Grandparents taking me to court for access

[Smith100]

Hi

I was wondering if anyone had deal with a similar situation to one I am currently facing.

My mother has been abusive for years. Screaming, shouting and crying. Not just at me, also her in laws, colleagues, my brother and our wives for such reasons as, not saying bye, making pizzas for dinner, children visiting a toy shop.

This came to a head a couple of years ago when my sister in law had terminal cancer. My mother had one of her usual outbursts. When things calmed I said that my brother and his terminally ill wife were not to be told of events. At this point she made three separate threats against my brother. My father witnessed this and did nothing. He has never done anything about her behaviour.

At this point I felt that she was capable of anything so said she needed to be supervised around my children so that me or my wife could remove them in the event of one of her outbursts.

Both her and my father are vehemently opposed to me or my wife being there. I initially agreed that my father could provide the supervision but it quickly became apparent he was not up to the task so it reverted back to me and my wife.

Since then my parents have refused at least 7 different opportunities to see the children. Three offers were to have the children in their own home.

It has been almost two years and they are now taking me to court. I have heard from my brother that her behaviour has deteriorated further in that time.

Thank you

They can't take you to court. They have no parental responsibility or rights.

It sounds like they will have a hard time proving the sort of relationship that would result in access to me.

Do you have legal cover with your house insurance?

Hi, I don’t think I have legal cover with my insurance (currently just have contents) so will fund legal costs myself.

I have received a court order so I think they can take me to court. I have a lawyer who has said there is an error on their application. They have said they don’t need permission to petition the court, but they actually do.

We are currently at the stage where we are defending the court action by giving reasons why the process would be detrimental to the children. Our lawyer has advised we have a good chance of doing this, but it isn’t certain.

For background they live over 200 miles away. They have put on their application they saw the children about every 8 weeks, which we don’t dispute but this would have reduced anyway due to changing family circumstances (we are no longer able to visit as often as we used to)

Wouldn't even waste the money on a solicitor TBH. They have no rights. They're not going to be granted access based on the level of previous contact you describe.

Which country are you in?

My understanding is that grandparents do not automatically have rights over the children. The only time it might be possible is if they have been primary carers due to parents being awol, prison or because social services have preferred them due to substance abuse.

Anybody has a right to take you to court but a lot of things get immediately thrown out too. I think you need a secondary solicitor's advice to confirm if your solicitor is correct.

EDIT - Apologies, confusing visitation rights with custody. Get a second opinion anyway, one off consultation.

To gain access they would have to have had great amounts of unsupervised contact. Sleepovers or cohabiting arrangement (with you living at their home also for example) . That the now lack of relationship is damaging to the dc..

My first thought is they can't, they don't have Parental Responsibility, so don't have any "rights" to anything including contact. Is there anything like Child Arrangements Order, Special Guardianship? And even so if they are abusive I doubt the court are going to look favourably on this. Definitely seek a second opinion on legal advice though...

They would have to apply to the court first for permission to apply for access. The very fact you have offered time with the dc and they have refused will go against them. Have you kept all correspondence op? Start putting together a timeline. Don't be too concerned but the more prepared you are the quicker this can be put to bed..

Hi yes, that is the stage they are at, applying to the court.

Yes I have all correspondence.

Prior contact was as they have described (about 8 times a year) although the majority of that was us travelling the 200 miles to them. My and my wife were usually present but there were odd occasions where we may have gone out for dinner etc and they had the children. They also had the children for about 5 days in the summer whilst my wife worked.

Legal advice is if they can show a beneficial relationship with the children then the court might want that to continue. They may argue it is best to not have me and my wife there due to animosity but we have been around them numerous times over the past two years, with no incidents.

They won't be granted access, don't worry about it.

I can't see how the court could force you to give your children over for access visits and not be there, especially if it's 200 miles away

Family courts are used to self representation so if you are able to prepare some stuff in advance, timelines, evidence that you've offered visits and this was not taken up etc. Then I would suggest keeping it lower cost and self representing. You can also show willing by offering some access, should you be prepared to, on the terms that you want. So for example, they are welcome to come and visit on the third Sunday of each month for a few hours or whatever. Basically you are being reasonable and they are being v unreasonable.

