Anyone experienced or legal have any advice re difficult ex?

[misreadings]

Hi there, hoping someone can help.

I am part way through a v acrimonious divorce. My ex claims to want the DC a lot yet is very cruel and controlling (eg withholding his contact for 6 weeks) if I don't do what he wants - ie offer the contact he wants.

I have recently gone away for a 4 night trip within the UK and have seen a barrage of abuse re the fact I didn't give him an exact address and phone number while we were away - this despite it being a Monday to Friday trip outside of his contact arrangements and despite me sitting down last Sunday with the children and showing him the website all together! I know he's being an arse but can somebody make me feel better???! Please help. So much of the divorce to go and am losing the will to live...

All I can suggest is that you no longer speak to him either on the phone or face to face. Restrict any contact with your ex to brief e-mails so that you can keep a careful (written) record of any abusive responses. Also suggest you put as much correspondence through your solicitor as possible rather than engaging with him yourself. He's an abusive bully which means that everything he does is designed to intimidate and wrong-foot you. He was setting you up to fail which is why showing him a website about your trip had no effect on the outcome. It's deliberate and typical.

So don't go to any special effort to communicate from now on. Don't rise to any bait. Don't feel responsible for facilitating contact with the DC. Keep any contact very brief, keep a full record of threats or abuse and make full use of your legal representative

Cogito - thank you. Sorry I've only just been able to get online and see your response. I am going to try and talk to my lawyer about it all next week although it's just another thing to add to the list of ridiculousness that is currently causing my legal bills to be sky high. I keep lowering my guard and 'letting him in' because the lure of being nice, particularly in front of the children, is very strong. But I get nothing but pain in return, just non stop aggression.

Your advice is very good, and helped me to see it all for what it is. The sense of attack is constant and it's hard to see the wood for the trees sometimes. :(

There's no obligation to be nice for the sake of the kids. Civil, yes. But not nice. He's not your partner any more, he's not even your friend, he's a bully....

You have to be child-focused in your dealings with him so you offer contact that is reasonable and he refuses: his problem.
If you want to tell him any details of what you are doing when the DCs are with you and he doesn't like it: his problem.
Work hard on being neutral, establishing and protecting your boundaries and he jumps up and down, makes threats, blows a fuse: it's not your problem.
One thing is to never make your arrangements dependent on him having the DCs and always have a plan B.
Keep the dealings via the lawyer factual as they won't be able to make him see sense or effect a personality change.
With luck, he is making his lawyer feel exasperated.
If it comes to court orders then all you have to do is show you are being responsible in allowing the DCs to have reasonable contact - their right, not his. And that you are prepared to negotiate in their interests.
Hard as it is - my ex was like yours - it will pass and you will come out the other side better, happier and more able to enjoy spending time with your DCs with a controlling black cloud.

Thanks, I have actually just put an application for a court order in as the past few months have been horrendous - and expensive - trying to sort out contact. He has been battling to have three weekends a month with them, all very complicated and different days/arrangements each weekend. I have been trying to negotiate around an EOW schedule, although fully recognise that that isn't really enough for the children. I have therefore said that if we don't have plans on our weekends (quite common) I would be happy for him to see them for part of that weekend - eg. take them out for the day on a Sunday. I just refuse to sign up to only seeing my children for one weekend a month. I have also encouraged as much midweek contact as possible, but he refuses to even phone them during the week and claims all other contact midweek is almost impossible unless I drop the children off at his house, with him having moved an hour away. Because of my refusal to give in re. weekend contact, he has done things like not turn up to collect them from nursery, refuse contact all together, tells me each time we try to negotiate that I am offering him less and less each time (completely ridiculous), we had a roundtable meeting with the lawyers - at vast expense - trying to sort it all out, and at one point he threw his pen across the table and stormed out of the room. Bullied my lawyer relentlessly. Constantly sends me very long, verbose, complex emails about how my application for maintenance is a joke, that my lawyer is a joke, that I am a liar and a thief, he has called the police on me several times before moving out, claiming he was the victim of "abuse". I got a non-molestation order but ended up giving joint undertakings at the return hearing because I was terrified he would drag it all out into a contested trial (he is that sort) and at the time I was unrepresented and had no money whatsoever, with him having cut off all access to money and me having been a SAHM. Since then he has taken the piss relentlessly about what a "joke" my non-mol was and how everyone including the judge was laughing at me. Thankfully I see him more and more for the vile bully he actually is, but we are nearing a point where I have to take further action somehow because once again in these recent emails he has threatened to call the police on me.

It has been a relentless, nightmare of a year!