I'm going through a very difficult divorce following a breakdown. I was found to be lacking in capacity by a psychiatrist. This means I am incapacitated in a specific context. For example, I have been diagnosed with cPTSD and would not be cross examined. In these circumstances, someone acting on my behalf called an official solicitor would take my place.
When it was suggested to me that I go for the assessment, my barrister said that he felt confident taking instruction from me 9 times out of 10 but knowing the hold that my ex husband had over me, he felt an assessment was needed in the event that I became disoriented or overwhelmed.
My solicitor said "nothing will change", "I will still take my instruction from you" and "we will not close ranks" when I expressed a reservation that I might be left out of decisions regarding my children if I was found not to have capacity.
The psychiatrist assessing me was very kind and stressed that he was keen to keep me out of the firing line given that my ex seemed to be gearing up for an extremely acrimonious divorce with full residency of the children.
I would happily walk through fire for my children but I can't deny that being the cross examined might well make me very unwell so I don't question the decision.
However my legal team have made some decisions without my input or giving me explanation and we are now in a position where my ex got everything he wanted. I'm driving 400 miles a week to see my children. I feel my legal representation was well intentioned but the other side was sharper and more aggressive. At the very least I would expect to be involved in discussions with the barrister over the issue of an appeal. When I asked for the official solicitor to say least call me to tell me why it had been decided against, she ignored the request.
Since this concerns the welfare of my children and I am not lacking in intellectual capacity, I wrote to my solicitor detailing the ways that I felt things could have been handled differently and making it clear that I expected to be involved in conversations around important decisions.
The official solicitor has now become quite bullying. When my solicitor asked me "Do you feel any responsibility for where we are now?" in a confrontational way, I began to answer as best I could without knowing the scope of the question. I had only managed to say a few words before the official solicitor interrupted aggressively, hectoring me to answer the question. She has done this before and I find it very difficult to deal with. When I first met her, she did not introduce herself to me but chatted over my head to the rest of the team. When I came into a Zoom call recently, I didn't even know if she or my solicitor were aware of my presence until I had asked if they could hear me because they ignored my greeting.
At one point, I was trying to explain why I was unable to do something because it would trigger my CPTSD. My solicitor interrupted mid sentence and talked to the official solicitor as if I wasn't there, expressing her frustration that I wasn't able to comply with a handover at a particular place. The official solicitor did not explain how cPTSD works but instead the women seemed to be continuing a critical conversation that had begun about me before I joined the call.
I would like to request a change in official solicitor. Do I have to make a complaint in order to do this and if so, what kind of transgression would be considered sufficient for a new official solicitor to be justified? I don't want to complain unnecessarily.