Child Contact

[ThatsNotMyBakedPotato]

Hi I was wondering if someone could please advise. This is a bit of a long post so apologies in advance. Have NC for this post.

My partner has mediation with his ex over the contact arrangements for their 7 year old soon. For the past 6 years they've had no set arrangement in place and it has just been them sorting it out between themselves every week. However my partner (for various reasons I won't go in to) is now looking for a firm contact plan to be in place.

Originally he proposed EOW Friday from school until Monday to school and one night every week after school for a couple hours. (Plus 50% holidays) His ex rejected this on the basis that:

A) She did not want DSD going away with his without saying goodbye to her first so pick up would have to be her house on a Friday at 8pm when she gets in from work

B) She would have to be returned Sunday night as DSD has a school routine that needs to be followed

C) He can see her a night after school every week but it won't be set as they never know what they're doing so this would have to be arranged on a weekly basis. (No issue with the 50% holidays)

So thats what has been happening for the past 6 months, and it is working...ish. But my partner feels like he wants to be more involved in his daughters life than just Disney dad EOW and afterschool as and when, and wants this to still be changed to something nearer the original proposal if possible to allow him to do school drop offs / homework.

At mediation he is going to propose that if ex does not agree to Fri - Mon then he would prefer Sat morning - Mon morning instead of the current Fri night - Sunday night meaning he can do the school drop off, and at least have two FULL day and nights with her instead of getting her here on a Friday night purely to put her to bed, and then Sunday we can never really do anything decent because she has to be returned home by X time.

He also wants a set night through the week - and would prefer if this was an overnight rather than just after school as he would like to get her involved in a club or class perhaps around this area (DSD has mentioned she'd really like to go to an acting class and there is one near here on a Wednesday night for example) where she can have something him and her do together (not possible with the EOW set up for obvious reasons) and also allow her to make friends around this area for during the holidays etc. Also to again do the homework / school drop off etc.

His ex is unlikely to agree because she's said before overnights with school the next day are not allowed at all ever.

But does this sound like a reasonable proposal? In peoples experience does the "EOW and one night through the week" usually extend to an overnight through the week or is it usually just for tea etc?

In actual fact he would like much more contact than this, but it is his understanding that this is the "standard amount" given in court and to be honest his ex is unlikely to agree to even that amount.

He wants to avoid court.

Sorry for the long post!

If she said no then you have zero chance on avoiding court tbh
Sorry

It sounds reasonable from the outside - then look at it from the other side.

1. They had an arrangement and it worked for 6 yrs - one party wants it to change for their benefit and expects the other side to accommodate.

1. From what you have said, this is not all about Disney Dadding and wanting to be more involved - a change in work is the most likely.

1. Have you considered the impact on the other party - if used to being main carer and other side having as and when, with a bit of convenience to accommodate social activities - who loses the flexibility and who gains.

1. Maintenance - sounds like your DP did not have many ONs per night before. Him increasing that will have an impact on the other party, who may or may not be able to make up the shortfall.

What is being proposed is 4 nights one week and one night the week after.
If I were the other party that would be deeply suspicious that the next step will be more ONs on the short week to even it out more.

At the moment this seems more about your DP than the child - has anyone asked her what she would like to do -she will have a view after 6 months of this arrangement.

At the moment it comes across as your DP wants and EX has to go along - I can see why she is dragging her heels on minutiae. Agreeing to 50% of the holidays and EOW is a huge step from an ad hoc arrangement- the thought of such an antagonistic move of going to court when they are pretty close to an agreement seems crazy.

sorry have just seen

wed -fri, sat, sun, -wed

Is hugely disruptive to the other house
Mon, tues ( Mum)
Wed ( Dad)
Thursday ( Mum)
Fri/sat/sun ( Dad)
Mon tues (mum)
Wed (Dad)
Thurs -fri, sat, sun, mon, tues ( Mum)
Wed -( Dad)
thursday - Mum

Half of that 2 week cycle is madness and will be very unsettling

I don't get why she can't say goodbye to her when she drops her at school on the Friday morning and then is returned Sunday tea time? 🤷🏼‍♀️

In my opinion the child's mother is being so selfish. She should be happy that the child's father wants to be so involved and wanting to spend so much time with her. Not all but many fathers don't want to be involved and I think it's so lovely that he wants to be such a big part of her life. She is being unreasonable I get that it might be un settling but I'm sure they could come to a better arrangement in the long term the child is going to resent her mother for not allowing more contact with her father(providing that the child does want more contact) I would give anything for my children's father to be wanting to do much more and enjoy doing activities with them.

