H went, what can I do about his family?

[BattyBadgerBadger]

H's family always caused us problems. His mother's extremely volatile and has acted aggresively towards me in front of our children in the past. H and I agreed to prevent them seeing the children, eventually. They haven't had contact in about a year.

As part of our access agreement I requested that this non-contact continues indefinitely, due to his family's aggressive, volatile and unacceptable behaviour in our home and in front of our children. H signed his agreement to this.

I have no doubt though that he will come under immense pressure from them to retract this agreement over the coming months.

What is the legal position on this? How likely are his family to gain access through court? He has aprox 25 hours access per week, with which he seems relatively happy, so it's not that I am being unreasonable as far as he's concerned, it's just that I feel his family pose a real threat, to me and more importantly, to the childrens wellbeing.

Very unlikely for extended family I would have thought, if not impossible, certainly given their behaviour in the past
Is your agreement with xH a legal witnessed one on record?
If so it is probably enforceable and possibly could jeopardise his access rights if he violated it?

No, I doubt our agreement is legally binding; we both signed it in each others presence but with no witness and not through solicitors.

OTOH, I suppose it would count as an admission of their past behaviour?

your in laws would need to go throught the courts to gain access rights.
they can do this but the magistrate would take into consideration the fact that they had behaved poorly infront of your children and that they have not been an active part in their lives for teh past year and so the children are not missing out on anything.

the role of teh court is to take teh childs best onterest into account. not what teh adults want.

i doubt they will get access.

They wouldn't get official access, but your xh might decide to leave the kids with them during his contact time.

If this happened, I'm not entirely sure what you could do about it.

I think H is entitled to do what he wants with the children within reason during his hours so you might not have much say in this. Unless the agreement could be made more official or there was some way of estabilshing legally that his family are a threat? It's a matter of keeping H on side for this one I think.

I don't know how amicable your separation is but perhaps don't dwell on this too much as H probably knows this is the very thing to wind you up.

It's unlikely they could gain their own individual access through the courts, given that they don't have a pre-existing close relationship with your children.