give in to bullying ex over contact?

[NicknameTaken]

I've asked a solicitor about this and I'm waiting for her to get back to me, but I thought I'd canvass some opinions.

DD is 4 and about to start school on Friday. I've been separated from ex since she was 18 months. We have a court order - I'm residential parent, ex has lots of access, including during the day Mon and Fri. He'll lose some of this time when DD starts school, although he'll still have her after school on Mon and Fri till 5.45pm plus every second weekend and every Sunday night.

Prior to school, I handed DD over to him at a certain spot on Friday morning at 8.30am. Now she needs to be at school. Ex is trying to insist that I hand her over at the same spot at 8am instead. This means she has an unnecessary trip every Friday morning, with the risk of being late for school, instead of going straight to school, which is across the road from my house. I've said that ex can walk her to school on Friday morning if he wants, but he reckons that's not good enough. Bear in mind, he'll be seeing her later the same day anyway.

Ex has a long history of very controlling behaviour. Since we split, he's make false allegations to police and social services about me, failed to return DD when due, and tried repeatedly to bring me to court. He's a nightmare. He is very involved with DD and they have a strong relationship, but she tells me privately that she is scared when he gets cross with her, and I think she modifies her behaviour a lot to try to minimize his anger.

So, do I give in to his demands, knowing that succumbing to bullying means he'll continue to use this tactic? Or do I refuse to give in, knowing that he'll go into a rage and create a huge amount of stress on DD's first day of school? He's threatening to involve the police, contact the school (great first impression, eh) and says that if she misses her first day of school, it will be because of me. WWYD?

Cest, he has suggested keeping her for Thursday nights. I don't really want it for the reasons above, although if the court grants it, I'll grit my teeth and go along with it.

I don't know if this counts for anything, but all his bad behaviour, false allegations, not returning DD - I'm frustrated that none of it seems to count for anything. I'm not trying to withhold contact as punishment, but if he learns that he can take me to court based on false allegations of me blocking contact (he's claimed this alongside his true observation that his contact is impacted by her going to school), and can succeed in getting more contact - he's just going to keep doing it again and again. He is self-representing as he can't get legal aid any more, so he has nothing to lose.

Sorry, I slipped into a whine there.

Well, it is also a little bit about how he treats you! Him bad mouthing you to her is really bad because it will cause her confusion and that's very unfair. He doesn't sound all that great as a parent or a role model and I'd be looking to keep contact to a minimum based on those two examples that you outline.

Maybe talk to her in a very general way although I know this is hard. Breezily say that Daddy shouldn't be saying that you are bad but you can't stop him doing this and it is not something she should be upset about as you're not upset. Aaaghh - tricky one. All you can do with a child of this age - and of course, never bad mouth him.

I have a 5 year old little boy and would never bad mouth his father to him - he would be confused, upset and I'd never do that to him. There is simply no need. He often says to me ' I love both you and dad and you and dad are like best friends aren't you? ' and I always confirm that we are indeed friends and we both love him too - even though our relationship can be decidedly tricky. My son doesn't need to know this though.

In all serious I would stop contact for bad mouthing like that.

Seriousness

If I were you, I would be filming all handovers. Tell him you're doing it so that there can be no arguments in court that they took place.

Now that DD is in school can you simply work out how many hours she is "free" after school weekends and then show him how equitable you are being?
it is utterly absurd to get a small child ready for school half and hour earlier and take her further away from school so that he can take her in. Anyone who has any experience of getting DCs ready and with the right stuff for school day in day out will know how absurd it is - am guessing judges/magistrates in family courts have at least a passing interest in children.
Is DD going to school with anyone else you know? Perhaps you could arrange the going in together, which might stop him from making a scene. A school would, one hopes, get someone causing trouble off the premises pretty quick especially when they have a crowd of anxious kids and parents on their first day.

ShIne, I do talk to her, and says that Daddy sometimes says bad things because he's angry, but she can love both her mummy and her daddy and it's not a competition. At one level, she does understand, but it's just such unnecessary confusion for a child that age.

Offred, I have asked my solicitor if it was possible to stop contact for the badmouthing and she said it wouldn't be the first recourse. The solicitor did write a letter to him expressing concern, so at least it is on record as a concern.

ThePig, I considered filming after some pretty aggressive handovers. The handovers are usually better now, but I'm more worried about what he says to DD when I'm not present.

It's a good idea to work out how time is shared. If he were to have her on Thursday nights, he'd be collecting her from school three days out of five, as well as having a longer weekend than I have.

As well as wanting to "win", I think he also has an eye on tax credits and child benefit. He's previously tried to get them transferred to himself on more than one occasion. From my point of view, it's not about the money, but the tax credits do help, considering I work 26 hrs a week and he has never contributed financially to me (though he does spend money directly on DD).

make sure you make it clear that he doesnt pay maintenance. his spending money on her when they are together is by the by

I just thought that it might stave off unpleasantness this week.

I really do feel for you - you're between a rock and a hard place :(

It's great that he wants more access - pity it's only to score points off you and not for genuine reasons. Tosser

Okay. I thought the court didn't like money being dragged into contact disputes. My concern honestly isn't based on whether he pays or not. But if it helps, I'll mention it.

Thanks for the sympathy, Pig! A lot of the time the contact is reasonably okay, but he averages about two major blow-ups a year.

I may give my ExH a hug when I see him tomorrow

Give him a squeeze from me!

TBH op I would pick out the things which are clearly likely to be taken into account by the court.

While any parent who badmouths their ex to their child is despicable, I suspect that this is a lot more common than we would like to think, I certainly know some resident parents who do just that, and afaik the nrp would have little recourse in the courts.

