My ex is a crap dad (long)

[OhEmGee24]

This is long just dont want to drip feed sorry. My ex and I split when dd was 2 weeks old. I had a traumatic birth resulting in 3a tear which required two rounds of surgery. Thankfully I had lots of support from friends and family to help with baby as ex never offered. She is now nearly 2.4. Since she was 4 months I have received £280 per month maintenance much to his disapproval. He is however a totally shit dad..Of all the weekends in the year he chose last Christmas and her second birthday to go away. He has never had her over night as he won't buy a cot/toddler bed and says I should. He sees her 8.30-5.30 on a Sunday although three weeks have gone by since that happened as he's "too busy", this is frequent. When he does, i have to provide her bag of changing stuff and food as I cant trust that he'd feed her properly. He has never ever text or called randomly in the week to ask how she's doing. His family live in Cape Town (he's south African) and have never made the trip to meet dd, nor send her a card at all. Ex is 27 but my god he needs to grow up.

By total contrast, she has an incredible father figure in my boyfriend of 8 months. He's 32 and the difference in maturity is blinding. Dd calls him Daddy James (name change)which was her own decision. They play together wonderfully and his parents and sister also treat dd like a member of their family and are always calling to ask how she is. Dp and I are moving in together soon so he will become an even more permanent figure in her life.

What can I do? Does ex legally HAVE to see her even when there is zero effort. Dd clearly doesn't like going on the few occasions she does. I hate seeing her crying :( Now she's able to voice her opinion I feel I should take her decision as gospel but can I really do that?

Sorry for long post. Em x

And since he is her dad what you have to do as a priority is reduce her anxiety about going out with him. That could probably be best achieved by supporting her to build a relationship with her dad, going to mediation to make an access arrangement that is better for her and discouraging her from viewing your boyfriend as a "father figure" which is very confusing for a child with a flaky crappy NRP.

DH has been in DS's life since he was 3, and has been his stepfather for the last 10 years. DS has ALWAYS called him by his first name. His Dad is his Dad, end of.

And 8 months is far too soon to move in, honestly. DH and I were together for 2 years before I moved in with him - I refused to do so until we were officially engaged and a date was set for the wedding. I'd never been married before, but felt at 41 with a child that it was undignified to be shacking up with someone I wanted the legal benefits and protection of marriage for my son's sake.

I'm not going to get into the "daddy" discussion, but I would just like to say you owe your daughter contact with her father. Because when she is older she will want to explore that side of her family...

I can understand your frustration over his parenting but be glad he's there for her at all and paying child support.

I may have missed it, but does his family in S.Africa even know about her? He may not even have told them he has a child in UK which would explain the lack of contact.

My son (21) visited his family in Africa last year (and found out he is part of a huge, loving family). I'm so glad I kept up the contact even tho I was a LP for most of his life.

I still don't understand how the OP would know if her ex's family had any contact or not with her daughter? Surely any contact would be done through her daughter's father (ie their son)?

I would not expect (and they don't) my ex-husband's family to contact my children through me - any contact they have is done via my ex. Surely that's normal?

Mydog- as a stand alone example, i dont think you not contacting your dc when they go on holiday with your ex means you are a bad parent (i speak to ds avery day he's away, as does xp on the (few) days he doesnt see him. But thats personal choice, it works for us) but if your dc permenantly lived away from you and you saw them for 9 hours a week (unless you were busy that day ) then youd probably bridge the gap by contacting them in between wouldnt you? Orinquiring about how they were doing?

I agree that op needs to conyinue to facilitate contact and to try and help dd feel more positively towards her dad (for her sake, not his) but i dont think his shitty attitude needs excusing.

Mydog- i think you are taking your own set-up and just assuming that its the right way. To answer your last question - no, its not 'normal' in my case for xp's family to only communicate with xp about ds. They call him here, they sends letters and cars here, they make arrangements with me as much as with xp to see ds. Thats 'normal' for us. Your normal is fine for you but theres not (thank goodness) only one way of doing things.

