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.

The court ruled I didn't need to know his address and I wasn't to be told where he went on holiday, even though I have to tell him.

Contact was a shitshow and in the end I was ordered to drive the children to him, as they kept refusing to leave my house.

I had to go back to court to ask for his address 🤯

Pop an air tag in dds bag

Actually ImAvingOops my ex took our daughter when she was 5 months old. When I tried to find out where daughter was my ex said I wanted that information to find out her whereabouts, which wasn't true. I had all the usual domestic abuse allegations so I was hamstrung as trying to find out where daughter was was being used against me, so I learnt quickly to give up trying as it was being used to paint me as an abuser. She was a nightmare, I was glad she was gone, I wanted to know where daughter was but I didn't have that information for around a year and even then that was because her Solicitor forgot to redact her address.

All the more reason for OP to use an AirTag. She doesn't want to end up in that position. I'm sorry it was like that for you though.

NopE the onus is on him to prove he can take. He’s hardly ever collected by the sounds of it so in the absence of certainty, the school would always stick with the parent they have seen day i and day out since the child started at school

not the op to prove he cant

otherwise anyone could rock up and say… hand her over and you prove I can’t!

“All the usual domestic abuse allegations”

ok so that is your stance on domestic abuse allegations

Someone taking my daughter hundreds of miles away
that someone refusing to give me an address
that someone having had very limited contact with my child and let her down multiple times in the past

i wouldn’t just be using a tracker. I would be following in my car and sleeping outside and that was ONLY if I was forced to. Otherwise I would collect from school early, have a meeting with the head, and basically make it as bloody difficult for him as possible

how many times you reckon he will risk travelling hundreds of miles on a wasted journey

@Skeptadad is correct.

if you believe that dad is a danger and cannot safely care for her, then don’t let her go with him, contact social services immediately to inform them and get the ball rolling with legal advice.

if not, then he is their parent and legally does not have to inform you of where he’s going and what he’s doing. Much the same as if you let her go on a sleepover, or went on holiday, or stayed anywhere you wouldn’t need to provide him with the address.

if he has PR he has exactly the same rights as mum to collect her from schools, take her away for a weekend etc.

you either think he can parent safely or you don’t.

if you are concerned about contact best to get it legally drawn up so you all know what’s acceptable.

as to an airtag- if he (or his gf) has an iphone it will alert him to the fact an airtag is travelling near him. It’s a safety feature designed to alert people to being tracked unknowingly.

Personally I think parental rights should hinge on regularly seeing your child and paying child support. Funny how so many nrp dads usually like to cherry pick the bits of PR that give them rights but not the bits which confer responsibility!

The law is an ass when it comes to telling a resident parent that they don't have a right to know the address of the other parent. It's not a law I would respect wrt my child.

It’s whether you see the issue as a pure safety one

or whether as a parent you look at the issue a great deal more broadly than this

if he is so bothered he can go to court

otherwise not a bloody chance my daughter would be travelling hundreds of miles without knowing where with a man she hardly knows to the home of someone she doesn’t know

When exH and I were setting up a visitation/ custody agreement it was written into the agreement that we each had to notify the other if new addresses within one week of moving. PO boxes were not cou Ted as addresses.

It is possible and imo also desirable to know where the children are.

I forced exH to move when I discovered there was a registered sex offended living in one apartment building he moved into.

@mathanxiety
out of interest, how did you “force him” ?

You don't have a right to know his address.

He doesn't have a right to have contact on demand.

I wouldn't send her with a phone or tracker because it will make you look bad. Could he be angry if he discovers a phone or AirTag in your DD's bag? An AirTag warns someone with an iPhone that they are being tracked btw. You might know what kind of phone your ex uses but his gf or home could have Apple devices.

I'd be telling him that you wanted to go to court. It won't stop him cancelling as a CAO spells out when you have to make dd available not when he must collect dd but he can't demand contact randomly.

How did your dd know that she was going to her grandfather's? If she has a phone that she texts him with, it might be an idea to check her texts.

It's shit but it's just a power move. I wouldn't let him take it to court as you will just end up with court ordered contact which you CANNOT skip or miss, it becomes another way to control you. Try and act like it doesn't bother you. I know easier said than done. But realistically what difference does it make to know the address or not?

