Fathers rights???

Does anyone know what rights a father has, in the eyes of the CSA?

There have been a few changes over the years and we wondered if anyone knows what the rights are..i.e. it would appear that the courts always awarded custody to the mother...have the times changed this ruling?

Clive has joint custody of Daniel but his ex is increasingly denying him access. He is happy to contact the CSA but doesn't really want things to get nasty if he can help it, nor drag it back through the courts, so just wondered what his options are these days.

http://csa.gov.uk/

The CSA has nothing to do with custody or rights etc, it is solely concerned with maintenance payments.

What was the original agreement of the court/parties etc?

Thanks SM

It doesn't really have anything to do with the money side of things, Clives ex is making access more and more difficult, it is upsetting Daniel and making Clive so angry.

At the time of the divorce, joint custody was awarded, joint access, out of court arrangements for child maintenance, and he paid her a lump sum and gave her a car rather than monthly maintenance. Apparently, as she was 10 years younger than him and came into the relationship with nothing, the courts allowed him to keep the house that was his before he met her, she had already emptied it of most of the contents though when she did a moonlight flit.

At that time, Clive agreed that Daniel should live with her as he was working full time, she only worked two nights a week so Clive would have him those nights. Clive also has him every other weekend. She would drop him off and pick him up at the weekends and Clive would do the work run.

Nothing has changed except Clive and I are now married and she refuses to do any of the driving, (20 miles each way), involved in collecting Daniel and returning him to her early each morning so that he can go to school. This changed when we moved 2 years ago, even though we only moved 5 miles further away. As we are doing the collecting and delivering so that she can go to work for two nights and then claim everything going from the government because she works part time, we thought it would be reasonable that she does half the journeys but she refuses to. We even suggested that she only does half the journeys for the work run, and we do the collecting and return on the weekends we have him, but she refuses to do any driving at all.

Over the last several months, since Daniel said he wanted to come and live with us, then suddenly changed his mind when she told him he would never see her again if he did, she has tried to stop him coming over on a couple of weekends, and has also said she isn't working some nights so Clive can't see him then either.

He is a lovely boy when he is here, especially for long weekends over the school holidays, but becomes sullen when he has to return to her, but even worse when he comes back after spending time with her. He comes out with things, usually slagging me and his dad off, and it is obvious that he hasn't a clue what he is talking about, especially as they had been divorced for 8 years before Clive and I even met!

She has had him for over a week now without Clive seeing him, we were supposed to have him Monday and Tuesday nights but she suddenly said Clive couldn't have him as she wasn't working...she didn't ask if we still wanted him even though she wasn't working, there was no option, Clive was just told. Daniel is supposed to spend the last weekend of his holidays with us, then we return him on Sunday night so he is with his mum Sunday night and all day Monday before he starts at his new school on Tuesday. We know he is worried about it, and we also know that she has been winding him up about it, (she is a nasty piece of work, once told Daniel that Clive wasn't his real dad!!), but she phoned this morning and said Daniel couldn't come this weekend as he was ill. Daniel then came on the phone and told Clive that he hadn't felt well and that he didn't think he would be well enough to come over...I asked Clive if he sounded poorly or upset, and he said he sounded completely disinterested in talking to his dad.

Clive is worrying himself sick that she is brainwashing Daniel into hating him, that she will get the CSA onto him and that he will get classed as a bad dad. Whilst he has been paying maintenance for Daniel he has been overpaying her, so I try to reassure him, but I don't know anything about the system and wanted to see what the CSA would class as being his rights as a parent...I didn't realise they were only involved in the financial aspect

I have a feeling Clive is going to have to sort this out with her, which is difficult as she is horrible to him unless she wants something, or he is going to have to drag it through the courts, which he doesn't want to do for fear of upsetting Daniel.

