Don't give up - your child needs you and is probably deep down pleased you are doing something to sort things out for them - the worse feeling for them is feeling abandoned. Your child should only be spoken to by Cafcass/Social workers once and they are supposed to make it a relaxed friendly chat - often at school. I know what you mean because I felt like giving up once when my son was being alienated and under massive pressure. But what stopped me was realising I would be a) abandoning him and b) leaving him with someone who was capable of psychologically harming him. After the final order he said life was much better since the court order (he only knew there was a court order because ex told him!). And they get over things quite quickly.
FHDRA is an opportunity for negotiations and to reach agreement for a consent order. Are you being represented?
What is the current situation? Do you get to see your child at all and has your ex made any allegations about you?
No, she completely stopped in April the contact on stupid facetime which we don't really enjoy cz they are kids they run around its pointless.
The process has been exhausting I will just quickly summarize to you.
Separated 4 years ago post Covid, a court proceeding started in 2020. Because during Covid there were soo many outstanding cases that the first hearing date FHDRA was given to us was after 9 months. basically there were lengthy gaps and by the time the final order was made it was after 3 years (2023)
It was unsupervised contact which my ex- was against it , she wanted supervised! Not because I'm violent or a dangerous person I'm just an average man working in a white collar job. She just didn't wanted unsupervised cz she was just jealous and may be you can say a vengeance.
So I kind of know how the whole court proceeding works, In the beginning first year I was getting solicitor to represent my self and do the paper work but going forward I was doing the paper work and was representing myself (and mind you I was doing well ) Instead of flocking money to these solicitors.
So the final order was made 2023 and she stopped contact few months ago and made an application for amendment of CAO to be supervised (as per her children are getting distressed) She has been exploiting children (this was established in the previous court hearing) and doesn't encourage children nor say anything positive about a father. Basically she doesn't want the children to go to my house she is getting worried the children will enjoy and want to spend time at my house more.
So it took me three years for the CAO to be made going through the whole bloody court process, cost and all. And now she started the process again which is going to take another 2 years I guess. (So total years) Now another social worker will do the whole S7 report speak to parents, children go to the whole crap again which is why I'm frustrated as I was delighted when the Final order was made last year thinking finally this crap is over.
That's the reason I said I should just give up and concentrate on my life instead of going through the court process again for 2 years.
In a way I'm kind of stuck I'm fighting to see my children but unable to, so if I stop seeing the children the children would think that I abandanant them or mom would tell them see dad doesn't care about you or doesn't wanna see you (which is not the case). So I'm kind of stuck in both situation if you know what I mean.
