Hello
a little advice if i could? my husbands ex has moved the children 2 hours away from us, so to accomodate the children as to not have them driving all that way being round trip of 4 hours we moved approx 45 mins away from them, the court order which was set in place was that we pick the girls up on friday night and she is to pick them up on the sunday night every 2nd weekend. she and her partner are both living on benefits, she has a son to a previous marriage which she receives child support for he is 14, she has my husbands 2 children which we pay child support for and she has a 9 month old baby to her new husband and another on the way. she phone the other night to tell us the child support was going down and because she has a mortgage and her other child support is going down she wont be able to afford to drop or pick the kids up, so there for if we dont do both trips we wont be able to see the children. can she do this? my husband can bearely pay for his car loan to get to work and his maitenance. so he wont be able to afford to drive both ways. i pay all the house bills becasuse he cant on his wage, so i cant give him the money either.... can she do this? if so what do we do? the kids want to spend as much time with us as possible and never want to leave so i dont want to not see them..

many thanks for any help.

Vanessa

She can't just change orders or re-arrange them willy nilly, both parties are subject to the same orders and need to follow them. This is perhaps the legal response to if she can do it, realistically is a different story.

In hindsight you may have been able to stop her from moving from the area or taking the kids from the area but thats of little use now. She has moved and you have followed.

As it's your husband who picks the kids up and there mother who retrieves as it is said in the orders ( I hope they are court orders not a parenting plan. ) he could simply pick the children up have the weekend then wait for her arrival to pick them up, If she rings then he can state what a good boy he is and that he is doing what has been said in the orders. She can make her own mind up if she wants to collect them or not.

You would not be breaching the orders and the court has done this because of shared cost.

Now if she refuses to hand over the children because she can't afford to pick them up at the end of the visit this is a breach and you file breach of orders.

If she does not pick them up then you have the kids a bit longer, of course he will provide proof that his budget and limited and with the price of fuel going up he can't afford the costs to do both trips.

Hopefully you have a record of the conversation where she refers to her demand that both pick up and drop off are done by the father.

The only thing left is to decide what suits you best and will be least expensive.

I also hope you have recorded the move that was made and whether you objected to it etc etc.................

Hope this helps a little if not let me know a bit more.

We had access withheld a number of times. In our case we did involve the police on at least one occasion to enforce the order, but when involving the police to attend the location with you, you need to weigh up the pro's and con's of the impact on the kids.

In our case my partner turned up to pick up the children for his court ordered access arrangement. His ex knew we were taking them on a nice weekend away and decided to try to stuff up plans. The kids were screaming and crying at the windows for their dad to take them and their mother was barring him from taking them so we called the police and they went on their weekend away.

It had the effect essentially of putting the ex in her place, making her aware that we would in fact take steps necessary to see the kids and the affect for the kids was to see this was wrong of their mother so she could not twist the story around to say their father didn't care enough to take them later on. On the other hand if the kids were crying not to come with us, calling the police would have had a negative effect, so we would not have done it.

Her financials are her problem, not yours. She should have thought about all of that before moving. I'd stick to your guns. It makes me so angry when I hear of parents using their kids as blackmail to get their own way.

One thing to remember is the police as a force do not and can not enforce orders but they can be used as a peace keeper so to speak. No disrespect KAE this happened in your case but most the people I talk too are point blankly refused service regarding custody matters.

They can do certain situational things but they are limited.

Be careful and make sure you record everything in some way.

She has not breached the orders nor is she suggesting that she will, she is how ever attempting to change the orders and if you follow this you will set president for future alterations " He has been picking up and dropping off for 6 months your honor ". This makes it sound like there is no breach because it has been agreed upon and may even transfer into a change of orders at the judges discretion, watch you back.

If she refuses to allow access to the children she is breaching the order. This I thought is what she has threatened to do.

D4E is right though in not setting a precedent.

wishy77's hubby is being told that he now has to drive the kids back from their visit with dad.

The X is saying that since her child support payments have now gone down and she can not afford to pick them up this now falls on him to both pick up and drop off, the orders say dad picks up on Friday and mum picks them up from dads on Sunday.

Realistically it will become a breach if she doesn't pick them up as this is what the orders state. If she refuses to let the kids go with their dad this is also a breach. If she uses blackmail and try's saying that I won't let the kids go unless QQQQ happens and it is agreed upon, you may feel that you have been put under duress to accept and then change your mind. It's the X's responsibility to pick them up and comply with orders.

Even if the orders are breached it's up to the court to implement what will happen because of said breach, if you call the police they do not have authority to ensure the orders but they may be of help to mediate but they can not remove the children from one parent and hand them to another.

Sometimes the police are called to remove a person from the property that will not leave etc....... dad trying to get the kids for his access time may end up with an AVO for next to nothing. Don't forget some can see the real problem and may put more effort in than other, so it is with public servants too.

You could be right. The police have a pretty good history of what has transpired. They went to talk to the ex regarding the orders at the time my partner picked them up. They didn't physically take the children from the mother to hand to the father. The ex and myself may have come to the same assumption 'that they could if they wanted to'. I don't think either of us knew they could not physically act on it.

I have to say, in our case, the police have been absolutely brilliant. Even now they are telling us that is what they are there for and they see their role as supporting children and good families such as ourselves. We've been lucky on that one. Took a push in the beginning but now we're well supported. Mind you, we don't ring every 5 minutes of the day. Just when we have nowhere else to turn.

It's good to hear that some cops still make a damn fine effort, I know in suburbia where we use to live they often didn't have the time to attend straight away but you could make a time for such issues and they would oversea the situation, other have simply flatly refused any help at all.

Always advisable to keep on the good side of the police they provide much to assist in these matters and many will do their best to help.

We couldn't get much in the way of help either. But after the xmas eve catalyst where the poor kids were involved, they've honestly bent over backwards. They know what is happening and they're not happy about it.

When I spoke with them the other day, they said to me, that's exactly what we're here for, the children and good families. I felt touched I have to say.

thanks everyone, we will keep that all in mind. she was trying to give us full custody of the kids but with our jobs its just not practical as we both are away at times. we were lead to believe its what the kids wanted to do but when we asked why did they want to come live with us, the couldnt give us an answer. After we said no, and that we would have them stay extra weekends etc thats when she brought up the child support issue, so i would be safe to assume she was dumpng them off because she thought that her child support is going to down so whats the point in having them..... so thanks all