Forced by ex husband via courts to send DD to state school( long post)

[Bethtinne]

Hello everybody
I have joined Mumsnet because I need both support and honest advice. I have a long and quite frankly frightening story to tell about being drgged through the Family courts and the sad effect it has had on my children.

I had a sad and abusive marriage to the father of my two youngest children. He drank and was very abusive (verbally) to me and my eldest daughter ( not his child).
we seperated and all seemed to be going better for the kids and me when he decided out of the blue to oppose the fact that I wished to send our daughter (my middle child) to the same independant secondary school that her elder sister had attended with sucess. I can only suppose that the fear of having to contribute to the fees was behind it. he does not pay CSA payments for the kids. I said up front that I would pay the fees but despite that when we ended up in court the judge fopund quite firmly in his favour. It was a strange experience were I found that all my seemingly logical arguements as to why my choice of school was best for this individual child were dismissed out of hand. The politically correct line was taken and my daughter was told to go to the school and put up with it!
She has since done very poorly academically and has been bullied. She is not in a class with any of her old primary school friends ( she was put in a low tier due to her poor sats performance) She has sunk into a depression and now does nor want to see her father. He is now persuing a vigourous court action for contact saying that I am stopping her seeing him. She refuses to speak to him, is disengaged from all school and is slipping further and further behind with her work.
The Judge refuses to acknowledge that he made a mistake by sending her to a school she did not want to attend and the CAFFCAS officer is now saying that my DD is not unhappy about the school but because I do not agree with her father about the choice of school. He implies that if I just buckle down and accept the situation all will be well.
Sadly this is not the case and I am facing prison for not forcing DD to see her father.
This story sounds unbelievable in this day and age but it is totally true.
I started off trying to get a dedent education for my not very motivateded child and am now looking at prison for having the audacity to take on the politically correct courts and her horrible father who happens to be a lawyer!!!!

no judge will send you to prison

Your children have a right to see their father though, sorry.

I think the issue is that your ex is a lawyer, How has he managed to get out of paying child maintenance though?

Make your dd available for collection and let him be the one to have to forceable evict her from your house. He may get the point then.

The courts normally (I say this loosly) do what is in the best interest of the child. They do, like every one else, screw up from time to time. What were the courts reasons for your daughter going to the state school?

It's very rare they send a mother to prison for things like this, you are their sole carer.

If you make the visits through a contact centre they will have it all on record, whether he turns up or not.

Good solicitor, get meetings done through a contact centre, get psych evaluation then go to court of appeal to get the origional court decision overturned.

Oh, I can believe your story, all too easily. Dh ended up in a court case with his ex because he wanted to pay for his dd to go to private school. His ex was adamant that the local (not very good, and particularly not good with SN (which dh's dd is)) state school, while also sending dh's ds to private school (all fees paid by dh, naturally).

All dh wanted to do was to give both his children the same opportunities in life, but he was dragged through court at great expense, with distress to the children, and despite the judge agreeing that to send the childrn to such wildly different schools would probably be damaging to their sibling relationship longer term, dh lost, and was not allowed to pay to send his dd to a school which could meet her needs.

was the order (re school) made by consent or did the judge make the decision and give a judgment? if so the judgment will contain the reasons for the decision.... you could have appealed the order if you thought the judge was wrong.... in any event i am assuming this was a while ago? you can make your own application for change of school? but given what you have said re recent cafcass report this sounds unlikely to succeed. how old is dd? one option depending on age would be to apply for dd to be separately represented in the court proceedings, ie to have her own lawyer representing her views / her interests thus freeing her of being caught between two parents with no way of her independent position being put to the court. this is what i would think you might explore, with at least some legal advice if poss. once she has sep. rep. that will be time to consider getting some expert assessment done to assist. hth. good luck.

I'm afraid I'm not surprised, family courts seem to be barking. And judges seem to be falling for the father's rights brigade.

If your dd is secondary school age, surely the courts should be taking her views into account? Sounds as if your ex knows how to play things because he's a lawyer. So agree with everyone else, best lawyer you can afford -avenap's advice seems good.

I am totally shocked that any court can refuse to allow a parent to spend their own money on their child's education...........

I'm sorry I don't have any advice, but I am totally outraged that it can happen....

My DH pays for my 2 DSDs to attend a lovely private school (actually at the request of his ex) and it has had an amazing effect on DSD1......

So much so, we've already decided to send our DS to the same or similar school in due course.

I'm sorry that is of no help, but there must be a way of highlighting this issue

Ooh, that's a great idea of islington's. Sympathy re. Cafcass, they do seem to be (putting it politely) VERY variable throughout the country.

Ahh, they are doing what is in the best interest of the child, not the parents. The judges pretty much ignore what the parents want because if it has got to the stage where the courts are involved it is assumed that the parents are so blind as to their own problems they can not see what is in the best interest of the children. Pile of sh*t if you ask me.

our cafcass officer was hopeless - highlighted that dsd should go to stay at state school because she liked both sports and drama - when the school had no sports pitches (and dsd was not able to play eihter cricket or football - her two favourite sports - because there was no girl's team) and the school also had had NO drama productions for the last 3 years!

