrict our movement so much.

I'm not a legal bod at all but with inset days here they don't seem to be part of holidays. For example, term dates may say start of term is 1st sept, 1st and 2nd sept are given as inset days and children return on 3rd sept. But term begins 1st sept. Hope that makes sense

Perhaps offer him more and compromise every other weekend is not very much contact at all to see a child. I bet you wouldn't like just every other weekend. If you offered more regularly then it might help you take on more work and secondly it might help the child to see the other parent more and thirdly it could make the dispute over inset days resolved.

Is it EOW and half the holidays or does he get every half term? It would be better to agree/clarify between the two of you - perhaps with the help of mediation - rather than go back to court. You say it is restrictive - does that mean your ex won't agree to swaps at all? FWIW, I think the end of the holidays is the day the DC's go back to school, so if I was calculating I would count that as a 'holiday' day for the purposes of contact.

Hi , no he's pretty inflexible, the issue of half terms is ridiculous- we have the half terms alternatively, but even if it's my turn to have our child for the half term, I still need his permission and cooperation to have a holiday. The reason for this is that the order states that the half term contact runs from one Saturday until the next, with the remaining days to be spent with the other parent. If we want to go away, it's impossible to build a holiday around these restrictions. Whether or not he allows me depends on his mood.

He's has half holidays, EOW weekend and one night in week.

Can't you just get a Saturday afternoon flight and come back Friday evening?

I can rarely get packages that work like that

Try Expedia - you can tailor everything, and if you book flights, transfer and accommodation all together it counts as a package holiday with the same ABTA protection.

You have my sympathies - have just been awarded our court contact and it sounds similar, although our half terms have been split half and half through the week - so Friday to Weds and then Weds to Monday. I'm already wondering whether my ex will be agreeable to letting me have a whole week on occasion so we can go away.

Having said that, it's not as though you want things to be much different. I agree with titchy, is it REALLY that hard to get something that works from a Saturday morning? You do have a whole week, eg. you could go away for a 5 or 6 day break..? Am I right in thinking that he would then have them Friday afternoon till Saturday morning and Saturday morning until Monday? In thinking through our situation, I realise that if I have them for a whole week in half term he won't get to have any extra 'quality time' with them for a whole half term, until the next holiday.

It's all so hard, you're probably like me in that you think you are entirely reasonable. But my ex has a hair trigger response to things being 'unfair' and can make arrangements next to impossible. Mediation sounds like a good idea but in my experience is a nightmare unless you are dealing with two reasonable people who are not bearing a grudge against each other.

Tried mediation, shouted flown at every opportunity and a useless mediator who stood back and let it happen. Conflict seems to be the order of the say with my ex, he won't work with me on anything, makes comments about my poor parenting and lifestyle combats toy, says child would be better off with him. He won't even let her go to a club that she's been attending for two years because it now falls on his day. It's tiring.

I know exactly how you feel. Mine is the same (when he wants to be). I have just had a weekend of wheedling him to agree to take them to their ballet class on Saturday morning, even though they've been going for 2 years.

Sorry for all the typos! He doesnt want to work with me. He asks for changes a lot but rarely allows me to do the same. So you think it would be possibleto ammed this order?

You'd have to apply for a variation, but you'd need to show that something significant has changed since they last gave their judgement. In the half-term scenario, for example, ordering alt weeks with a weekend for the other parent is fairly standard, so I'm not sure you'd get any joy on the basis you want a week's holiday and can't get a good deal! It already sounds like a pretty closely defined order, something that happens when there is a high level of conflict in order to reduce the amount of 'interpretation'. TBH I think it would be an expensive way to (possibly)gain a day here and there.

Balia it's not about getting a 'good deal'. It's about being able to have a holiday without living in fear of the schedule around it. He goes absolutely postal if there's any delay at whatsoever, I'm talking minutes. I live in a constant state of anxiety as he threatens court every week, screams and roars about 'breaching the order' if I beg him to let our child go on a school trip that overlaps into 'his time' by an hour. It just isn't possible for example to have a trip away with friends and their families for 7 days during my half term as he will not allow it. We have to leave every holiday early, I'm so sick of it.

Seriously, a good deal? No.

You asked, specifically, twice, for a likely court outcome. I'm sorry you don't like the answer but it is just my experience of family court - you can't change an 18-month old order unless there is a significant change to the circumstances that were judged on. If you want to go back to court - which seems odd as you say you are so anxious when threatened with it - then go ahead, you certainly don't have to pay attention to what strangers on the internet say about it. If you were asking originally how to cope with an ex who denies his child the opportunity to go on a school trip as it eats into his time by an hour even though you offer to make it up, I'm sure you would have had different responses. All anyone can do is answer the questions asked with the info in front of them. I'm sorry you are finding it stressful and I'm sure it isn't easy but there is lots of advice here about making the best of it, minimising conflict, trying to compromise - from people who are in this situation, coping with contact orders, difficult exes, split holidays. Surely that was the point of posting?