Daniel does know the reasons his parents split up, although she tells him that it was Clive that had the affair, Clive has all the paperwork to prove it was her but feels Daniel is too young to be upset by it all. I have read through it and cannot believe someone can be so vile to another human being.

I'm just fed up with the whole thing, it seems we can't run our lives without disruption from her

FWIW I have been through a similar situation. I have only two bits of advice.

1 See if you can get mediation involved.

2 VITAL, however you both feel I am sure that both are not saying anything negative about his mother and playing her game.

children are the product of two parents and thus if one of them is constantly denigrated it makes them doubt their OWN self worth as of course they are part of that parent.

I have bitten holes in my tongue on numerous occasions in the past.........

In the end I cannot even guarantee that your stepson will not be permanently brainwashed unfortunately...........

It is a horrible, distressing situation which makes you say "IT is not FAIR" but there are no easy answers IME.

Not sure if that helps but I empathise, deeply.

I am so sorry you are both going tru this
It is horrible how evil people can be
I totaly dont understand how so far down the line someone can still hate so much
and drag a child down with her

You cant make her do part of the journey , no matter how unfair it seems, unfortunately it seems if Clive wants to see Danial he is going to have to carry on doing the pickign up and dropping off.

Maybe the fact it winds Clive up , is why she is refusing to do the journey so the way to approach this is for Clive to fit in with her demands.

Refusing contact is another matter , you may have to go back to the family courts to sort that out.

Neither parent in such situations should influence their children on the whys and what nots, its unfair to said child, and unfortunately as SB said, there is no guarantee Danial wont take sides especially as he is getting older, boys tend to be protective of their mums, even more so as they get older, so you may find Danial falling more and more on him mums side.

She may be feeding him with untruths but sadly you cant do anything about that, and Clive Is just going to have to try and be the bigger person and give Danial no cause for hitting out.

If Clive has to consent to doing all the traveling , then its a small price to pay.

Hope it can be sorted without any influence on Danial.

Thanks again SB We are very careful what we say about his mum and only ask what he has been up to and never say anything nasty, I tend not to get involved when Clive is discussing things with him, I can see how upset Clive is and I don't think that I can add anything to help him, so Ij ust make myself busy or sort out food etc. Because of him letting things slip to us, we make sure we are never in earshot of him if we have something to say about her, she is his mum after all and he loves her, it wouldn't be fair of us to take our feelings out on him.

Unfortunately I think she is jealous of the time he has here, he comes to the dog shows with me, walks Hen with me and spends more time with me than he does his dad. I think this is because he can talk to me about things without feeling that he is being disloyal to his dad about his mum. I gave him an old mini CD player a few months back, it was stuck in a cupboard not getting used and I asked him if he would like it, he loves it in his room and we've bought him some CD's so he spends hours just laying on his bed with his headphones on. Suddenly he puffs his chest out and tells us that his mum is buying him the biggest and best stereo there is for Christmas...well that's nice for him but it's almost like it's a game, we do something so she has to to it but better. Fortunately, Clive isn't into games so, although he gets really cross about her, ultimately he fears for Daniel if he doesn't see him enough to make sure he stays on the straight an narrow...his mum lets him stay up til all hours even on a school night and he goes to great lengths to tell me she doesn't make tidy his room like I do

We just walked Hen and Clive said that, if Daniel were older and said he didn't want to see him, he would be sad but would have to accept it. How it is at the moment he feels that his ex is pulling his strings and he just doesn't know what to do to get it all sorted, especially as he doesn't want Daniel hurt.

Thanks for that The thing is, she hates me too and I had nothing to do with the split, I treat Daniel as I would my own child, you would think that she would be happy that he has another loving home to come to. I think her real problem is that she was cheating, Clive caught her out and has the evidence to prove it, she knows that Clive won't show it to Daniel until he is old enough, and only if he asks to see it. We wonder if she is trying to split them up so that he bever knows the true extent of her lies.