It sounds as if they are at the stage to apply for permission to make the application

The court has to give them consent to make the application as they dont automatically have that right

As others have said, dont waste money or time or energy on it, you can simply write to the court, setting out what you have set out here, you oppose permission being given for them to make application and take it from there

Hi OP, I suspect they will be given permission to apply, because there has been a pre existing relationship with the children. This would simply open the door to a proper court consideration of whether the children should spend time with them, whether that should be supervised (and by whom) and whether the court should make an actual Child Arrangements Order as opposed to leaving it to you to make plans in the way you see fit.

If they end up with any kind of CAO at all, I would think it might be for visits 3 times a year or something like that, and from what you said it seems likely that you would be supervising those visits.

Thanks Fern. That would put the grandparents in a worse position than they are currently as we haven’t imposed any limitation on the frequency of their visits.

I would hope the issue of whether they see the children could be breezed over as that is not in dispute.

Lawyer has advised that we have a fair chance of opposing it at the permission stage given the disruption it could cause the children. My daughter was diagnosed with a stressed related disorder attributed to covid lockdown.

It seems that my parents do not understand what a court process will entail. My mother is not emotionally robust enough to withstand cross examination. A mediator previously refused to take on the case as they did not feel there was an emotional readiness on the part of my mother. She is not emotionally stable at the best of times and I’ve heard from family members that her emotional state is the worst it has ever been.

@Smith100 had this with my abusive mother. Whilst it was stressful I self represented and was honest with the judge who after hearing both sides basically laughed her out of crt and she only lived 10 minutes away from us.
Be brutally honest with the judge about how unstable your mother is and what effect her behaviour has on you and your family and effusive the fact that you are trying to protect your dc from her damaging behaviour. If she is as unstable as you say then there's a good chance of her losing it in crt when all of her failings are pointed out to the judge which will only help your case

MIL attempted a similar a few years ago. She's a manipulative narcissist. We lived 500 mile away from her and the first we heard was a court summons through the post on the Friday, demanding our attendance in court the following Wednesday. I phoned Citizens Advice, completely shell-shocked and was told "this is a court summons, you need legal representation."
I sought legal advice. We needed an English lawyer as luckily for us, the 500 mile distance meant that whilst we lived in the UK, we were in a different country. So, when it came to that Wednesday in court we were represented by an English lawyer who explained it wasn't possible for Willy to drive that distance with two small children, taking time out of school incurring hotel costs etc etc. It was ruled that the English courts had no jurisdiction over us and the case was dismissed. We haven't heard from MIL ever since.
Like your DM though OP, MIL made mistakes on her application. She lied on the part where it asked if she had attempted contact prior to applying for a summons, she hadn't.
Sympathies for you, it's a horrible feeling and chances are the relationship will be irreparably damaged now.
How do you speak to somebody who took you to court for access to your own children?

How old are your children and do they want to see their grandparents?

I also don't think you need to waste money on a solicitor. Simply focus on the best interests of the child, the fact that you are open to contact provided it is supervised.

Have their been any incidences of shitty behaviour in front of the kids? Any times you have had to intervene?

Kids are ten and seven. They would want to see the grandparents. I'm not sure what their answer would be if we told them we wanted to be there, whether they would still want to go alone.

I can think of two occasions where my mother has acted up in front of them. Once she cried about how a bath was run and second time she ran out of a restaurant crying. Luckily the kids were too young to realise what was going on.

She sounds too mentally unstable to have them unsupervised.. Maybe play on that angle... Your dc are too young to decide who they want to see.

Start gathering evidence. Screen shots, record phone calls and ring camera for the front door.

Hi OP - has anything progressed with this? My FIL has also stated he is going to take us to court for legal access to our LB due to denied access even though we have never denied him access however he wants unsupervised access (LB is 18 months old..). Sounds like a similar situation!

hope it’s all going okay!

Hi, for anyone who is interested this progressed and we had to attend court on four separate occasion. Eventually it went to a final hearing where the grandparents got nothing and the court was brutal in their assessment of their behaviour.

Happy to share details of my experience for anyone who needs it.

@Smith100 thank you for the update. So pleased it went in your favour

How did they manage to drag you to court 4 times?

And do you think you could have done it without legal assistance?

Very pleased to hear that