Hi,

Thank you for the replies.

Just to clarify, the arrangement hasn't been working for 6 years, there's been periods where it's been okay, and periods where it's been awful. To cut a long story short it's been gradually more "awful" than "okay" recently (including a period of contact being withheld from him for 6 weeks) hence why the change is necessary without going in to too much detail.

Maintenance is a separate issue, he has always payed maintenance and he would not be altering the amount paid if the number of overnights he did increased.

The main issue I suppose is that he wants to take her to to start a hobby which wouldn't be possible if he had to take her back home afterwards because it's a half hour drive so would be too late (whereas it's just along the road from us)

So is the norm in court EOW and 1 night after school per week?

I'm concerned about my partner and my DSD I want what's best for everybody.

Ex can't say goodbye to her before school on a Friday because she (ex) would miss her too much away for 2 nights without seeing her in the evening first in her words.

I should also say that DSD loves her time here with us. She has siblings here and when she's here for extended time there are never any issues with her adjusting etc.

Just to clarify again, he doesn't want to go to court, he wants to hopefully sort it at mediation. I was just wondering what was a reasonable proposal go to with. It sounded reasonable to me when he asked me but I'm obviously involved so wondered from an outside perspective.

It would be reasonable for them to have 50:50 which is far more than he has requested.

His request is reasonable and the reality of being at school is that life is very routined so a fixed night during the week is perfectly workable. It's very strange how DSD Mum refuses to let him do school drop off and very unreasonable of her IMHO.

The adults in this child's life need to weigh up the benefit to her of having more contact with her father against the reduction in time with her mother and the added complexities of going to school from different homes.

If the child is happy with the current arrangements and the mother is less than keen to make changes, it doesn't seem that reasonable to introduce what is quite a significant change to this child's life.

The parents would need to be able to cooperate and communicate very effectively to make this arrangement work well for the child and going to court isn't going to support that.

It sounds like recent changes in your partner's life mean that having more contact works for him. He needs to consider whether that is a reasonable justification for making significant changes to his child's life and his ex's life. It's a big ask to do this after six years of what sounds like a good cooperative relationship and a successful pattern of contact.

I would be very careful about disrupting an arrangement that is working well. Conflict can make everything very unpleasant for everyone concerned for a very long time.

Hi,

The situation has not been working at all and they are already minimum contact because of ex hostility. So going to court could not make the situation more hostile because it is already really bad.

He is not wanting more contact now because it suits him, he's always wanted more and she has not allowed it. However now that things between them have broken down entirely that is why they are looking for an actual official contact plan to be put it (because he was hardly permitted to see her latterly with the ad hoc set up)

I think probably the best thing to do is to abandon the overnight plan and propose one night per week after school only rather than an overnight. It's just a shame it means shell never be able to do any regular weekly activities with him due to timings etc.

@RandomMess He just feels very cut off from her school life because he doesn't do any drop offs and only very occasional pick ups when it suits his ex.

He gets his own parents evening appointments because ex refused to pass information on about when they were and gets reports cards / information sent to our house directly because again nothing was being passed over.

So he's involved in the sense he's taken steps to make sure he's up to date, but he's effectively been cut off from school otherwise.

If things are that hostile then accept you will end up in court and stick with plan to ask for weekday overnights.

Why are you giving up before you've started? If the ex has always been obstructive then all the more reason to press on. If you give the overnights a really good try and it doesn't work for DSD then you could relinquish them?

I think it’s fair to say to her that it’s eigher Friday school pick up to Sunday night or Saturday morning to Monday morning. The first suggestion is better in terms of your DSD keeping her routine for going to school.
I think it’s probabl fairer on DSD to have a set day during the week and not overnight as that can be quite disruptive for a child but I’m more thinking that if it changes each week it’d be difficult for her.
From the sound of it though I doubt you’ll avoid court

It does sounds like you need the court to set contact times if the current arrangement isn't working.

The ex wouldn't get much sympathy from the courts about needing to say goodbye on a Friday evening before not seeing her for two nights. However the child's needs should trump your partner's too.

I understand that he feels disconnected from school. If there isn't a good cooperative relationship there, I would recommend him either picking her up or dropping her off at school, not both. Otherwise you could end up with problems making sure there is clean school uniform, homework, permission slips, etc and the child is the one who suffers from that. He can make it clear in his statement to the court that this is the reason he is willing to forego picking up on Friday and dropping off on Monday morning.

