Advice needed difficult situation with contact

[Doesntseemright]

A dear friend of mine was not allowed to see his dd yesterday. Her mother said it was because she is grounded for not getting homework completed. She is 9. This is not the first time she has done this. The agreement is that my friend sees his dd every other weekend. This agreement has never been formalised, he is frightened that if he tries to argue with her or get a formal agreement she. Will stop all contact. He is concerned about his dd, she has poor self esteem, always looks scruffy, struggles to make friends. She is a lovely bright girl, but her mother is very down on her.

If your friend went for formal contact he would end up with more not less.

It sounds like he's not going to be getting his contact now so might be worth going down the formal route if he's going to lose contact for a while either way.

How long have they been separated?

They separated about 7 years ago, on off prior to that.

The fear is she would do her best to obstruct his access more. If she failed to follow a formal agreement what would be the consequence? She seems hell bent on making life difficult.

Tell him to stop making excuses, seek legal advice and fight to see his daughter.

I have been, he is just so scared she'll do everything she can to stop him seeing her. She is quite unpleasant towards him. She's refusing to talk to him at the moment.

She'll do that anyway if she really wants to.

I think she likes the power of being able to call all the shots. If she thinks he's challenging her she blocks access. I think if he takes her to court, really steps up she might respect that, but she might not, the stakes are so high, feels like a gamble.

He needs to be really child centric he is fight for his daughter right and need to have a relationship with her father.
I would suspect that the mother is hoping he will scared into not doing anything.

Pretty sure that is what she is hoping for

Well tell him to prove her wrong then. Honestly, all of the sad faces in the world won't make a difference. You've told him that he needs to step up and fight to see his child. If he is a decent, non abusive father, the ball is very much in his court and he needs to take action to prove that he is serious about seeing his child.

I am in the same situation as your friend. My ex has always called the shots when it comes to my contact with my kids even though our divorce agreement said it would be 50/50. As a result everything he doesn't get his own way I get threatened with court or he messes me about with timings etc. if I don't play ball I fear he will try to keep them from me and work on turning them against me. It is an awful situation to be in. I'm constantly scared he will let me down again.

One morning he was supposed to drop them off at 10am but I got a text at 6:40am (woke me up) saying sorry he had events to take them to and it would be 3pm by the time he'd be dropping them to me. I was devastated. The thing is I'm not entitled to legal aid and if it goes to court to legalise residency/contact I have been told it will cost thousands which would break me. Even then I have heard of people getting contact orders and still getting messed about by their ex.

I agee with the other posts that he does need to formalise things. She can't stop contact there would be an enforcement notice attached to any court order so if she did stop contact he could take it back to court to be enforced. I agee that he just needs to take those next steps now.