My DH's ex wants to move to australia with ss

[jencd]

This is my first posting in on mumsnet - Hello!

I'm not yet a mother myself but I have been with my husband for the last five years and we recently got married in June. We live in France and my ss mum lives in Ireland so our situation is quite abnormal.... and it looks like it's about to get more so!

My husband goes back to Ireland once a month to see his son and we have had him for extended periods in France during his school holidays, in the last year he has been with us for six weeks on three seperate occassions and alongside the monthly visits. He loves coming to France and often says he would like to live here permanently (not sure how I feel about that but that's for another posting!!!)

Since we announced our engagement about 12 months ago SS's mum has been calling, texting and emailing my DH that she is moving on with her life too and now wants to move to Australia obviously taking SS with her and her new boyfriend of about 18 months. At first we thought it was a load of rubbish but as time goes on it's become more and more serious. As DH is a legal guardian of his son she can not apply for a visa without his authorisation and she has now issued court proceedings in order to make him sign. We have debated long and hard about the situation and although it breaks DH's heart to think of him so far away he is aware that he can not stop her from moving on with her life seeing as he has clearly moved on with his. We have decided to follow the proceedings through court in order to have some certainty that SS will be returning from the other side of the world and won't just vanish in to the abyss. We have requested he spend his six weeks summer holidays with us in France every year, these happen over Christmas in Australia so we have requested the mother come home for these periods annually.

We have just received a letter from her sollicitor this morning refusing this access arrangement, stating that she will come back for four weeks every year but that DH won't have exclusive access to SS during that time as the child will have to see his extended family on her side too and that all access must happen in Ireland. This obviously means we won't ever have SS in our own home and will have to pay for flights and hotels for both of us and any of our eventual children together to return to Ireland every year for Christmas to see him. Imagine never having Christmas in our own home? Imagine only seeing your son for three weeks a year?

She is such a horrible, spiteful and vindictive woman... I have never felt levels of hatred as I feel for her. I am worried it's literally ruining our lives, at a time when we are newly wed and supposed to be enjoying ourselves we are crippled with anger and fear.

I am also worried her sudden wish for SS not to come to France is due to a rather heated email I sent to her a few weeks ago!

I would be very interested to hear you thoughts and experience on whether this can be upheld in a court or if it's totally unreasonable? Does it seem unreasonable to me because I love DH so much? Does the fact we already live in a foreign country mean that we have no say at all?

I'm sorry you're being put through this stress. Even if your DH did sign the application I can't imagine the Australian authorities jumping with glee at getting 2 unemployed Irish arriving. They don't just let anyone in, have you checked if they qualify?

I was wondering about the issue Pandygirl has just raised. I am not entirely sure but I thought you had to be a skilled worker and have a job lined up before you were accepted into Australia. It sounds a bit like a pipe dream to me, but maybe they have sussed it all out and can be accepted. It is an awful dilemma - as North Dublin I know to be quite grotty.

The other thing though is in your first post jencd you mentioned that you weren't sure about how you would feel about the child coming to live with you on a permanent basis. I think this is perfectly understandable but I think it needs to be out in the open even though it will add another complication. Incidentally in the UK there is no such thing as custody of a child any more. These matters are private law and hearings are in the Family Court. Where parents are "fighting" over a child, one is awarded a Residence Order and the other one usually gets reasonable contact. Not sure if this is how it works in Ireland though.

I am just wondering jencd if you are sort of half hoping that your DH would not get "custody" of the child - apologies if I have that wrong. It certainly is a very tricky problem. Just a thought, but the child may be telling your DH that he wants to live with him, and telling his mum the same. Small children often do this, as they don't want to upset either parent, and he is far too young to make the decision for himself in any event.

Hi All,

We had our day in court last week and it went as best as it could do in my DH's favour. He will now have annual access for his DSS long school holidays every year that ex will have to arrange for. It was what he asked for initially regarding the access arrangements if indeed she will get her visa etc.

I have to say that on the day we both felt that our solicitor really 'rolled over' and was at one stage recommending an agreement that would mean DH would only have 3 weeks / year with DSS. DH said that when they went in to the court (which was in camera) he felt that the judge was fair and in some ways he wished he had tried to go further and block the move.

There's a lot at stake with such a conflict of interests. DH has tried throughout the experience to think about how he would jusitfy his actions today in the future to his son. He felt that if he had tried to block the move entirely or take DSS away from his mother then this could be greatly turned against him in the future. Imagine he succeeded to block the move and his ex would tell her child that he ruined their lives, they could've had so much more etc etc. Now we have a court order that states access arrangements unti DSS reaches seniority and DSS will always know that his dad fought for his rights to retain his access.

DH ex's new boyf has a job offer in Oz, that's how they could go... they couldn't apply for the visa without my DH and now they have begun the process. It could be quite a long time before they leave, if they even manage to at all.

as an aside there are many reasons why i wouldn't be sure about having DSS reside with us, but the number 1 reason being he really loves his mum and i'm sure he would miss her. She hasn't really ever mistreated him and she is his birth mother, I think it would be quite awful to try to seperate them now.