Can My Wife Change My Access Arrangements?

Q.

I have been separated since January, and was paying maintenance over and above the CSA calculation through their web site. As I work away during the week I was initially allowed access every weekend. In May my wife requested that she should be allowed access for 'Quality Time' every 3rd weekend, to which I agreed. Since then I have had to take a lower paid job, but I am still away during the week and I have now started to pay maintenance at the CSA rate. She now wants to reduce my access to ensure that I will have the children less than 104 nights per year.

Is she allowed to do this or am I better off going to court to gain access bearing in mind that I cannot have custody of them during the week.

A.

From the sound of things, you and your ex-wife arranged access between yourselves, and you have voluntarily given more than the CSA recommended amount of maintenance for your child (for one child it’s set at 15% of net income) for as long as possible, and even now you adhere to the CSA guidelines.

Since the access arrangement is apparently between yourselves, then the negotiations are whatever you work out between the two of you, really. What you might well want to do, and should do, is talk to a solicitor about your position. If you and your ex can’t reach an agreement about access, then you might want to have solicitors to mediate an agreement between the two of you.

Hopefully that will work, because you should see going to court as a proposal of last resort. It’s costly and time-consuming, and will do little to help relations between you and your ex, which on the surface would seem to have been quite good to this point.

You don’t mention how old your children are, but if you have to go to a court for a Contact Order and access set, their wishes will be taken into account, if they’re old enough to express them – the whole aim of the court is to set what’s best for the children. However, they will take prior access times into account, and the fact that you work away during the week should not matter in the least, since it hasn’t in the past.

You’re not disputing where they should reside, or even that your kids spend one weekend in three with their mother; you simply want to spend as much of your free time as possible with your children.

A court hearing on access will mean reports from the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service officer, who will interview you, along with your ex and others, in order to determine that you can meets the needs of the kids when they’re with you and whether they will be safe with you, even though you have almost certainly proved that to be the case in the past. It’s just procedure.

The ideal solution, though, is if you and your ex can resolve this amicably between the two of you.

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