Part of me feels sorry for her, she has no-one, she can't seem to keep friends and she falls in and out with her sister. But it was her choice to give Clive and everything that went with him away, she must live in terror that we will take Daniel away from her too.

Thanks Jackie

The problem with Clive doing all the travelling is the costs and the time, it means that he is paying out for fuel and turning down work in the 1 1/2 hours each journey takes, (there and back). It does help when I can do it for him as he can stay at work longer but, we have to get permission from her that I can do it and she won't always agree to it...she has us over a barrel and she knows it. With finances being how they are we just can't afford for him not to be working if the work is there.

We try so hard not to try to influence him, we did ask him if he wanted to live with us as there were better schools and more opportunities for him over here, also his mum won't take him to any clubs or let him have friends round to play...we just though that, as there are two of us, we could provide a more stimulating life for him. He said that he would like that, then changed his mind from when Clive dropped him off on the Sunday afternon to picking him up on the Monday afternoon. We obviously asked him why, and he said that his mum said he would never see her again if she moved in with us...what kind of mother says something like that to a child?

We've had quite a few conversations about living here, usually instigated by Daniel like, if I lived here I would be able to join the Rugby club, if I lived here I would be able to help you on jobs when I'm not in school, and learn a trade (to Clive), if I lived here I could always come out for walks and to the dog shows, I could have my friends to stay if I lived here. I could do my homework using the internet and Sheree could help me...so many things he comes out with. He gets Clive's hopes up time and time again, but it never comes to anything.

I have to agree that Daniel is a mummy's boy, she walks him over to the park, walks him down the road to school, doesn't let him out of her sight, and I wouldn't dream of saying she is a bad mum, she just seems to be trying her best to stop Clive having anything to do with him and turning Daniel against us.

As I mentioned previously, Daniel saw someone on tv having a psternity test, he asked what it was so we told him, he then said would he have to have one, that's when it all spliiled out that his mum was angry about something and said that Clive wasn't his real dad. I asked Clive whether he wanted to do the test but he said no because he would be fearful of the results and it would kill him to lose the son he has loved for all these years.

I think you are all right, Clive and her need to sort this out between them, maybe the mediation route initially..I just feel very helpless when I should be strong for Clive.

She sounds a very bitter woman. I'm in a similiar position.Husband had been divorced for three years when I met him. His ex had an affair and left to be with the other man.( since split up after she had another affair) The trouble started as soon as we started seeing one another, his daughter couldn't stay if I was there cos ex didn't know me. Then when that didn't work she told daughter how I was trying to steal her Dad away from her and that I didn't like her. Anyway eight years later we still have loads of trouble. If we have daughter extra times to help out ex while working etc there's no thanks but when we need to change a weekend there's hell to pay and then can't see her for a couple of weeks. I'm afraid the mother holds all the cards and now we just go with the flow. We won't and can't be held to ransom by a bitter and jealous woman who uses her child to try to get her own way. I make it a point to never say anything bad to daughter about her mother cos I think that she's old enough now to realise what she's really like. It's very hard when women are like this, I wouldn't show myself up in this way. Dad's get bad press for not bothering to see their children and then when you get the ones that really care and want to be involved in their kids lives you come up against some one like this. I think they are unhapppy and can't bear the fact that their ex husband has moved on and found happiness with someone else. Good luck to you both, I hope your step son can keep in contact with you, It can only enrich his life.

P.S if i didn't know better I'd think both our husbands had been married to he same ex wife! Keep your chin up.xxx

I sympathise Sheree Mark went through similar with Joel. I have seen him bit his tongue to keep her sweet so he could get to see him. I cold scheerfully fo tol h ehr a few home truths but I had to stand by and watch Mark suffer because she is a nasty mixed up mess. Things are settled now but it has taken a lot of time and Mark having to back down time and time again even though she was playing silly games.

My friends son has his son but he walked out of the house with him and took her to court and she has so much previous stuff going on they awarded Lloyd access.