What he's wanting to do is get a set night per week (so if we use Wednesday as an example as it would likely be a Tuesday or Wednesday that would work best) so the schedule would be

Week 1

Monday - Mums
Tuesday - Mums
Wednesday - Dads From School And Overnight
Thursday - Mums
Friday - Mums
Saturday - Mums
Sunday - Mums

Week 2

Monday - Mums
Tuesday - Mums
Wednesday - Dads From School And Overnight
Thursday - Mums
Friday - Mums from school and then dads from 8pm
Saturday - Dads
Sunday - Dads until 6pm

(Or else Saturday - Monday school week 2)

I know he wouldn't want to do anything too disruptive to her, so regardless of whether or not a court would tell him he could, if he thought it would unsettle he'd stick to EOW.

Hi @Goldmandra the idea of the Friday - Monday initially was to utilise the school as a pick up / drop off point to save DSD from observing ongoing conflict to save them having to see each other because it always escalates into an argument. They went to mediation before and part of what he asked was to for to stop shouting / swearing / arguing with him in DSD presence but this has never happened. It's actually escalated to her one time physically pulling her away from him at a handover. His idea was that he would pick her up Friday in her uniform, would wash the uniform here over the weekend and return her to school in the same uniform on Monday.

But like other people have said if he's never done the drop offs before (again not through choice) it might be disruptive to her for him to start this now

Why is it so important to him that she sleeps there during the week? If he is picking her up from school, he is maintaining those links. I would imagine she could go to bed half an hour later one night a week without too much of a problem and still do the hobby he is keen to do with her.

Remember, this is about the best thing for the child, not the wishes of the parent.

Apart from anything else although she has agreed to the EOW plan currently in place, she's already cut a few weekends because she's made plans on his time and keeps asking for her back early every week. So the informal plan isn't being stuck to just now either really (although it is...ish)

Geez just go to mediation then when she doesn't stick to it go to court.

She doesn't seem to want DSD to have a relationship with her Dad so stop procrastinating and crack on with the inevitable!

It's not that he's so keen it's just that he'd like to take her to a class and it's just along the road from us. It doesn't finish til 7:30 which means she wouldn't be home til 8 and although it's once a week ex has said before no later than 7pm home during the week.

Although it would be a half hour drive to school in the morning he'd be able to drop her off at 8:50 to school on his way to work too, whereas now she's in breakfast club at 08:00am every day.

@RandomMess You're right 🙄

His idea was that he would pick her up Friday in her uniform, would wash the uniform here over the weekend and return her to school in the same uniform on Monday.

OK. I see the point about avoiding opportunities for conflict.

However, he and the ex would also need to cooperate about PE kits, homework, permission slips, payments for trips, dress-up days, lunchboxes, etc. That seems like a lot more opportunities for conflict.

It doesn't sound like there's an easy answer.

She is 7 and has been in a high conflict situation for most of her life - there is no reason for this to continue.

Your Friday - Monday and one over night in week and half school holidays is imminently reasonable and will be seen as such by the court who more and more are looking to 50/50. This is exactly the contact pattern the court ordered in my case.

She is entitled to a good relationship with her dad and any step half siblings she may have.

Your partner needs to ask for more than he wants really.

The fact she is happy with you also comes into play and the issues around her mother being difficult with contact should not be used to dictate the future pattern.

I would recommend self repping in court.

And we never co-operated with the ex - it was impossible for many reasons - we just had our own sets of everything that lived in our house and DS took everything between houses if needs be, ridiculous but sometimes needs must.

The Friday - Monday thing was specifically to avoid conflict situations.and also to give DS a shield - he was visibly upset being moved directly from mum to dad and going to and from school prevented most of that (bar holidays).

Plenty food for thought here - thank you everybody for the opinions, it really is much appreciated.

My own kids (DSDs half siblings) aren't school aged yet so it's easy to forget the ins and outs of PE kits, permission slips etc.

She has all her own stuff at ours (about 2 weeks worth of clothes, pyjamas, toys, own room etc etc) so we're more than able to provide for her, it's just we'd like to do more if we were "allowed" (especially because she loves seeing her siblings, and they love seeing her)

I'm not going to tell my partner what to do obviously, he's dealing with this himself for the most part, but it's just to get my own head around what he's asking for from an outside perspective.