IME the best thing to do with contact fuckery is just to be really grey rock about it. Boring. Unbothered about anything. If he asks for anything outside of your current agreement, agree to something reasonable. Do not ask him for any favours or ever suggest that contact is beneficial to you, and do not rely on contact as childcare. Try really hard not to comment on anything that you hear or suspect is happening at contact (unless it is illegal or abusive). I know this feels completely counter to parental instinct but if he thinks something winds you up, he is just going to do it more. Ultimately also, he is her father and he has the right to make decisions that you may not agree with, as long as they are not causing serious harm. That means that he might do things which are higher risk or less healthy than you're happy with, but that is his choice as her equal parent. It's one of the crappy parts of separated parenting. Decisions you make still have an impact on her, so try not to feel stressed about this. Control what you can and accept what you can't.

This approach tends to mean that it settles down to a boring, predictable arrangement (which is perfect for the child/ren) or the dad gets completely bored and moves on and starts seeing them less and less until it's once in a blue moon or never. This is less ideal, but it's still better than tension and arguing or manipulative last minute cancellations, which are particularly crap for children.

I would be stalling for time until you can get this into court and get something formal in place. Whilst it's said he doesn't have to disclose his address, why would any responsible parent see holding this information back as being responsible, if nothing else it would be a common courtesy on his behalf!
Also, his flitting in and out of your daughter's life when the notion takes him shows he has no understanding of the damage this can do to a child.
As for parental rights, they are not in place for a parent to use as a trump card to manipulate. They are there so a parent can exercise their responsibilities,like taking an interest in schooling and attend parent and teachers, taking child to doctor/dentist and all the other endless appointments and duties we have as active parents.
I really believe that parents who don't participate in these responsibilities should have parental rights stripped off them!

Pretty much

@srj11
I would be wondering if he would return her tbh

Just to reiterate. You do not want a court order. A court order will not stop him flitting in and out of her life on a whim. The court order will not add anything to what he has to do. You are already doing/willing to do everything a court order would make you do with the difference being that it's now voluntary so you could refuse. The difference will be that you will potentially be forced to do half the driving (which he is currently offering to do all of by the sounds of it), the schedule will be set by the court rather than something you are happy with and you will be forced to make her available whether he turns up or not. At the moment if he's being flaky you can just not mention contact to her until the last minute. You can also vary the pick up point so that she doesn't twig if last minute you have to take her to do something else instead. You can be reasonably flexible. I know a mum recently who made an agreement with her ex to change their (court ordered) contact because her other child was at a party. She had the option to drop him off before the party or after the party (late) so the ex originally agreed to early, and then conveniently "oh I'm not there, you'll need to drop him off at the normal time." She said no and took both children to the party. Her ex called the police, and the police came to the party and told her she had to take her child to his father immediately and warned her it would look bad in court/she could lose visitation rights if she did not stick to the courrt ordered arrangement - this was not in the UK, and I don't think the police would do that without a residency order, but the warning about it looking bad in court/affecting future decisions does apply.

Abusive men use the court system to continue to control their ex partners. I would do a lot to avoid a court order unless it was absolutely necessary. I know it feels totally wrong to let her go with no sense of where she is, but what practical difference would having the exact address make anyway?

The difference I suppose is that if he doesn't return her, she knows where to start looking!

That doesn't practically matter. Without a residence order you can't force him to hand her over anyway. And this is quite unlikely, especially without form for it.

No he doesn't have to.
Dh didn't with Dsc's dm.
And theirs a court order.

On the face of it if he has joint parental responsibility for the child eg name on birth certificate he has equal rights to see her. You don’t say how old she is. Can she have a phone and contact you while she is away with him ? If there are no safety issues or any previous history of neglect or abuse there doesn’t appear to be a reason to prevent access. Does he have ties such as family in the area, does your daughter see grandparents etc? I can imagine how concerned you are but are there grounds for you concern other than the usual feeling that we as mums or dads want to know where are children are. It’s a reasonable request. I assume he has her to stay for the weekend before and she has been fine ? Why do you think he is refusing to give you the details? If you feel there is a good reason to withhold access and it’s in the best interests of your child then let him take you to court. If there isn’t a good reason and she is happy to go I would let her but say that you would like contact with her to know she has arrived safely as it’s a long journey so you don’t spend the whole weekend worrying.

ZOMBIE

@Poochycatmum this thread is close on two years old!!