Cost of travel to see children

[Bonsaigem]

My ex is refusing to see his kids unless I travel 50% of the journey.

We moved 3 years to Wales and we split after 11 months of living her. Was together a total of 9 years. He has moved to back where we used to live. For this reason he thinks I am responsible for doing half the journey with our 3 kids.

Last year he saw them 46 nights out of the year. He works full time and lives with a new lady and her child. I have a tiny camping business that I operate around the kids school and still live alone. (Not sure that matters!)

He works nights on a sporadic rota so I cannot predict when his is off and he won't share his rota as it is none of my business. He cannot commit to regular visits (he says) due to the need for his rota to be flexible (he shift swaps to get longer chunks of time off). He says won't see the kids this year unless i agree to 50% of the journeys or if I bring them to him when I visit my family who live near him (which I do anyway).

Should I agree to 50% of the journeys so he will agree to see his kids more?

Totally do what @RandomMess suggests!

Random mess idea is fab. My ex never took my days I proposed just to be a pain!

He will badmouth you and reject the DC no matter what so allowing him to be the occasional Disney Dad is likely the best course of action.

You will evidence of being utterly reasonable should he ever decide to take it to court.

You can't reason with a controlling nasty bully so stop torturing yourself trying.

KOKO

@RandomMess

Thank you. Yes it is like I can never sort it. What ever I fix it's another problem.

I cannot thank you enough for your help advice and support in this. It was seriously twisting my melon, but I feel better now so may people have given me the confidence that I am not being unreasonable and there is a course of action to take that makes me feel more secure with my littles.

I need guys like you in my back pocket!!

Thank you xxx

I've had a similar situation with my Ex-H over the last year, although he doesn't live as far away as yours. He was abusive and basically forced me and our child out of our home - I had to move about an hour's drive away to go and stay with family.

Now a court might say it was 'my decision' to move away, but it was either that or be homeless so I didn't really have any choice. I did share the driving intially but he continued to be abusive and rude so I told him he'd have to make the effort and come down to see DS. I completely disengaged from it. As far as I'm concerned I do 90% of the work of raising our child, he can jolly well get his arse in the car and put a bit of effort it.

That's not to say he didn't kick off. I had many threatening letters trying to force me to meet him in Ikea bloody carpark (so he could piss about and be late). When I took legal advice on my position they said I was being perfectly reasonable and it was his responsibility to collect/drop off DS.

Don't let him bully you.

Please do as random mess says.