Can I fight a court order?

[Mama1026]

Hi all, I’ve been given a court order for my child to see the father every other weekend for 4 hours. We are an hour away and it’s a very long time for me to keep my other children occupied for that long. He lives in the same time but refused to go to the one in our town as it’s for 2 hours not 4.
is there anything I can do?????? I’m not stopping the relationship but this is very excessive for me as I work and have other children to think of where as he is not co promising - there is no chance of 3rd parties as he is not allowed near my home

It's very unusual for a court to decide that there has been abuse against the CHILDREN and still warrant visitation to the abuser. What could happen is that there are allegations of abuse that can't be proven, and one child doesn't want to see the person the allegations are against. The reasons for that can be complex and may lie more in alienation than in any truth in the allegations.

There is no way of knowing this off of an Internet thread, though.

Swim plus lunch - that’s about 4 hours. Every other weekend, sounds like a fun plan

My solicitor said it’s a court order and there’s nothing I can do unless we come to an agreement outside of court. He is an unreasonable man unfortunately. I will get on with it for now but I’m pregnant so driving an hour there, 4 idle hours and an hour drive home isn’t going to be ideal in the long run.

i Don’t know what a contact centre looks like on the inside but I can’t imagine it’s much more than a room with maybe a few toys. He isn’t going to keep up four hours at a time, surely, unless he can park the child in front of a tv or video? Will there be a note taker?

if you keep
up the four hours initially but can bring the courts proof that it is not a quality experience for your child, maybe you can later apply for it to be reduced? If he doesn’t himself start to drop hours as the reality sets in ..

Because he's an abusive dickhead. One child isn't allowed to see him because of his abusive behaviour. The fact that the father has to use a contact centre is a clear sign that he is/was a shit father. OP wants to use the contact centre in the town where they both live but he is insisting on the contact centre an hour away.

There's always someone on here supporting abusive dads. It's sickening.

He's insisting that it takes place where the court said it should, for the amount of time they said it should.

No, it isn't unusual.

Perpetrators will can apply for, and are routinely granted access, though sometimes supervised. People would not believe what goes on the the family court system.

Is this the closest contact center that allows for 4 hours?

Have you spoken with the father of your baby about helping with this task in some way? While not his responsibility, you aren’t absolved of your responsibility simply because of a pregnancy or a newborn so you are going to need help from somewhere.

Could you take the child to the 4 hour contact centre and the dad then takes the child to the centre near you to do drop off? Assuming it's not supervised visits but a case of yous not coming into contact with each other? So you'd both be doing an hour travel.

You can apply to have a court order changed due to circumstances.

The time to fight it was during the court proceedings. Surely you made all the arguments to the judge then? What has changed since the final hearing? If you made all these points and the judge awarded the contact anyway then you have no grounds to appeal.

Advising the OP to comply with a court order isn't supporting abusive dads.

What circumstances though? She would have raised all of this during proceedings and the judge awarded this contact anyway. Nothing has changed uh the past 2 months.

Unfortunately you cannot appeal this at the current time. The judge has had written into the order that its to be the closest contact centre that offers 4 hours contact. Unfortunately your most local centre doesnt offer 4 hour contact slots, is that correct? How long does the order say they expect you to be using a contact centre for? Usually its a stepped process where, providing he prove himself to be a 'good enough' parent, then contact would move away from the contact centre.
The best time to challenge this is before the final order is written up and sealed.
How old are the children? An hour isn't an unreasonable distance in the eyes of a court and your other children aren't their concern. Look carefully at what the order expects the future to look like and work around that. Its never easy to facilitate a court order but look at the long term and hopefully it will start to seem easier

Allowing unsupervised travel would somewhat defeat the point of the supervised contact - that's why OP or a third party have to facilitate the travel.

How long has this been happening? I'm pretty sure he'll soon get bored of 4 hours inside a contact centre - and so will the child. It's odd that theyve ordered this as its such a long time. Just let him do it for a while and don't let on that it bothers you for now. He'll probably ask for it to change before long.