My ex will not return my son

[Sunrisesmile]

My ex and I have a son, we both have parental responsibility and my ex has him every weekend, a couple of weeks ago I dropped my son off at his dad's on Friday evening as usual and went away on holiday without him agreeing to have our son for me to go away, I texted him the following day to let him know I was on holiday and would not be returning to the following week now he will not return my son, where do I stand

Hi,
I feel your pain. I have to deal with an unreasonable ex and I just want to state that women are not always innocent despite on MN being able to do no wrong!
We are sick of the lies, false accusations whenever she doesn't get her own way, parental alienation, mental and psychological effects on the children, the children no feel as though they're having to take sides and demonstrate allegiance to their mother, the list is endless.......
My advice is to keep a very detailed log of everything she has done that's unacceptable and that is not in the best interest of your son. This is primarily what any court will be interested in, not how it inconveniences you.
They are likely to award custody based on what is working and in place already as long as there are no safeguarding issues to be explored. The more of a stable, loving home that you can denonstrate you can offer you son, the more likely custody will be awarded in your favour. If it were me and if you genuinely believe your son would have more stability in your care full time, I would keep that in place and apply straight away for a child arrangement order. You will need to demonstrate that you have been to mediation and tried to reach an amicable arrangement with the mother. A mediation solicitor can override this if necessary if you feel mediation is not a viable option.
I have been there and worn the T-shirt. I wish I had been more proactive at the start rather than be the flexible one to just try and keep the peace. Court took 18mths, cafcass involved etc because she was such a vile, evil liar with no interest in the children other than to use them as a weapon and cause maximum disruption to their lives out of spite. Luckily the courts eventually saw through her motivations and handed her arse back to her on a plate.....
Good luck, but stand your ground if you feel that your ex isn't acting in the best interest of your son. Do remember though that your son has the right to a relationship with both parents even if she is unreliable and puts her social life first. Witholding contact for any reason other than a genuine safeguarding issue isnt fair on him and will be looked on dimly in the courts and will be seen as you just trying to teach her a lesson.

How old is your son, and what does he want?

You are confusing childcare with residency.

As stands so is the mother…..

It’s fine to do a reverse as some MNers do give answers based on the sex of each person.

However, I am a bit confused about who did what.

If you co-parent 50:50 then both people need to follow the rules.

If one wants the son for a longer time, like a holiday, then that’s fine but it should be agreed with the other person first.

Your only option is to ultimately take it to court and get set days.
Perhaps you could text your ex and say that you both need to work out a contact arrangement and if not you’ll have to go to court.

Threads like this make me thankful that my ex has never wanted to be a parent (obviously not good for my child though).
Some people would rather be petty and get one over on their ex, rather than put the child first.

and that’s fair enough.

but she doesn’t work. So if she wants a “more equal” split she will lose CM. If she’s claiming benefits then it’s unlikely she’s independently wealthy so that will be a significant cut in her income.

usually you can’t have it both ways. You either need to get a job so you can financially contribute so the other parent can have the child more, or you take on the bulk of the childcare so the other parent can work and support the child by paying CM.

she doesn’t work and she wants the other parent to do more parenting.

Dh’s ex did this when they first split. Pissed off for a month with her OM. Although she did ask first. Meant dh had to take the 6 weeks school holidays off, no income as self employed. So then she was pissed off when he couldn’t pay her CM that month. Can’t have both.

Everyone was for him when they thought it was a woman writing it.
If anything it would appear that he has proved how biased this site can be. Bash the deadbeat dad but, how dare a man trying to point out that the deadbeat runs both ways.

Do you know what a reverse is?

And you need to RTFT.

To be honest, most people seem pretty scathing of her even after finding out it was a reverse (has anyone defended her?) so clearly MN is capable of understanding that women can be terrible parents too, even if we are mostly women and therefore, apparently, incapable of giving a reasonable response (begging the question of why anyone who thinks this would want our opinions anyway). Enough people on here have horrible mothers of their own and enough female posters are accused of bad parenting.

If you truly believe that all fathers will be bashed no matter what and all mothers will be defended no matter what, then why post? You'll be getting an unfair response either way. Why should the unfairly positive response suddenly become valid because a man lied about himself to get it?

This is a reverse.

Most people are irritated by the reverse and also agree the ex is unreasonable.

