50/50 shared parenting

[dadseven]

Hiya, looking for some advise please.

My wife and I split up June 2016 and have been sharing 50/50 since day 1 (it's working out amazing, our daughter is mostly unaffected, I can touch on this later, and we're still friendly to each other)

But here's the problem, it's primary school deciding time. I would like our daughter to cointinue going to school in the town where I live (she has been attending nursery then pre-school there and lived in Hitchin since the day she was born, my wife moved elsewhere when we split)

My wife wants our daughter to go to a new school where none of her friends are going, in her home town of Cockernhoe. My wife works in Stevenage which is next to Hitchin and I work in Barnet. She already drops off and picks up our daughter from Hitchin pre-school and has done for the last year and a half and it works really well, she basically has to come through Hitchin to get to her work.

I'm trying to do what's best for our daugher by keeping things stable, she expresses a desire to go to school with her friends and has been telling me for well over a year that she would rather live with me than her mum, she's even told her mum the same.

Her mum says to me there 'may' be a possibility of her not working in Stevenage anymore but we can't make a decision for our daughters schooling based on a 'possibility'

Also I should add that on the rules for application for schools page of the Gov.uk website it states that when a child is in a shared residency the parent with the chiild benefit or child tax credits should apply as that is considered her man address (I have the child benefit in my name)

We had previously agreed that we'd put our daughters 1st choice as a school in Hitchin but then my wife wouldn't let me apply under my address and insisted us putting her Cockernhoe address, which would very obviously effect the decision of where our daughter goes to school. So now we are having to go to a mediator to sort this out :( I'm trying to do what's best for everyone, it feels to me as my wife is trying to do what's best for her.

Any advise?

Thanks :)

Speak to a solicitor she has no right to do this ....

@Justoneme, I may end up doing that. I'm trying to avoid that though as I feel like the money it'd cost us could be better spent our our daughter

Well it appears the money would be well spent if your daughter attends a school with peers she knows.... I find it hard to understand why your ex isn't agreeing to the original plan of where your daughter should attend school?

I agree it isn't nice to do the solicitor route however if your ex isn't being reasonable and past plans are no longer on the agenda you are left with no choice. Both parents have the same right as each other; if you and your ex can agree mutually than court is the only route.

@Justoneme, I honestly don't know. Our daughter has always seen me as her main carer and now that we're apart it must be hard for my wife to hear that she wants to live with me, so perhaps she's trying to change that by taking her, I really don't know!

She's threatened to go for full custody a few months back but that was resolved. I've never once been late to pick our daughter up or missed a single day with her, my wife has asked me to look after our daughter on her time on a few occasions so she could go to a festival and away with her new BF, this past halloween she asked me if she could take our daughter to a halloween party on my time and left her at pre school because she stayed late at work, turned up at my door with our daughter at nearly 7pm and was just like 'sorry, she's been at pre-school this whole time as I stayed late' didn't even let me know so I could take her myself or bring her home! I'm getting sick of the amount of stress she's causing me, I constantly feel as though I'm having to fight for my daughter when I'm clearly so much more committed to her!

Your posts says it all ... speak to a solicitor.

@Justoneme, thanks, I'm going to

Good luck