Are there really as many women as it sounds who deny ex access to children?

[Rainbow03]

I don’t personally know of anyone who has done this. But when you speak to people, especially men you always hear the story of the evil ex women denying contact or making it difficult etc.

My own partner says he has a friend whose ex only allows access if he gives her money.

Do women genuinely behave like this as much as you hear about and why is the story constantly being told.

It makes it difficult when you have actually denied contact to seem legit and I hate telling people in RL. In my case it was drugs and abuse but people probably think I’m one of those ex’s.

And what exactly are you basing this on? Nothing you’ve written seems to indicate you have any direct experience of this, just a lot of lazy stereotypes about women as far as I can tell.

Boring.

@SandyY2K yes I didn’t see many red flags but then I grew up with a controlling and neglectful mum. There were many I just didn’t see them back then.

SIL ex claims this. The children are teenagers and saw their father be violent towards their mother. They want nothing to do with him and are old enough that the court will not make them see him.

No there aren’t.
Its very easy to say the reason I don’t see my children is because my ex won’t let me because what is the alternative?
Admitting that actually you absolutely refused to change jobs/ try and reduce your hours so that you hours downs more time with your children.
Or admitting that you preferred to go to the pub/ do your hobby/ sit gaming/ go out shagging / meet your friends or anything rather than have to spend hours with difficult children and do the grunt work.
Also you can’t use the excuse that you have to work very, very long hours in your very important job, whilst trying your best to pay as little maintenance to your child as possible.
I think this is often the excuse doled out by men to their new woman. I’ve known if men who suddenly start seeing their children again when a new woman comes on the scene. Unfortunately as soon as she is gone, he stops seeing his children again.
In this scenario I can fully understand the RP getting peed off and reacting accordingly.

my partner's was nearly 20 years ago so money rules may have been different, court 5 times and she was never admonished

I highly doubt it, and anecdotally definitely not. The men who complain at the top of their lungs that their kids are being kept from them get pissy if you ask which solicitor they've seen about it, because it's much nicer to whine about their bitch ex and avoid taking any responsibility. 99% of loving and involved fathers see their children, supported legally if necessary.

Family courts are keen (sometimes much too keen to the detriment of the children) on fathers having equal access to kids. If they want it.

I have to say my assumption when I hear this is that the bloke can't be bothered and claims that his ex makes it hard because it's a convenient excuse that makes people feel sorry for him rather than judge him.

Or he's actively dangerous and she has good reason to deny contact.

I know that there are women who do weaponise DC but I'm afraid I just think they are a minority. Probably 10/20% whereas 80-90% is one of the other cases where the story looks very different if you actually see the mother's side.

My experience is that most separated mothers want their ex to see the DC and try to maintain contact way beyond the point where they should do, because they want the best for their DC.

My SIL got sole custody of their two children. BIL was abusive, has problems with cocaine and alcohol, has no home of his own and was constantly letting his children down. She gave him chances and was more than fair. He also doesn't and didn't pay any child support.

However he will tell you that she's keeping his kids from him and he's going to get them back because she's not looking after them properly and she did everything behind his back. According to him he was under general anaesthetic when their custody case was being heard (total lie). SIL also had to go to the high court to get a forced divorce as he wouldn't comply or turn up to any court hearings. His two children want nothing to do with him but he is so delusional he thinks they will come back to him. He also had another child three years ago and he' has done nothing for that child either. If you didn't know the whole story and you only heard his side you would think it's awful that his kids were taken away from him because obviously according to him he's just fantastic.

My DP ex reduced contact after he moved in with me. He moved 5 miles but she cited the long journey as being mentally damaging to the children.

DP had to go CAO route to get proper meaningful contact. She still continues to try and stop contact etc and is high conflict on every way possible.

My ex told the courts I did. I gave my Barrister the print out of every contact request he'd made (very few), none of which were for when he was saying I was denying him contact.

Closest I came was when he tried to arbitrarily change the visiting day, and I asked if we could talk about that, as it was the only day off I had each fortnight, and preferred the day we'd originally organised. He wouldn't discuss it at all. Oh, and sometimes I declined because we already had stuff on (he never gave me more than a week's notice).

As to this subtle stuff, he does that all on his own to himself - barely bothering with the kids or significant events in their lives, so it's no wonder that they're not that interested in him. I tried for the first 6 months, but I have better things to spend my time on that pretending their dad is interested in them (we just get on with our lives, I don't talk him down either, we just barely talk about him at all)

The only friend I have to has limited contact is because the father wants to take his sons out and on holiday but not his daughter - as his daughter is now old enough to understand it's not fair to treat them unequally. I bet he doesn't tell his new gf that's the reason though

My ex says I limit contact with his child, because I don't allow him to come and go from my home any time he pleases

How old was he? I don't think I'd want anyone else taking my baby for a hair cut, but as he gets older I think that's the dads job to take him to a barbers

Very good point

You can not refuse contact for domestic abuse.

