Witholding contact

[Blondie1969]

i appreciate i am a dad on a forum called Mumsnet but advice to both mums and dads who post seem to always be rational.

I am at wits end with ex (separated 18 months) and i have looked after y children (aged 6 and 10) 50 per cent of the time in that period.

There is letter from ex's solicitor stating that ex is happy with contact arrangements dated mar 13.

In the divorce petition (from a month ago ex has stated in the box for children we have agreed contact time for children).

Yesterday she sent a text stating that the children were in non uniform today and she could drop off uniform (dirty) thurs night after she finishes rainbows (approx. 7pm) or Sunday at 11pm (clean)

Without thinking too much as I stated thurs evening was fine. Later approx. 2pm I realised I had xmas party with work so when I saw her at school (for youngests nativity at 2:30) I said Sun would be fine as I had xmas party,

She then said uniform would be dirty and I said not a problem I would wash and tumble dry. Suddenly after nativity she said I would have to be late for xmas party and collect from 4pm from her house or buy replacements

I gave her the following options
• She could drop off after rainbows and I would leave window open
• She could drop off as Sunday as she originally agreed
• She could leave in church and I would pick up over weekend (I am in church twice over weekend)
• I could meet her at school playground this morning when she drops kids off
• Or she could hand to mutual friend at school playground
• Or I would buy replacements

Apart from the rainbows one where she would have had to drive 5 mins in wrong direction to pick up. The others would not mean any deviation from her plans

As I did not give in to being late for xmas party (and said i would buy jumper and cardigan to prevent reoccurence) she has now texted saying that from Monday the children will be with her Monday to Friday and she will arrange for the children to have tea one or two evenings with me.

I have had a number of text exchanges but she is adamant that the children are with her during the week.

So what can I do. I do not want to be a dad/parent who is allowed access to his children when ex feels like it. What next?

I’ve not run off or set up home with anyone since we separated. I have seen my kids for half the week since July 2012 .

When ex does not get her way I am punished.

The last thing I want is an argument in front of children on Monday evening at school. But I do not believe its in my children’s best interests for the children not to continue seeing me and for them to see me being involved in the mundane things (baths, taking to school etc, collecting from school). The more she has them the more I believe she will margianlise me out of their lives. (i am also upset that on monday ex knew i was going to take daughter to see Hunger games).

Has anyone else had contact held over them like this. I have read in the past that even people with alcohol or drug issues get overnight contact with the children during the week.

any tips or advice appreciated.

You need a court order in place. Engage a family law solicitor. Sorry you're going through this.

So you had made plans to ensure that the childrens uniforms would be washed and ready for school on Monday. Then you decided that those arrangements didn't suit you so you expected them to be changed?

You are absolutely correct in that the shittiest fathers in the world do indeed get contact,

But I would maybe consider if you need to be a little more thoughtful when making/changing arrangements. If you have form for this it becomes a real irritation. Your Ex does not exist in order to serve your needs.

No excuses for denying contact on a whim. It sounds like she doesn't want to go to your Christmas party for whatever reason and in a strop. I can't speculate though.

If there is a court order and she is the resident parent unfortunately you'll have to go back to court. She will be in breach of court but only the court can action against that and hold her in contempt and enforce it.

If there is no order I suggest a solicitor ASAP, mediation is usually the first step. You should remind her that contact is in the best interests of the children NOT the parents and judges don't take kindly to either parent pissing about in any way on this matter.

You say you're at your wit's end - that suggests there are other incidents? That might affect my reply!
If it's just this, and things have previously worked OK, I would tell her that I didn't want to change arrangements but clearly something was up, and could we talk about it? This might be part of a wider frustration with you, that may or may not be reasonable - and may be resolvable.

What jumps out at me is that 18 months on, and 50/50 care, she is the one worrying about uniform, and you don't already have uniform. Why not?

My ex and I have lived apart since my daughter started school in September. I bought lots of uniform, gave him half. We have very ad hoc days. It's possible for one of us to end up with all the skirts but none of the dresses, depending on the days we have her and her choices on any given day.

Recently though, he said he was out of cardigans. I said "right-o, I'll stick 2 extra in her school bag".

But what I thought was "you useless fucking arsehole, all our marriage I do everything, you can't even keep track of uniform after I've given you loads, we are divorced, when will I get to pretend you don't fucking exist?"

You see, no matter how reasonable you are with options, I'd be pissed off you didn't have uniform covered.

Obviously I have a lot of anger towards ex and am bringing my own issues to this...

But I share to illustrate, that you may not be aware of frustrations she has. Perhaps she doesn't care about uniform. But is annoyed that it's always her dealing with school letters, maybe... or maybe she is unhappy about Hunger Games on a school night.

I'm not saying who is reasonable... just that you should try to get to bottom of her true motivation.

But if she is unreasonable - stand your ground, and see your solicitor.

But but some sodding uniform man!!!