I moved in with my h after being together 7 months and we got married a year after we officially got together. If it is right it is right I don't think the risk is the moving in together necessarily which works on an individual timetable depending on each relationship, I think the risk is allowing the daughter to see him as a father at such a young age. My dcs always knew DH as my BF and gradually came to see him as a stepdad when we got married, sometimes they call him dadda for the benefit of the twins, they don't think of him as their daddy, they think of him as their stepdad and how they feel is he "looks after us because our dad has runaway" their feelings are quite fragile at the moment, currently they are angry and upset with their dad because "he doesn't speak to me or spend time with me and I am afraid to talk to him" because they are afraid to find out that he isn't interested in them and afraid that that is because they aren't good enough for him. but still these are things I feel they have to go through because they are the reality of life with their dad DH shows them how a dad should be and what they should be able to expect but he doesn't actually replace their dad and I feel a bit like they have the right to experience the reality of their family.

I tend to be a bit black and white on the topic of new partners being introduced early on, but its not black and white at all, is it?
im glad your dc are getting to experience having a father-type figure around Offred. And im sorry their actual father is such a selfish twat.

Foosa - point taken, but my way is my normal, and it may or may not be normal in the OPs set up.

All I'm trying to say is that there may be a perfectly logical explanation why the OP doesn't think that her ex's family have had contact.

but really unless the OP comes back then this is all just speculation.

Offred - your situation sounds very very difficult.

I think it is just the reality of life with a crappy disinterested xp. Things are bad at the moment and the small amount of contact he does have is disrupted because he is angry at me for going through csa for maintenance. We have struggled financially since the twins were born and xp is on a reasonable wage (£18k +) in a fairly stable job now so I asked him for £120 per month two years ago, he lied and avoided it until I said I would have to go through csa whom he has avoided and delayed since march and now they are going to give him one chance to make a payment before they garnish his wages for £350 per month in order to clear arrears and for his minimum maintenance payment. In the meantime I have two years overdraft interest to pay because of the delay. most of all I am he is allowing it to disrupt his tiny contact. He started with a similar attitude to the OP's x "I have to give up xyz to give bare minimum inadequate care to my children, you should be grateful". I don't think it will be bad in the end because I desperately want to avoid what happened to xp as a child with his absent father - his mum pushed his dad out and had a series of "daddy Alan" etc, his dad came back when he (the younger sibling) was 8 and took him to a family wedding where he offered him cocaine - xp took it because he wanted him to be pleased with him after so long absent.

Blimey I never posted for a debate about what my daughter calls my boyfriend. Tbh I don't really care what others think about that. I call him James to her and he calls himself James to her too. I posted to ask if it is legally vital for her twat father who doesn't actually want to see her anyway, has to. (Did I mention he doesn't know her birthday? And didn't come to hospital when I left nine texts/voicemails that she was an impatient with bronchitis and the hospital is a 5min walk from his house?) Especially when dd doesn't like going.

If you split up 2 weeks after she was born was he not there at the birth?

You are doing the wrong thing for your daughter if you sideline her father - if he does it by himself because he's a twat, then that's his own look out - but for you to do it and replace him with "Daddy James" is totally and utterly the wrong thing to do.

Whether it's legally vital or not, the right thing to do for your daughter is to enable a relationship with her father.

Yes, you are getting a debate in the full picture here rather than just the answer to the strict question about the law.

Legally you cannot refuse him access if he has parental responsibility he has joint rights to decide on medical treatment and schools as well as her having a right to have contact with him, which is how I suggest you think of it because that is the law.

He can use the law to assert her right to contact with her if you deny him contact. From what you have written you do not have a legal basis to cut him out and if he went to court you would lose some control over asserting what things your daughter did need protecting from because of this unreasonable behaviour. He would also be able to cite that you were allowing her to call your new partner daddy and failing to support her with having contact with him prior to you withdrawing contact altogether.

Morally you need to act in the best interests of your dd. What you describe I think is not that although I can really see why it is tempting. However you need to try and ensure she had contact with her father as much as is reasonable and this does not stop you from removing her from situations where she is at risk or changing an arrangement that is unproductive for her but it doesn't mean you can just stop him seeing his daughter or that you should allow him to stop seeing her either.

Her right to contact with him!