Court without mediation

[Skidamarinkadoo]

Just got some court papers through the post totally out of the blue

Had mentioned to ex a few months ago that I was thinking about looking into counselling/therapy for our DS as he’s been through a lot recently and his behaviour at home has been getting steadily worse. Ex is one of those people who doesn’t believe in mental health and thinks people should just ‘get over it’ (except when he decides he can claim poor mental health to get out of doing things). He’s now taking me to court to try to stop me from taking our son to therapy.

Obviously there’s a LOT of problems here, but my question is should he have been able to put the application through without trying trying mediation first? They’ve processed the application without a signature from a mediator but I didn’t think that was possible!

Backstory being that we went to court recently to sort contact because he wasn’t sticking to the previous court order so we have been to mediation in the past few months BUT not to discuss this issue or even any similar issues.

Anyone?

It is possible. If the court thinks he should attend a MIAM, they can direct that. He doesn’t have to actually attend mediation with you though, that’s voluntary. Refusing mental health care is unlikely to be considered in the best interests of the child.

@MissMalice ah I thought you couldn’t send off a court application without the signature of a mediator saying you’d been to an MIAM. I’m really shocked that he’s decided to take me to court over this! It seems ridiculous.

Do you know for sure he didn't get a signature though? He could have attended and got a signature without you having to have been invited to a MIAM. Do you have a copy of the application from him with that page unticked and unsigned?

He is not supposed to but it has also happened to me. Nothing was even said by the court let alone done about it.

@Doyoumind I have a copy of the court application and that bit is unsigned, he’s ticked a box claiming we’ve already been to mediation about the issue but obviously we haven’t

I see. It's worth mentioning when you make it to court. I'm sorry you're going through this when you thought it was sorted. I've been to court several times with my ex despite thinking it was over and done with the first time.

I'm sure they will side with you and it will end up backfiring on him. They might agree he has a say in choosing who your DS sees though I suppose.

Have spoken to cafcass today (about an unrelated issue, would be nice if he’d get one problem out of the way before starting another!) and they think court probably decided that we’d had mediation recently enough even though it wasn’t within the past four months and was totally irrelevant to this situation

I really can’t see what argument he has for refusing..

I would be very restrictive on anything I tell ex I. Future

Why are you so hung up on this issue?

He doesn’t have to attend mediation. He should have attended a MIAM. A MIAM is a MIAM. There isn’t different ones for contact and a different one for money and a different one for specific issues or whatever. He knows about mediation, he isn’t obliged to engage in it.

If you had gone to mediation isn’t it likely he would have stuck by his (unreasonable IMO) opinion that your child shouldn’t have therapy, you would have insisted it’s essential and so he would have applied to court anyway?

Don’t waste your energy on things that don’t matter.

MissMalice because the issue is that he’s lying and getting away with it. He’s also lied in the application about something cafcass had said.

Starlight456 I told him because I made the mistake of thinking he might help pay for it! Silly of me in hindsight

The courts - and you - have far bigger problems than trying to get your ex in trouble for a lie that would change nothing if it was corrected. Let it go.