I just want to emphasise - even though I am obviously bringing my own experience and frustration to the party, I really saw myself in your ex... Not denying contact, ever.
But in possibly thinking "I don't want anything to do with you. I have to maintain a bare minimum for child arrangements. I do not WANT to be texting you about dropping uniform through the window."
I felt relieved when ex and I moved from texting arrangements to using a shared iPhone calendar. It is stressful having continued direct contact with someone you don't want to talk to.
I wouldn't react like your ex, but bloody hell did I feel irritated just reading that you didn't have enough uniform!

It's so frustrating, you have my sympathy. You sound like a great Dad.

Court order sounds like the only way forward, the fact that you've had 50/50 for so long should mean they will suggest it continues.

Get the ball rolling as soon as you can and don't rise to anything in the meantime. Good luck.

No matter how annoyed you are with your ex though cabrina you said you'd never deny contact. The annoyance is irrelevant, using your children to punish an ex is disgusting

And what Canrinha said really. You could avoid this issue by buying extra uniform

if this is over uniform collection (not kids collection) then buying spare set for such eventualities would prevent this happening again.

if the divorce isnt finalised then make sure overnights are in the arrangements for children in the final order?

let her come and pick up the dc in the evenings they have tea
let the dc ask HER why they cannot stay overnight.
stay calm... and get solicitor to make sure overnights are clear in the final arrangements.

i am wondering whether in fact she will soon realise that actually ahving nights off in teh week is great for her - and will soon revert esepcailly if dc ask her why they not allowed to stay with dad any more...

And maybe the Ex is at the absolute end of her tether and a simple undertaking to have more consistency to arrangements would be enough rather than start down the road of courts and solicitors. Because believe me, if you can avoid that road, do so at all costs.

Monet - give the OP a break. He did offer to buy extra uniform. He also "changed his mind" later in the day - I think we're all capable of absent mindedly agreeing to something and then realising soon afterwards that we'd forgotten about something - or are you impervious to such imperfections? FFS.

Blondie - I think your ex's behaviour is appalling and I suggest you get yourself to a solicitor ASAP and consider making an application to court ASAP. And I say this as a separated mother who is in a contact dispute with my ex, with him wanting more contact. It sounds to me as though you need a contact order from the court so your ex cannot just do as she wants. I bend over backwards to facilitate contact with my exH and he is controlling in the opposite way - he withholds contact from the children if I don't do as he wants. I honestly don't know how a parent can live with themselves preventing contact for something so trivial. We all know who suffers the most.

Sometimes of there is any unreasonable behaviour from either side, going to court is the only option. Changing contact when it's been 50/50 is not smart.

Again, contact is in the best interests of the children not either parent. This also applies to a situation when contact is denied. Squabbling over uniforms is ridiculous and OP yes you should have a set, I agree.

If you can't communicate with your ex, mediate as CAFCASS do not always make the best choices and neither do judges. Ball is in your court as to how you proceed from here. You can either put a stop to the to-I my and fro-ing or set yourself up for years of games and disruption.

If as you say up until now you've had them 50% of the time then I'm assuming you've done as my running about and juggling as your ex so you should both be on equal footing when it comes to taking responsibility for the day to day are of the children. If not as se has been organising them for seeing you too then she has every right to he annoyed about the uniforms.

In any event if she is going to play games you are best getting some sort of residency order.

I have skirts, trousers, jumpers etc for the children.

The things i do not have is spare set of Clarks shoes for kids and a spare cardigan for oldest daughter. In last 18 months we have alternated buying the school shoes.

The arrangement works for children as follows:

I have every Monday and Tuesday evening and alternative Fridays to Sundays.

As mentioned in earlier post i am happy to buy duplicate stuff but this is the latest in a series of events where we have agreed something to happen and she will suddenly change if she knows it inconveniences me.
The second last event was i had arranged to pick up the children after they had been away camping with ex. Time was agreed. At some point daughter mentioned to ex she was seeing grandfather (my dad) and aunt who had travelled 150 miles to stay and suddenly ex said kids were tired (this was 4pm) and had been travelling all day (by train from campsite 30 miles away).
So my family suddenly lost the window of opportunity.

For some time i have just inwardly fumed when she has changed access times. But the events/date changs are only when she knows it will upset me (and by default the children get disappointed when they cannot see family).

Monetbyhimself - you raise valid point. Is my ex always having to do the organising? When i attempt to pre empt or organise i am told to back off or am told . Two week before fathers day i asked "Can i see the children on Sunday (fathers days) between mid day and 2pm to have a meal?).
That is the exact text and the response back was "Its my weekend with kids".
I replied saying "My understanding is that fathers day is counted as a special day like birthdays and contact arrangements can often be altered"

The response was "Well learn how to f**king ask. You dictated when you were having them without agreeing if i would let you even see them first"

Now i know that i should have used "may i see the kids.." to be grammatically correct. But i did not think it was an unreasonable request.