Both can be true.

I detest reverses because:

They’re disingenuous and are always written in an inflammatory manner.

The thread gets derailed because inevitably a load of posters aren’t aware and answer based on the OP.

They’re cowardly because they can’t deal with reactions to their potentially shitty behaviour.

This is exactly what I mean.

This is why reverses get people’s backs up @Sunrisesmile

Ok.

so, when did you separate.

is it really the case you only have your child every weekend?

no holidays? No mid week contact?

The arrangement, however long it may have been running, is poor as a start point.

you become Disney weekend dad, mum is having NO quality time.

so I suspect, she has needed a holiday, and I would guess, has been met with resistance.

unless there are significant safeguarding concerns, there is no reason to keep a child from another parent.

whilst yes, the previous arrangement has broken down, perhaps this is a good time to look at a a joint arrangement. Split weeks, week about in holidays.

whilst a court won’t look positively on someone going away without notice, we don’t know her side here. Has she asked repeatedly for you to take leave?

what are your holiday arrangements?

they also won’t look fondly on someone blocking contact with the resident parent over a holiday dispute

I'm not surprised, you essentially dumped your child with its father while you buggered of on holiday for a week without telling him you were going away. It didn't occur to you that it would be common decency to inform your child's father that the child would be staying with him the whole week?
He deserved notice and not for you to abandon the child on his doorstep

The thing with a reverse is that you're claiming that this is what the other person would say if we asked them. And given that reverses are usually incredibly obvious, it's clear that the other person pretty much never would say what the OP thinks they would.

People do not do things for no reason. They may be shit or selfish reasons, but they are reasons. Reverses very rarely give the reason, the thought process, behind the other person's actions. They usually just leave a big gap where the reasoning would be, as this one has, because it's not that person speaking, it's the person they've pissed off. Nobody is ever impartial when they do this. If you were impartial, you wouldn't be on here asking about it.

If you're just honest about who you are and what your perspective is, we can see where the inevitable gaps are, give it the right context and ask the right questions to try to come to a conclusion. We can have an honest thought process. We can't do this when the OP is lying to us about whose perspective it is.

If you think we are too stupid or prejudiced to give you a fair hearing, you're not going to turn us into King Solomon by giving us a false perspective. If you think we are too lenient towards a certain type of person then why would you give any more value to what we say when we think you're that person? It's still prejudiced.

Either be honest, ask us what we think and do what you want with the answers, or just don't ask us.

Team ex (the father) all the way. This is ridiculous and sounds like unfit parenting from your child's mother. Good luck with the court order. Your child deserves stability

what were you thinking of, just going on holiday without a proper plan in place for childcare. You sound very self centred, your poor little lad - time you put him first…

Weird. I went into edit and deleted everything and all I can see is Post deleted. Still, it doesn't actually matter, thanks.

Frankly the pair of you need to grow up, stop playing silly games, and work together for the good of your poor child.

He has a stable arrangement. He looks after the child 2 days a week. 100 days in a year. The mother does the rest. Disappearing for a week is weird but appears to be in reaction to this dad refusing to have the child more than 2 days a week! And the title of the bloody thread is about ‘not giving him back’

If she doesn’t work though, presumably he is working to provide CM for the child.

someone needs to contribute financially, if she isn’t working, then he needs his job. So she has the child in the week when he works, he has them at weekends.

she wants him to have the child more, she needs to work so he can work less.

he states as well this is not the first time she’s done it. If he’s working full time it will be more stable for him and the child if he has childcare in place. As hoc childcare is nearly impossible to find, so having the child dumped on him will risk his employment.

You're not

But his behaviour isn’t shitty, so I don’t know why you’d get irritated

Every story has two sides.
Trust me, the yarns that have been spun in court, to SS, to schools, anyone that would listen in my experience were all to fit the narrative that she wanted people to believe.....
Problem with MN is we will only ever get one side of the story so we really can only base our advice on that. The OP can choose to withhold key snippets of information that would completely change our viewpoint to favour his ex. He won't then get a balanced view in the replies but that's a waste of time and energy on his behalf

Children need reliability and stability and she isn't providing that.

You are doing the right thing to keep him where he's safe and knows what to expect and I hope you get full residency, with reasonable contact with his Mum, in court.