Relationship breakdown whilst living in Australia

[snowystar]

We've been living in Australia for nearly 15years. Both DC were born here ( aged 9&12). TBH I have never fully settled but never really had much choice in returning to the UK. I now find myself in the awful position of finding out my husband has been having an affair.

And now i feel I'm trapped. All I want is to return to the UK but my husband won't. So this means I have 2 choices :

1.Bring my kids back to the UK, which means they have no regular contact with their father ( he has said as much as it would kill him he would let me because of what he has done ) He will never return to the UK

1. Stay and be trapped in Australia so my kids can maintain contact with their father even though I hate living here.

Feel absolutely helpless. Would love to hear from anyone who has been in this situation.

The kids will have enough upheaval with the separation. Moving them away from all they know to strangers in a strange country would be a selfish act. Make yourself happy in Australia, make friends there build a support network for the 3 of you, you've been there long enough to have someone there you like.

In England, the kids would (probably) be seen as 'exotic' and 'cool'. Just the right time for them to make a transition, fit into new friendship groups, etc, and as they're active children, they'd find new after school activities and probably make friends easily that way, too.

The activities are potentially very different though. Depending on where the OP lives in parts of Australia there’s a whole culture around swimming, swim club, the beach, nippers etc. Not saying there aren’t great swim clubs in the U.K. as well but if their whole summer is usually spent in and out of pools it’ll be a big change. Where we live in Australia pretty much everyone has a backyard swimming pool.

@snowystar

Moving from yr 5 to 7 is likely too much unless they are very advanced so I totally get that you are rightly concerned. But from yr 5 to 6 is very doable but it does take work and unless you have the resources to outsource it, the effort falls on you. I know my DC had a friend who was a year older than them all because they were held back and it was just fine for the girl.

So again, it is fine to consider not keeping them in the age cohort. I would think anyone saying any different either has kids that are very advanced and can easily make this jump and it is not an issue or perhaps is not focused on academics.

I am sure you will come up with the best solution for you AND the kids once the initial shock for all the family has past.

Just one thought that I haven’t seen anyone else comment on (but just scanned the last page now so may have missed it): if you move soon/in a rushed way, is there a risk that the children will see you as the ‘baddie’ if they don’t like it/if they don’t find their feet easily in England? I’m just thinking that in their minds it might be a bigger thing that they’ve been uprooted and moved to the other side of the world, more than the fact that their dad moved away first, and finding yourself being blamed by them for ruining their lives would not be nice, no matter how ‘in the right’ you were.

Another thing is that life is not fair. No matter what you do/he does, nothing can make up for his betrayal. So I think you need to think about your children’s future, and your future, mainly without thinking about your need for revenge, if possible.

One very, very unfair outcome of putting children first is what can happen if a parent abducts a child to another country and fails to return them. In some cases, the child is only found years later, after the parent (normally a mother) has fought for years to get them back. When they are found 5-10-whatever years later, sometimes courts have decided to give custody to the abducting parent, based on the needs of the children. The parent has built an ok life for the child, they might be surrounded by loving grandparents etc – and have not ‘suffered’, more than – obviously – the loss of contact with their mother. So no matter how unfair it is to the parent who were refused contact with their child, the bad parent is still given custody – because it is deemed that it would be worse for the child to be uprooted to another country a second time. (The other parent is obviously given visitation rights etc etc.)

This is not directly relevant to your case obviously, but just thought of it as an example of how unfair life can be when it comes to sharing children.

I think it sounds really good that you will take your time to think. Such decisions should never be taken lightly.

Is there not some documentation/order that can be signed now saying he agrees to you taking them to live in the UK. You could then use it or not once you've had time to think through your options etc.

Personally it could be an opportunity to live here if only for a year or two as an experience for the kids even if you ultimately go back because that's where they want to be...