I have a close friend who was in a similar situation to you. Their in-laws case was equally as hopeless as yours. Everyone they spoke to about it said they had no chance – just the same as you.
However the problem was that it took them about £20,000 and two years out their lives to get through the court process. At the end of this they finally got in front of a decisionmaker who said “ this is nonsense. I am if you want a relationship with the children, go and mend the bridges you have burned with the children’ parents “.
so yes, your in-laws main objective maybe to see the children unsupervised and without your consent. However, their secondary objective may be to abuse you through the legal process, as a punishment for not doing what they want.
The problem is that rich and plausible people can use the law to do this against people of modest means.
What happens in my friends Children’s case was that they were months of exchanges of letters between solicitors, which ran up the bills, lots of reports requested from various experts for which the children’s parents had to give access and take time off work to have meetings.
The In laws reported them to social services so there was an investigation. Social workers who are apparently too busy to investigate actual cases of abuse seemed to have plenty time for lots of visits , always in the day of course and so both parents had to use up their annual leave .
Social workers also demanded that the children were kept off school for these visits , otherwise they would attend the school to see them .
Then they requested reports from the GP, the school and the nursery.
During these SW visits, the parents had to pretend to be 100% happy with everything that was going on. As soon as The expressed even the slightest concern, this apparently was a HUGE red flags because the social workers had decided that anyone who doesn’t enjoy their visit is obviously hiding something and is probably abusive.
There were many prehearings in court at which either the case didn’t call or it did call but the other party's solicitors hadn’t turned up. Or the other party’s solicitor had turned up but didn’t have the necessary documents . So the case was postponed to another date a few months hence. This is why it dragged on for about two years .
So my advice is that you don’t instruct a solicitors right now, otherwise you lose control as the two lawyers just send endless emails to each other, run up bills and waste time.
I advise that you DO go to mediation. Don’t see this is a way of potentially giving the in-laws access to your children. See it as a means of delaying or possibly preventing legal action. Even if you can’t prevent it, you can use the process to show that you have been reasonable and corporative and also possibly to find out exactly what your in-laws want and what their main arguments are.
You dont have to go and sit in a room with them and discuss things. You can ask for shuffle mediation, where they are in one room you’re in another and the mediator goes between you. You can say this is for your husbands mental health.
remember it’s mediation and not therapy. Don’t pour out to the mediator how you’re feeling and how awful they have been. It’s understandable that you might want to do this but it’s not helpful . You have to speak all the time about the children and what is in their best interest.
Your bottom line needs to be that the relationship between yourselves and your in-laws has irretrievably broken down ( partly because of their behaviour over the years and now because of this legal threat ) and therefore it’s impossible to see how it’s in your children interest to have a relationship with the in-laws without you. Of course, when the children are adults and in a position to decide for themselves, you will support them in whatever they decide if they wish to have a relationship with the grandparents.
Maybe you want to offer some sort of non face to face contact, like the exchange of cards at birthdays and Christmas . Or perhaps a zoom call twice a year - this is a good one to offer if your kids are small as they will get bored after 5 mins. Id not offer to allow IL to send gifts as this has been abused in the past.
You may want to suggest they put money in a bank account which YOU hold in trust for the children as they will almost certainly refuse that. you want to offer things that you can agree to without too much stress, it doesn’t matter if they refuse .
your husband should tell the mediator about the abuse that he suffered as a child. I know that this may possibly be very distressing for him but he doesn’t really have an option now, I’m afraid. Not the details, but he needs to say how they were physically/ emotionally abusive and how they are still trying to control him as adult.
I think if you don’t mention this now, it might look less plausible if you literally mention it in court. But I know it’s not easy . You can ask the mediator to keep some things confidential.
you can explain that because of this history of abuse, you had tried to find some compromise with the in-laws to let them see the children under your supervision. You had thought that they might have changed and that you could keep your children safe, but sadly this is proved not to be the case and you realise that you made a mistake to even try this . You were only trying to give your children the opportunity to have some limited but positive relationship with their grandparents but you now realise that this can’t happen , which is very sad for your children. That’s is not about the Gp wishes , it’s about the children’s welfare.