Dh pointed this out, but was told this was not relevant (!) and also pointed out that dsd was not receiving appropriate academic support (her academic levels had actually gone down while at the school) but was told that he did not understand the system...

Family courts - we love them in this house [wry smile emoticon]

Have i got this right? The family court told the parent with custody that she could not send a child to the school of her choice because the non resident 9and non paying) parent didn't want her to go there? This can't be right, surely? And how did the courts propose to enforce this if you just carried on sending her to the school of your choice? Am I missing something?

(not the most tactful thread title, by the way!)

They are male, upper class from public school. Of course they have no idea. Eton has all of this stuff, not your average comprehensive. I'd appeal.

was the judge male op?

Thanks very much for all replies!
DD is 12 she asked to be heard at court but Caffcass recommended that she was not heard because" if the judge heard her and agreed with her she would think she could get her own way all the time! and if he heard her and went agoinst her she would think no one listened to her!" Judge did press point but Caffcass was adament so she was not heard. She has gone down hill big time with regard to grades and general health and happiness. All the friends that went with her from her Primary are in the top 2 tiers so she does not see them much and has not made any new friends with the girls in her new class.
I have ,through GP and school nurse -who are both very concerned about her- managed to get her an appointment with CAMHS. They should be able to help with counselling and also will hopefully be able to put her side of the story. She told the CAFFCASS openly that she did not want to go to the school but the officer added to the report that he thought she had only said it "under pressure". When pressed in court he said "the pressure usually comes from the resident parent".
The judgement was very poorly written and basically said that as I had not proved that the Stateschool was likely to fail her she should go. The judge dismissed completely all arguments that my choice was a better school. The Gov statistics show that the pass rate for GCSE's by State school is between 46% and 50% for the last 5 years and for my choice ( non selective local indepentant) Between 98 and 100%.
It was stunning to hear the Judge dismiss our argument. His reason was that " all statistics lie".
This story probably sounds quite fantastic but believe my it is totally true.
I would not have believed it if I had not been part of it!
Am seeing solicitor on Wed when we are going to start formal complaint against CAFFCASS and look at re applying to courts to over turn order about schools. Hopefully we will go with a report from Docs that shows that DD di not want to attend school, is not doing well ,is suffering because she ids there and now refuses to speak to her father.
Re CSA I have discovered that if you are self employed and pay @£200 every 2 and a half months you can string them ( CSA) along nicely as they are always on the back foot. Ex arrears re CSA now well over 12K but that is not an issue in the court proceedings.
I will force DD to visit her father when CAMHS tell me that it will not cause her any likely future harm in view of her current problems brought on by the school situation.
The prison looms (in theory) because when last in front of same judge he stated baldly that he would not accept that his decision on the school had any bearing on the contact with father issue. Our argument is that it is the core of the problem. If he continues to act like this at next hearing a court order forcing DD to see father will be made and if DD refuses and I do not drag her there Ex will reapply to court saying I have broken court order and I believe that that is possibly custodial!
Thanks once again for your advice.
Beth

P.S. This court case has dragged on for over a year and I am probably missing out useful information but I have tried to put down the main points. There was another CAFFCAS report about contact where the officer noted DD's feelings of extreme anger about being forced to attend the school and also her anger against her father because of it but he stated that her views were not to be considered as " she was too young to have her views on school considered and her views about her father were totally unreasonable"
The judge agreed with him completely.
Hence my wish to make a complaint about CAFFCASS. I do not think I can complain about the Judge as I get the feeling they can say as they wish.
B

P.P.s.
sorry to be so long winded!!!
I would like to clarify that my objection is not to State education per se but to the fact that I knew that my DD would not thrive in the lower tiers of the large state school to which her father had decided she should go. I wished her to have the best educational chance in life and felt very strongly that that was offered by the local non selective independant school that her elder sister attended very successfully. In fact our youngest child (son) is considered very bright and will do well at which ever school he wishes to attend state or otherwise.
The irony is that his father is happy for him to attend the highly selective independant school which he has expressed a preference for!!!
B

please talk to solicitor about applying for dd to be seperately represented within the proceedings... this doesnt mean she will be sitting in court listening to parents arguing about her but means she will have ownb advocate putting her independent position to the court. at 12 this is completely realistic. rule 9.5 family proceedings rules 1991. dont waste your time and energy pursuing formal complaints about cafcass officer. good luck. let us know how you get on?

Just found your post on here.I went through something similar (not as bad as yours tho) when DD was 3.It's all fine now but I do feel for you - it was a stressful nightmare.You mentioned that father is happy for son to go to boys independant school.Is it RGS by any chance?If so,how could he argue against sending DD there now that they take girls?If you're worried about the entrance exam, past papers and a bit of private tutoring worked for a friend of mine (not RGS unfortunately but a school in Lancashire).
Let me know how things are going

Btw, should have mentioned that I coughed up the £5 so you can contact me directly rather than on the board as I could give you names of lawyers and child psychologists I know in our part of the world....you probably know all the lawyers anyway....don't want to go naming names.Knowing my luck I'd end up in court myself!!

Good luck and enjoy the bank holiday.