Can my ex withold his new address and still take our child for the weekend?

[srj11]

I have been separated for about 5 years and we recently did an online divorce. We have never had a formal agreement in place and my ex has seen his daughter on and off. He often cancels seeing her. He doesn't pay any maintenance (he says he is unemployed).
He has recently moved 100s of miles away to live with his new girlfriend. I don't have an issue with this but I messaged him to say we needed to discuss how this will impact his ability to see our daughter. I got no response. After 4 weeks of no contact he announced at the beginning of this week that he will pick her up from school for the weekend. I asked for his new address and, bizarrely, he is refusing to give it to me. I have told him that he cannot take her unless I knew where she will be staying.
He seems to think he can take me to court over this. can he?

Any advice would be great.

You don’t need to know, however go to court and formalise contact first then he will need to provide address ( though you still wont be given it).

This is a really excellent point! Also I don't know where my ex husband lives and the CMS still take the money directly from him. Good luck xx

I'd tell him to take you to court then and would not allow unsupervised contact. I would also tell school not to release her, or to at least give you a heads up if he turns up.

Id also put a mobile phone hidden in her school bag with Life360 activated on it so you can see where she is. If he collects her it will track her location (you would need it on your phone too and it has to be connected to the internet so you'd have to get unlimited 4g). There's no way I would risk any situation where a flaky bastard could take my child and I had no idea where she was!

CMS absolutely- I don’t know why but I thought they’d be dicks, but they were lovely.

I told school he was a bellend and the head told me that legally they have to give the child to dad, this “ain’t their first rodeo” and they’ve many ways to stall handover until I arrived…

i let my ex take me to court when he moved 100s of miles away with no address… it didn’t get that far in the end, but he tried to get it in writing that we’d all put our lives on hold for his last-minute-notice to have them. I pushed back hard - his days were his days and if they didn’t work for him, too bad - he had to wait for his next weekend.

funnily enough, he never did miss one when the onus was 100% on him to sort his shit out rather than me being “nice and accommodating “.

I wouldn't let it happen OP. He can't just dip in and out like that, demanding stuff out of the blue. Its confusing for your daughter and unsettling. No he can't have her this weekend at short notice and when he hasn't been maintaining a regular relationship with his daughter. Let him take you to court if it means something to him. I did that with my ds father and 11yrs later he's never bothered. Never paid cms, never sent so much as a birthday card. Don't let this man dictate things and hurt your daughter with his flakiness and unreliability.

I suspect he’s sold himself to the new girlfriend as a nice guy with a lovely child and a difficult ex. And now he has to produce a lovely child to Disney dad, or a combative text from his ex or he’ll look like a shit dad/bloke.

calm and measured OP. If you’ve got texts/emails cancelling contact get it all down on paper. Eg. We agreed every other weekend. Ex has actually had child 10 weekends in the last year. He cancelled at short notice (under 24 hours) 13 times, just didn’t show up 5 times and gave reasonable notice (over a week?) 5 times. Or whatever. That way if he does go to court for more access you can show he didn’t use the access you agreed.

That's awful. Was there any consequences to him doing that? Isn't that kidnapping?

How old is your daughter op?

This 100%

I see two issues here:

1. Schedule for contact


2. Communication

Resolve the first one through mediation. Resolve the second one by reading cafcass handbook for the separated parents programme.

However I would add that if you had a CAO in place, he would not be in breach if he refused to tell you where he would be spending the night with the child whether it’s at a girlfriends house or a holiday destination in England.

Thanks everyone.
I think it's all about controll for him. Since we split (my decision) he hates the fact I no longer just cave and do what he wants. It's amazing to me that I don't have alegal right to know where she is spending the night, especially under these circumstances. Since I asked him where she will be going he has sent me long, angry messages accusing me of sabotaging his relationship with our daughter. I would never do that to HER.
I feel like he has been trying to get me to say he cannot see her for a while. I know that he has told DD on at least 3 occassions that when he doesn't see her it is because I won't let him. I have never done that. This situation is a gift for him as now he can claim it is true.
Anyway, new development this morning. I explained to DD (she is now 8) that daddy wasn't going to pick her up. She told me they were supposed to be going to her Grandad's for the weekend. This is obviously fine with me as I know where that is and I know her Grandad etc. I was annoyed that my ex is expecting DD to pass messages about weekend arrangements - and she is obviously not on it cos it's the first I had heard.
Anyway, I messaged him this morning to say that this was fine and if he confirms that is the plan he is more than welcome to take her there.
I feel like this was just a huge manipulation so he can now tell his family that I stopped her visiting them.
I'm happy to go to court over all of the arrangements. I have said we need to go to mediation and he has said he will find someone. I'm scpetical he will do this.
I will try and claim maintenance.
This whole situation has made me feel so sad and stressed. I would never obstruct DD seeing her dad especially because he is so quick to cancel but I am also very keen to set firm boundaries with him for all our wellbeing.

