For Parents

This blog post will be a bit more serious than some others, not my usual joking style but it is a post that I believe needs to be written and read.

As usual I will not name any names in respect of privacy but this situation is happening to too many people right up and down the country and something needs to be done.

We all know that marriages break up everyday for a million different reasons , sometimes there is blame and sometimes it's just life getting in the way . 2 adults make the decision to go their separate ways and try to get on with their lives. So far  ,so amicable , yes ?

Well no .It is not always just between 2 people , there are often children involved , young children who have no idea why Daddy isn't there to read a bedtime story or play horsey in the garden , older children , battling with their own teenage hormones , having to split their time between 2 homes , taking sides.

I have a good friend , his marriage broke down through no fault of his own and sadly ,but not unusually , his young Daughter stayed with her Mother.

Being a fair man and wanting the best for his Daughter he has no problem with paying to support her , although having 25% of his annual income and 25% of his disability tax credit means he has only £9500 a year to live on.In contrast his ex wife (the instigator of the separation) earns over £45k a year but still she has entitlement to child maintenance payments and would still do even if her income doubled overnight.

His main problem is connected to access.
For a long while his ex refused to let him see his Daughter , even though he has never done anything wrong , has never , ever been anything other than a loving Daddy , who before the marriage split was the major care giver in his little girls life , she was definately a Daddies girl.
 
The first step in gaining access is via mediation which my friend complied with but unfortunately his ex wife got agitated by this and refused to do more than one session.
So the next step was preparing a court application but before he could do this she decided that she would 'allow' access via the contact centre.

Again though this process is weighted in favour of the Mother (or resident parent) as the parent wanting access has to pay £53 per hour to the contact centre , which hardly seems fair in no fault cases. I can understand this if the Father has been aggressive or has to be supervised strictly with his children but in my friends case this is not so.

He is supposed to have access at the contact centre every 2 weeks and for a little while this was going well , he was reconnecting very well with his daughter who was enjoying having her Daddy back in her life.

But then his ex wife decided to make things a bit more difficult again . She claimed that it would not be at all possible for her to make the agreed contact meetings so he will not get to see his daughter for 6 weeks.
Okay if she has to work that is fair enough , but there are Grandparents who collect her from nursery and provide care to her but apparently are not capable of delivering her to a pre-arranged meeting with her Daddy.

Given that she is being seen to be complying over all with the arrangements there is nothing my friend can do to get help to see his daughter.This hardly seems fair , she is controlling the entire situation and the Father is left helpless.

One workable solution would be that in cases where access arrangements are not being met satisfactorily then support payments should be held until such time as they are.They could be held onto by the CSA in a fund and when it is proved that the 'Resident Parent' is fully compliant with the access ,  only then will full payment be made.

This will ensure that parents are not able to use their children as weapons against their former partners or they will lose out monetarily. The supporting parent would still be making the payments as usual , there is no question of that not happening.

If you have a moment please could you sign this petition to help Non resident parents to get to see their children whether they are Mothers or Fathers. Thankyou very much xxx

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/49800