So pick the things which are likely to be considered e.g.:

The fact your ex has failed to return dd after access visits.

The fact he has on occasions grabbed your daughter from you in the street.

The fact he is making unrealistic demands wrt the Friday morning handover, which means a child just starting in reception would be expected to get up half an hour earlier in order to meet him at a different location, this being detrimental to her wellbeing and also her education as sleep is vital for such a young child just entering formal education...

Perhaps as a compromise over the Friday mornings, could you suggest every other Thursday night? That way you are essentially increasing the amount of access he has, but not making it an every week thing iyswim so it's still equal...

And also point out to him that while he will see her less when she is in school, so will you...

Yes, technically I'm "losing" three school days with her, and he's only losing two. (I work when she's at school. He does sometimes, and would put her in nursery anyway. He has a pretty patchy work record though).

Every other Thurs - worth considering. Thanks.

This isn't the first recourse is it? He has had a letter. He hasn't stopped. A parent who manipulates the contact in this way cannot be allowed to continue doing it.

Op I want to give you a massive hug your ex sounds exactly like mine and the comments about him point scoring over dd welfare were sad and familiar.

If you are going back to court draft a new contact proposal yourself with reasons for changes etc. get a second opinion from HV, solicitor, any other adult who is foolish with the situation. I have found dd HV really helpful with my issues.
In some ways this will be easier when your dd is at school as thru will get to know her and may be able to supprt you. Nursery is also helpful in supporting me - maybe you have one?

Agree re keeping a diary but is there a 3rd party who could supervise handovers for a while? Might stop him making allegations.

He sounds like a prize twat!

Thanks, crack - sorry you've had this too. No HV, but the nursery has been helpful.

Third party supervision - no, unfortunately, I've no family nearby and neither has he, and it's not really the kind of thing I can ask a friend to do on a regular basis. I'll see if I can work out a schedule that would have one of us dropping her off at school and the other collecting, but it might not be possible.

You're right, Offred, but it's hard to prove. He just turns the allegation back on me and says I'm badmouthing him.

No word back from the solicitor yet, so will do a bit of chasing. It's been really helpful to get people's views, so thanks all.

Do you not think it is more important to assert yourself over your dd's welfare than it is to ask what you are allowed to do?

I know it is hard, believe me, but of course he will say he isn't bad mouthing you and harming his child. That is an indicator that he knows what he is doing but doesn't care about the consequences for dd, only him.

Surely your only priority should be making sure she is safe and happy with him. In the end apart from anything else bad mouthing you will only make dd uncomfortable and sad with seeing him. It could seriously undermine her relationship with him.

FWIW you can hardly ever prove anything in a family law dispute.

He's already bad mouthing you to your DD, he's already made false allegations about you and he's already going to take you to court, what exactly do you have to lose by standing up to him?

I'd risk the rage, document it for your future court date. How do you communicate with this pathetic little wanker your ex? Verbal or email?

Yes, thanks for stiffening my nerve. Got a letter from him reiterating that he expects the handover, cc'd to the court and CAFCASS. I'm hoping that he'll keep bombarding them with garbled accusations about me and reveal what a nightmare he is to deal with.

He's also try to co-opt DD into badgering me to do the handover where he wants. I desperately want to keep her out of the conflict and every time he thrusts her back into the middle of it.

A friend has her DD starting the same day, so she said I could walk over with them and her partner would go along too. I was half-considering trying to get a bloody police escort at one point.

I never, ever thought I'd be the person to let someone walk all over me, but he knows I'll cave in every time I'm concerned about DD's wellbeing. And how he has used that knowledge against me. I have to stop letting it be such a potent weapon.

Smells, I do try to keep contentious discussions to email. He submitted some of our email exchanges in his court papers, and re-reading them, even his selection of them, you can see me being business-like and attempting compromise, and him going off on lengthy rants about his every wish not being obeyed. He also goes on about the social workers report on me (resulting from him making malicious allegations) and how it defames him, when it is really studiedly neutral. Now that he's self-representing in court, I hope his character will be pretty obvious.

I totally understand. My x is very difficult to deal with and emotionally abusive to me and the dcs too. I think perhaps you could do with readjusting your thinking just a tad. As things stand you are PWC, quite frankly you are better equipped than him for this emotionally just now, if he wants to challenge that he can go to court.

Since he is NRP his contact visits are exclusively about him building a relationship with dd. if he isnt doing that or he is harming her while she is with him then that makes contact utterly pointless in terms of relationship building. In my situation I've decided there is a point to them still seeing xp because they need to learn about who he is in order to keep them safe from him and so he has extremely limited contact but he is happy with this as he's not bothered about seeing them or being involved in their lives.

I have always taken the approach that I was going to do what was best for the dcs and keep them safe and get the law etc to help me do that as much as possible rather than asking what I was allowed. Xp has done some crappy things to the dcs including not wanting access to the youngest, giving our ds beer when he stayed over (just a sip but still), ragging them around in random cars without car seats, smoking around them, not calling for medical attention/me when one had a respiratory illness because he didn't want to get caught out for smoking, not turning up, telling ds about fights he has had, having his hour contact in the pub with a beer and worst of all pretty much ignoring dd exists because she doesn't fawn on him and he doesn't want her. That is on top of telling lies about me and making himself look better than he is. He currently has about 1.5 hours a week.

It is nerve wracking going to court but my experience was ultimately good in that the case was thrown out as vexatious and he was told to apologise to me, no order was made, they trusted me to be reasonable even though I had stopped contact a few times when he was refusing to take dd and when he was refusing to comply with the order that had been set up around him and trying to bully me into just turning up when/if he felt like it and I had said either he complied with the order or he didn't come and we'd go back to court to set another he would stick to.