Thanks again everyone - sorry this is long.

How does your child feel about being taken hundreds of miles away from home to stay with somebody they presumably don’t know that well?

Technically he doesn’t have to tell you his address, but under the circumstances you’ve outlined I would refuse, and I’d fetch the child early so he can’t take them. Given he’s not seen much of his child over the last five years and doesn’t pay maintenance I’d tell him to crack on and take you to court.

you drop the school an email to say only YOU are able to collect as RP with full parental rights

Which would be wrong as the DF and on the birth certificate he also has full parental rights, whether people like it or not.

The phone hidden in a pencil case in her school bag is a brilliant idea, definitely do that OP if you are able to.

I would tell him that you need to make a proper written contact agreement, not sure what the legal requirements are in the UK but whatever is as official as possible without needing to go to court. And set up regular calling times (video call/face time) that she will be available for him to call her (but don't tell her that he's going to call beforehand in case he doesn't and she gets disappointed) and write down every time he skips calling. Is there anywhere nearby he could take her for day visits? If so then also offer that regularly and write down every time he doesn't bother. Basically show you are trying your best to facilitate contact and documenting all the times he doesn't bother to show up/call. This will help if he does take you to court.

So your dd has contact with her father that you ate not privy to? Ie over a phone?

if so, I would shut that down private communication immediately. Any messages your daughter gets from him, she shows you.

presumably you have full access to your daughters phone at any and all time anyway

But unless he can prove otherwise ie he has the birth certificate

then he doesn’t have a leg to stand on in the immediate term

Yeah send your child with a tracking device.

I think people have actually got into trouble with the police for this it can be seen as coercive and controlling behaviour/monitoring. Although lets be honest it's only ever likely to be taken in such a manner if the dad does it.

I do find it fascinating that what counts as controlling for one gender doesnt seem to count for the other.

Schools would want proof that they can't go with him from the OP and rightly so.

Rather than. Phone, if you have an iPhone you could drop an Apple air tag in her bag. It's much smaller and you can buy them on Amazon. They will ping their location whenever they are near any iPhone. So if he has one even better!!

What's coercive and controlling is to take a child and not tell her mother where she is, as some kind of power play!

There's nothing illegal about Life360. It only works when both parties have agreed to use it and have it activated on their phones. A mother of a small child doesn't usually need to use it because they know where their child is anyway. Which is as it should be!
She can consent on behalf of her child. Although it wouldn't be necessary if the father wasn't being such a dick!

Both parents should know where the other parent is living if that parent has contact with the child (barring abuse cases obviously)

Yeah the key thing is when both parents consent not when one person knows a child/parent is being tracked and one parent/child has no idea there whereabouts is being monitored.

I wouldn't dream of sending our daughter away with a tracking device. The fact some people think this is normal totally blows my mind. Also, I would be getting a knock at the from the police if my ex found out and some people on forums like this would be advising my ex to go to the police if she found out.

i think the RP who is doing the vast majority of the parenting, has more right to a say in what happens regarding that child, than a NRP who has made no consistent attempt to frequently see their daughter and who pays no child support. Being a parent involves more than sperm donation!

Any parent who takes a child and refuses to disclose where they live, is entitled to the same level of consideration that they are showing to the RP.
The mother would be tracking her child, not her ex husband. I think she has every moral right to do this under these specific circumstances.

I am a father of a small child my ex is the mother of a small child. Neither of us know where the small child is when she is with the other 50% of the time. That's beyond my control. I do not send her with a wire. If I thought there were going to be be issue with the small child being with her mum it would be a court issue not an illegal surveillance issue.

If OP thinks, and really thinks this childs dad is a danger she should withhold the child and explain this to court. Although what counts as a "good enough parent" would likely be a surprise to many and OP will need to think about whether this course of action is truly justified.

This forum has been eye opening in relation to the double standards it has been fascinating to watch and I consider myself fairly objective.

If he is not a danger then OP will send child and not attach surveillance equipment because why would she need to? If he is a danger then that is a separate matter.

I don't think sending a child with a wire without informing the other parent is morally correct I disagree with you there ImAvingOops.

@Skeptadad presumably you know where your ex wife lives? No one is suggesting that the mother tracks the child while they are just out and about on normal contact days. I'm suggesting it as a means of discovering where the ex lives because I think this mother has a right to know that information.

It's all very well to say that if she did consider him a danger then sort that out in court, but as we have seen, a father named on the birth certificate has PR and could just take the child without the mother being able to do anything legally to stop it. Court dates aren't magically available the minute you need one! And the law doesn't always act in the child's best interests and does often allow access to people who really aren't fit to have it. The dad here does sound unfit to me because he considers it reasonable to not disclose his address to the resident parent.

Obviously, you do you and hopefully you and your child's mother have an amicable enough relationship where you wouldn't withhold this basic information from each other, but if I was in the OPs shoes I'd definitely track my small child to find out where her father lived and was taking her.