Ran out of ideas!

[g3orgia]

hey :)
So I'm looking for some help and advice on what I can do next.
In November my child dad threatened to not return her home after having her for a weekend. I rang a solicitor and spoke to her and she said the only thing I could do at that stage was to write a contract with him, which stated if she wasn't returned home again I would be able to stop contact completely,unfortunately I couldn't afford to get one written up by her so the one he signed wasn't legally binding.
He has recently done this again and I had to travel the 250 miles to get her back. I have now stopped contact between them for the time being but I know she needs to see and speak to him eventually.
When she goes to his shes rarely in bed before 11pm, she's 4!
She gets spoilt so comes home forgetting all manners and rules for our house. She comes back with attitude and shouting and screaming and even comes back saying disgusting things.
He always goes out leaving her with his mum or sisters and gets drunk or goes to parties which to him are clearly more important and she comes home crying that he's not spent time with her even though she's gone to see him.
I now don't know wether to go to another i solicitor and pay for this to all be sorted out properly which I can't really afford or wether to just leave it for him to sort out and give up trying to makes this right.
Any help in similar situations would be very appreciated thank you :)

I think unfortunately as long as he's not putting her in danger (leaving her with relatives wouldn't be in danger) there's not a lot you can do. The bedtimes and behaviour issue is VERY common and unfortunately just one of the many difficult things about shared parenting with an arsehole. You just have to be very clear with her that the rules at your house are X and perhaps build in a nice cool-down routine when she comes back where there are low expectations of her (she doesn't have to do lots of jobs, homework etc but can just veg) - obviously still don't tolerate rudeness etc but set yourselves up to win as it were.

I mean, you could withold contact and make him take you to court, but the court wouldn't be able to stop anything that he's doing right now (they would consider it a parenting difference) so you'd be in the same situation except that your contact is now court ordered so you can't stop it for any reason. At least at the moment if anything happened which really concerned you, you could stop contact and let it go to court.

I don't think that your solicitor was entirely correct, though. What you could look into is getting a residency order for your child which basically places you as her main carer legally, it doesn't change anything with contact arrangements, but it means that if he was to refuse to return her then you could get police involved to get her back. As the situation stands, he is her equal parent in law and it wouldn't matter whether she was distressed or what her normal routine was, as far as police are concerned he is also her parent and he has the right to keep her as long as he likes.

Unless it has changed it's not difficult to get a residency order but you do have to pay for it yourself.