Contact order via court

[Wibble01]

Hi all

I'm posting here as the dasdsnet forum has so little through traffic.

To keep brief(ish) I'm divorced. Separated just over two years ago.Did mediation earlier this year for child access and then it all went to.pot as my ex and eldest (he's 12) had a big fall out and he ended up at mine for 4 months pretty much with barely a home visit (ex has reluctantly admitted her responsibility). Things have since settled and he(eldest)gravitated back to ex's last couple of months as November to January is my busiest time at work. ex didn't take well what happened with eldest and has limited contact with younger kids since September.

So going forward I think with eldest we are broadly agreed on an arrangement where he spends about six nights a fortnight at mine. But basically within reason he can move between homes as he likes (allowing for practicalities and ideally spending weekends alternatively between houses).

For the others Im expecting an EOW type arrangment.I'm going to push for.a.bit more than that as we agreed EOW in mediation and a Sunday for a few hours on my mon weekend. I'm also planning on offering to have the others when I have eldest which would be something like Saturday -Wednesday one week and Monday -Wednesday the other. I know ex willnot.go for this but assume court will at least grant something similar to what was agreed in mediation.

My question is once in place do court orders get honoured. I suspect my ex will just ignore when it suits.I realise there are consequences but do they really get enforced and is it a never ending back and forth?

They can be enforced, but from experience it can be a relentless merry-go-round of back and forth to court. However if you're not happy with the contact being stopped and started at your ex's whim you can apply to vary the existing court order for example as the children get older getting them directly from school so theres less chance of handovers being sabotaged. Eventually if your ex keeps showing contempt for the decisions of the court you could always go for residency, as it sounds like eow + the additional days you're asking for would take you to 50/50 anyway, and then it would be your ex who would have to apply for contact.

Yes they can be enforced. Via the courts.
Repeated (blatant) breaches do not go down well. agree with contact starting from school and dropping back to school, completely removes the ex from handovers and court orders can be given to schools. It’s very difficult for parents to blatantly breach in front of school staff.

As another poster said, if mum stops contact it will be a merry go round of taking her back to court for enforcement, her getting a slap on the wrists, her ignoring it and it starting again....

My OH went through 4 years of this. A CO in place. The EW ignoring it, stopping contact (as a way to punish my OH). Purely out of spite, not because it was in the best interests of the children.

My advice would be, the minute the CO is broken, you need to get her in court for breaching.

After 4 years of my OH trying to work with her (unfortunately you can not reason with some mothers who think they own the children) a judge who she had been in front of twice for breaches remembered her (unfortunately you tend to get a different judge everyone). This time, instead of slapping her on the wrist he threatened to remove the children from her and told my OH the minute she breached again to email him and he would take action. She has behaved since then, but it took 4 years of stress to get there.

Good luck.

As PPs said do handovers as much as possible from school, and if you are doing part of the holidays do it in a block. So instead of sticking to your term time arrangement you need to have them for full weeks and alternate who has the first part of the holidays yearly. Make sure pick up on the last day of term is always from school. This will stop your ex refusing to allow you to have the kids for Christmas when it's your turn. For inset days the parent who has them for that part of the holiday looks after them.

Due to my DP's ex playing games when it was going through Court, DP's female barrister saw through her and ensured their calendar followed this pattern. This was a deviation from their Parenting Plan.

Your ex has shown she doesn't consider the children as individuals and punished you all for your eldest's child's decision, so you may as well push for this.

Thanks for the responses. Im due a response on my 'access' with the kids shortly after Christmas day. I'm not expecting it to be what I want or anything like so I think court is likely.
If you have to go back to enforce is it the same cost as the initial application?

£115 for an enforcement application and you can easily represent yourself.

After going back to enforce the order the Judge can allow you 6 months to bring it back (without repaying the fee) if there has been another breach. But yeah every time you go back to court you have to pay the fee, for repeated breaches it should be billed to the Respondent it would soon stop them from breaking the court orders. I hope everything works out OP and you get the time you want with your kids it's a shame its been dragged out so long and now wont be a step closer until after Christmas.

I think you are in for a fight - your plan has you as the RP - 8 days per fortnight and her NRP for the youngest and the eldest nominally 6 days per fortnight but the ability to d what he wants.

You are becoming RP and her NRP - would expect big push back, this complicated and is open to abuse on both sides.

How is maintenance going to play out on this arrangement?

Good luck OP - I think compromise on both sides is going to be needed to ake this work for all the DCS

@bogoffmda in the UK the Family courts do not care about maintenance in child arrangements cases. It's left in the majority of cases to the CMS as most people are not extremely high earners. The CMS will work out the number of overnights on a yearly basis, and follow the Court order if either parent disputes it.

It is also possible for different children in the same family due to their ages to spend more time with one parent.

Hi all. Update on the above. I've received an email from ex on access.
For eldest she's agreed a 50/50 split so that's all good.

For the others an EOW arrangement. Well building up to a EOW. It's less time than we agreed in mediation.

Glad you have 50 50 for eldest op hope you can get more eventually for your other children, try and push for pick ups and drop offs at the school if you can. Sorry you got screwed over after mediation x

@BlindMedusa

Glad you have 50 50 for eldest op hope you can get more eventually for your other children, try and push for pick ups and drop offs at the school if you can. Sorry you got screwed over after mediation x

Thanks. I'm going to use the eldest access time to argue for more time with the others. May take a bit of time but will get there!