Especially when for previous mothers day and her birthday where i had the children i had said to her that "your birthday/mothers day falls on my day with children so let me know if you want them for part of day/full day/or entire weekend if you are going away somewhere. happy to fit in with what works best for you."

moldingsunbeams - this happened yesterday. So as she would have had the uniforms after picking the kids up from school Thurs night (she has them on wed and Thurs) she originally said she could drop the uniforms off Thursday night (ie last night. And they would have been dirty. Or she would drop off this Sunday (clean). I need the uniforms as i have the kids from fri through to next wed am. As soon as she discovered my xmas party was yesterday she then stated that the only time she could give for me to get uniform would be Thurs from 4pm to 4:30pm. ie she changed the time as soon as she knew it would mean me missing part of my works xmas party.
Now if i had gone and picked up at 4pm the uniform there would have been something else that "niggled" her. She has complained in the past that i went out when i had the children and left a baby sitter in charge.
She's complained that children should not play with son of mutual friend as he was a bully then a week later arranged to go on holiday with the same friend and their son.

I think there will be frustrations when trying to co parent but the same frustrations sometimes happen when people are together.

I am just upset that for once ex did not get her way by me changing my plans and instead i said i will duplicate all the uniforms to prevent frustration again and all of a sudden i am being told i cannot see my own children but will allow me to have them for tea once or twice a week.

For some time i have hoped she would start putting the children before trying to upset me but I am so upset I'm shaking as i type.

Fuck that. Shared/Residence order. If With flexibility for holidays, birthdays etc. If this isn't sorted our now you will have an endless world of shit and your children with not know whether they are coming or going.

Cabrinha - realised i did not reply to hunger games comment on school night. i did ask ex if that was OK and she said yes. Its not often i just have one of my children so i thought it would be nice to see a film daughter wants to see. She is sick of films at cinema just suitable for her and younger brother.
Daughter would be home and in bed for 9pm.

Blondie - no need to justify cinema to me! Sounds fun. I was just trying to show a "for instance" where it might not be about the issue you think it is. I'm not criticising your cinema decision!

moldingsunbeams No apology necessary. Its easy to misread things especially as i've rambled a bit.

I have emailed solicitor and waiting to hear back from him (knowing my luck) he's on holiday for two weeks!!

Cabrinha

I am sure there is some underlying reason. I just wish I knew what it was.
A mutual friend has wondered if its financial. ie she could ask for an additional percentage of my salary for maintenance for children.

Someone else wonders if its financial as it would give her a bigger share of pot of money of when we sort out financials.

Another person wonders if she just gets satisfaction by trying to make life difficult.

Its a difficult period. I've "given in" time and time again and as some of you have stated this could go on forever without something formal in place.

I know she was upset me with two weeks ago as daughter wants curling tongs and straightners as one of her xmas presents. I asked my ex if she would give advice about how much i should spend. In my head I thought that was a reasonable request as she would be happy to help choose present. I was not asking her to buy. Purely should i be spending 10 to 20 pound, 20 to 30 pound etc. The response back was "advice is what friends do. We are not friends. We only need to converse when it concerns the children."

Whoa, she sounds angry.

I would tell her that you are going to court. She might back down, she might not. If not, then do it. Feel sorry for your position.

yes - shes angry.

Life for both us is worse financially. I have heard she is upset because i have not become withdrawn and depressed since we separated.

Don't get me wrong i have had periods of feeling down. its not nice to know that 14 years relationship is over. There are times (for both of us when its a pain being a single parent).

But i made a decision to not dwell on what might have been but instead focus on being a dad for my children and giving them all they need to make their best of their lives/futures.

But whatever frustration/anger she has I am not 100 per cent the root cause. She was discovered having an affair and one night stands before and during trial separation. So I know she is frustrated that she cannot show the moral high ground that she acted to save marriage whilst in trial separation.

She perhaps resents that her friends involve me in activities which involve the kids.

But the bottom line now as far as i am concerned is using the children by with holding contact to upset me or undermine me is not the action of a good mother.

There are lots of posts on here from mums who seem to be going through a terrible time with their ex's and i have tried taking stuff in to ensure i dont do any of those things that niggle or completely annoy or upset.

I don't want to put the children in the middle of me and ex.

I suppose my second paragraph in original post sums it up. I'm at my wits end.

Thank you for the messages. I'm not perfect by any means. And you have only got my side. If ex has a list of gripes and she started her own thread maybe the responses would be supporting of her. But i can only tackle gripes as they are raised.

I has an issue that for three months the ex was not doing homework with kids at weekend and it meant i was having to deal every other monday with getting the kids to complete. I did say to her that it would make my life easier if she could do on the weekends she had kids and she has mostly done.

Thank you to everyone who has replied. Just need to wait from solicitor and see how long the court process takes.

She sounds upset and yes angry. Her marriage has ended and no matter how shit things are she has to now come to terms with being a single parent and on her own and the life she thought she would have is a distant memory. She isn't going to be skipping merrily through daisies. She is not handling it well though and shouldn't be using your children to get at you. Obviously.

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