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Contact order now mediation ?

4 replies

ClaireMD · 03/02/2015 11:12

For just under a year and a half a contact order has been in place giving father contact once a week for 3-4 hours and every other saturday for around 6 hours. And contact can progress as arranged by us and can become overnight once he secures his own accomodation with an appropriate room for my son. These contacts were set out for specific times however my job position has changed so hours differ each week and my son has started morning nursery so time for contact needs to revolve around this. I always make sure he gets the right amount of time just the day and time differs. The father has resently not turned up for 4 weeks. He then text me to ask when contact is after these 4 weeks and told me its my fault he hasnt had contact as i should of phoned him and text him until i got a reply and now i have recieved a letter asking me to go to mediation for him to have fri- sun every other week including over night and to discuss handover times. He has never asked for increased hours each week, he doesn't even take the additional holiday contact. I think contact would need to be progressed gradually, is this unfair? Will mediation be able to change over night stays when court order says no? And is there any point to mediation when handover times cant change unless i give up work ? Which im sure no judge will force me to do !

OP posts:
ClaireMD · 03/02/2015 19:52

Any advice or views will be appreciated

OP posts:
RunAwayKey · 25/02/2015 11:23

Mediation can't change anything unless you agree, so it's worth going as even if nothing is agreed, it will postpone court (positive if there is a possibility of a not-ideal order being made) and may make him see sense and not bother applying to court if it's not possible to do the schedule he wants due to you being at work.

A court would never make you quit work, though they may still order the days with a way to work around it, eg him picking up from relatives/whoever is doing childcare while you are at work. Though this cannot be ordered if the relatives state they are unwilling to come into contact with him during the court process for reasons such as past threats, violence or verbal abuse from the father.

RunAwayKey · 25/02/2015 11:27

Also, if he has not arranged contact with you for a long period of time by the end of the court case then its unlikely to go straight from no contact into overnights anyway. Make sure you are still offering days, whether or not he turns up or demands different ones doesn't matter as long as it shows you haven't been blocking contact by offering some.

balia · 25/02/2015 19:08

Does he now have appropriate accommodation? If he does then it probably is a good idea to mediate to move contact forward - it's not ideal to have different times/days and as the DC get older it is nice to have a full weekend each. Seems like mediation is an excellent idea for you to thrash out a build up to overnights etc.

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