Hi,

just thought I'd share my experience of court residency and contact order stuff I am currently going through.

I'm self repping by the way. In original petition if you've got kids then at the same time you need to sort out contact with your kids. I really needed to do this as my wife was starting to get funny with me and making life difficult and I really missed my kids. I went over 2 weeks without seeing them once and it was really hard.

I agreed to mediation at the court. Got set a date within a week and duly turned up for mediation.

My interpretaion of mediation was at face value. I read the forms in detail and on the morning before I left to make sure I knew what was going to happen and what i need to bring/know.

I got caught out quite badly. At mediation you are supposed to work towards a common acceptable arrangement. We had one in place but my wife was fiddling with it so from scratch I thought a agreed one would happen but my first mistake was to turn up without several propositions to table. My wife with her solicitor had done this so I found myself having to work around one of her plans for contact which I knew wouldn't be anywhere near what I really wanted.

I'm really sorry to say as well that as a father/dad I didn't feel equal in the discussion, I felt like I was literally having to beg and battle for measly bit of contact and was told the norm for fathers is every other weekend at best. If you do better than this you are lucky. Personally I would have wanted every other week, not weekend.

Eventually we got to reach an agreement (something is better than nothing) so when it finished I thought that was it, mediation over so I was about to leave when I was politely told "you can't go yet". Mistake number 2, the correspondence from the court is vague, in actual fact the mediation was an immediate precursor to presentation and rubber stamp by the judge so it had to be written out and presented in 'judge talk' in about 15 mins.

Fortunately my wifes solicitor agreed to do this. I have paid since though, I've had grief because I'm self repping so my wife thinks I'm taking the ps by using her solicitor to do the work. I'm sorry about that but the bottom line is we need to reach the finish line one way or the other so I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

That was a little over 2 weeks ago. I was told I'd have a formal draft of the order in a couple of days as it needs to be typed up formally but not had anything yet. My wifes solicitor agreed to write it up and send me a copy I have heard nothing so maybe I should do it myself today but most importantly it doesn't matter too much as in principle it has gone before a judge and the arrangement, even if it was a handwritten rush job, is now in place.

The residency order bit is parked for the moment which I am ok with as I have got contact in place, therefore I am recognised as a part of my childrens lives and thats all I want now and forever. You can caveat the contact order so that if it doesn't work out in 6 months you re visit, I'll dig up the right term if I can find it.

So hopefully this gives someone else a bit of insight on what to expect, and you could save yourself some time and money with the residency order bit. Just don't turn up un prepared without anything to table or you may feel you are on the back foot to start.

Not sure what happens next after I send back the petition from my wife but maybe I can find that in the forum somewhere and be a bit better prepared.

SB

hi ,thanks for sharing your experience.
It saddens me when I see one partner uses the children like this.If only they realise the damage they are causing I am sure this never happen.
Hope you can maintain a lot more contact through different means.
To me ,specially with younger children,I would love maximum contact,look at it as a bonus,some more me time.And better for the greiving children,do beleive me,they grieve too
take care