In our case dh's ex wife is trying her lvelv best to cut dh (and therefore me, dss's step sisters and the rest of the family) out of my step sons lives.
She has moved an hour away, refuses to travel even half way for the 40% time we have with them, regularly withholds one or the other for contact, goes about telling everyone that we are abusive (we aren't), insists they attend clubs on our weekend that are near her, so 3 hour round trips every other Saturday and Sunday, on top of travel in the week. Accuses dh of all sorts, constantly bombards the boys with messages and face times when they are with us, so we never get uninterrupted time with them. We are currently travelling 2000 miles a month and paying about £500 petrol, fucking ourselves over at work, running ourselves ragged. She still says we aren't doing enough.
The boys are getting older and inevitably they won't want to come at weekends and do the travel soon enough snd she will encourage them in that. We are looking at moving but we can't for two years. And neither of us really want to live where she has moved to.
Dh is doing everything he can to stay in those boys lives-but I I feel like he's fighting a losing battle sadly.

In reality everyone is right, there are men who claim they were denied access when in reality they couldn't be arsed, there are men who shouldn't be allowed access, there are families where the best place for the child is with their father and yes some women are vindictive and self centred enough to deny access to the fathers just simply because they can.....unfortunately all these people exist but generally most people I know co-parent quite happily because they both want the best for their children

I know more men who have claimed their ex doesn't let them see the dc than I do women who genuinely don't.

That said, the couple of men I know who genuinely have exes who block/limit contact have never bothered to go to court over it so they obviously don't actually care that much.

My own ex told everyone once that I'd stopped him seeing the dc. I woke up to abusive messages from his family and a lot of joint friends. I hadn't stopped him seeing them, merely told him that they weren't available that weekend because we were on holiday. I offered him a day during the week to make up for it, he wasn't bothered.

I beg my ex to be in the kids lives. I've sent him countless emails asking him to do more, to reach out to them during the week or have a chat to them about a certain topic. He does nothing to help. Sees the 3 hours a month, 36 hours a year.
He however has played the victim since day one. I left him in the July after years of abuse, he told people on Xmas Eve I walked out on himself for another man. He has told everyone from day one I refuse to let him see the kids, I have email proof from him that he gave them up (had them 3 days a week) and gave me 5 days notice he wasn't having them anymore due to moving in with his girlfriend. Whenever I ask him of any help, via email as advised by our solicitor he claims I haven't and tell everyone I live in a fantasy world. I invite him and his parents to our home every Christmas he turns it down, when the kids ask their grandparents if they are coming they don't know what they are talking about and he just tells everyone I'm making things up again. He always plays dumb and makes me out to be this horrid witch when at the end of the day he refuses to communicate with his kids and even tried to make a claim on my home with his new girlfriend.

Don't always believe what you are told as there are two sides of the story.

DD1 doesn't have contact with her bio dad. I persevered for 4 years after we split when she was 4 months old. In the end I got so fed up of him turning up drunk, or not at all, or turning up with no money and expecting me to feed him, drive him around and organise his time with DD as if I was his PA and credit card, and just generally saying hideously inappropriate things to DD. His behaviour escalated until on his last visit he lost the plot because I refused to drive him to a betting shop. He then got drunk in a nearby town instead of getting the train home and spent the maintenance money on a hotel before getting in a fight with a bouncer and getting himself arrested and locked up overnight. He then completely disappeared for about 6 weeks shortly after (I suspect prison) and was kicked out of his parents home. I told him I would no longer facilitate his agreed visits with DD due to his behaviour and said we needed to go back to mediation to agree a new plan for his supervised visits. He pleaded with me to carry on being his driver and paying on his his visits as it was so hard for him as he'd also had a baby with his affair partner and I didn't know how hard it was for him to have 2 kids opposite ends of the country. I stood my ground on the mediation and once he knew I wasn't budging and wasn't going to put up with his crap any more he disappeared and I never heard from him again. So I guess you could argue I refused him access, but it wasn't a decision I took lightly. It was 100% driven by his behaviour

My experience- DH exW never actually stopped contact but she did withhold contact to bring about her desired outcomes. She wanted total discretion as to when DH had his son and so would just send “dates for his diary” and ad hoc requests as little as a week in advance. It was really difficult logistically as DH couldn’t organise childcare when contact was so haphazard and at exes whim. She declined 50:50 because she “couldn’t afford it” as DH said the maintenance would have to be directed to childcare for a 50:50. DH’s argument was she could arrange her social life in non contact time.

DH and I tied ourselves up in knots arranging trips or trying to arrange holidays and BM flying off the handle if her last min requests couldn’t be accommodated. BM was booking her leave, DH booking the same and then I was booking mine. It got to the stage I said this is ridiculous I’m not never being able to make plans or scheduling my own AL around BM’s.

Her need for total discretion has totally backfired now we’ve had our own kids and just book holidays when it suits us as a family etc and either include or don’t take DSS based on when we’re supposed to have him. If she had agreed to set contact she’d have been better off.

Women definitely weaponise their children, in many instances I do think they expect some sort of compensation just for their status as mother.

Exactly. I have seen both sides and liars on each.

Looking at it from the other side the way women on here expect a man's previous children to just disappear I presume that yes many women don't see a man's relationship with his children as important and prefer him totally out of the way.

I’m a male victim of DV and the bias is ridiculous - the police took pretty much zero interest in my case.

And before anyone says it, yes I know the majority of cases are men being violent towards women but that doesn’t mean ALL cases are.

@Deathbyfluffy I am sorry to here that. It is the same with women. Unless you have serious injury.