(I've never been away at a half term in 30 years of being a parent - always worked full time through every half term as many many women do, never lived off male earnings)

Never lived off male earnings. Right...

Indeed. I paid out to my children's father on the divorce and in that sense he lived off me. The law is gender neutral in terms of financial settlements - higher earners lose out.

I don't doubt you green, just confused as to what it means in terms of the question I asked

Hang on a moment balia. There is one rule in the family court which blasts all the others out of the water: that the court must do what is in the best interests of the children taking into account the welfare checklist in s1 of the Children Act.

It follows that if, two weeks after an order was made, the literal application of an order turned out to be contrary to the children's best interests, the court should (and generally would) be glad to have the opportunity to consider it again. It would be a peculiar sort of judge who actually meant to create the sort of headaches that nottonightjosephine is facing: I suspect s/he never foresaw that it would turn out that way.
From what you say nottonightjosephine, there are real practical problems that have arisen that are impacting on the children. The order should never have been drafted that way. It should have allowed for the suspension of ordinary weekend contact for the purposes of holidays and to resume the weekend following the return rather than the weekend of the return. For your esteemed ex to insist on having days immediately before or after your holiday bespeaks either a spectacular lack of confidence in his children's ability to hold him in mind or an equally spectacular desire to score points against you. Neither is an attractive position to attempt to sustain.
The answer to your first question is I cannot imagine many judges give a flying hoot about inset days: parents are not expected to be as footling as your ex. It will do him no favours that he has been. If pressed I would say they are not part of holidays but I would be astonished to be asked and my first question in response would be "who is asking and what do they hope to do with the answer?"
As to the second question - how it would pan out - is I doubt you will get very far on inset days: the court might as well toss a coin to decide what they count as. But I am concerned that the court may have made an order which, given the particular character of your ex is giving rise to real difficulties for you to arrange holidays and skool trips for the children. That needs to change and the obvious change is that ordinary weekend contact is simply suspended during any holiday period in which the children are with you and resumes on the next weekend thereafter.
I haven't got a form C100 in front of me so cannot remember whether you need to have offered him mediation this time round or whether the old order is close enough in time for you to be exempt. If you are I suggest you apply for a variation and get on with it. I should avoid lawyers: you are best placed to describe the difficulties that have arisen.
HP

Thanks Huppo. As much as I like MN, it sometimes males feel like I'm living in a parallel universe. Some posters speak with such authority that I've often left the boards feeling worse than when I came. I don't want people to tell me what I want to hear, but making comments about the fact that I holiday in half terms isn't at all relevant, or implying I'm just trying to get cheaper holidays at the expense of my child's relationship with the father.

The point is....I know several people with court orders and they dong have to have to live their lives like this. They don't have to leave holidays early, join holidays late...or just not go at all because their ex will kick off. An idea solution for everyone would be, as Huppo pointed out, to continue to have a half term each, but to suspend normal contact schedules until they're over. This would mean either latent wouldn't see child fir whole half term, but Insisting on visitation either side of the 7 day holidays is so restrictive.

If OP takes it back to court and gets a variation of the order that makes her life easier then I should be delighted. However, I stand by my opinion. IME, orders for half-term holidays are always set up like this - a week with one parent (which OP has, Sat to Sat) and a weekend with the other. Sometimes it is Fri-Fri, but I haven't heard of a half-term holiday contact that gives one parent the entire half term apart from situations where the NRP doesn't have term-time contact due to distance.

Ordinary contact is already suspended in this instance; the order provides for a week for one, with the remaining days for the other.

However, I apologise that my comment about 'good deals' has upset you. It was based on your post about not being able to get 'packages'. What I would suggest if you have a holiday in mind for a particular half-term, is not to apply to amend the order (which I genuinely do think may backfire) but to apply for a Specific Issue Order for that holiday. If you have, in writing, a refusal from your ex to allow you a few extra hours so DD can have a holiday when you have offered to make up the time/a reciprocal arrangement, then I think you would have a much better chance of getting the order. You would then be in a strong position with regard to future holidays as your ex would know that the courts would support you.

In response to your original post it's more a case of poorly-worded orders that whether inset days are part of holidays.

It's not unusual for a hostile RP to say I am sticking to the letter of the order and he/she is not having a minute longer' and to argue the toss of what the definition of, say, a weekend if (i.e. extremes being collection from school on a Friday until drop off on a Monday morning' compared to `Pick up from the RP at Saturday Lunch time and Return Sunday Lunch time to settle them before school the next day'...I've seen both).

Truth be told this sort of argument only makes things worse. A tightly-drafted order means everyone is clear.

It is seriously worth you considering a compromise here. Half of inset days? Inset day with whoever the child with is that weekend?

You really don't want to get into the habit of fighting over the odd day. I deal mainly with NRPs and while a single day may seem petty and paltry to the RP it can mean a big increase for the NRP.

If you do end up in court though - go for a well-drafted order though. Otherwise this sort of thing will come up over and over again.