I have been separated since January, and was paying maintenance over and above the CMS calculation through their website. 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 CMS 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?
From the sound of things, you and your wife arranged access between yourselves, and you have voluntarily given more than the CMS recommended amount of Maintenance For Your Child (for one child it’s set at 17% of net income) for as long as possible, and even now you adhere to the CMS guidelines.
If your ex is threatening to reduce or stop contact with your child, you may want to use our free Access Denied Action Plan.
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 family-law mediation service or a solicitor about your position. If you and your ex can’t reach an agreement about access, you might want to have mediators or solicitors to help arrange an agreement between the two of you.

Check what legal rights you have as a separated father. Takes 2 minutes.
Try our Father's Rights Checker free, here on this site →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 that there is a report from the Children and Family Court Advisory. A support service officer 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.
Your situation may be slightly different. ask a question below ↓ and our editorial team will reply with our advice.
My ex partner left the family home end of January this year.. we have a 3 year old boy and 21 month old girl together we have tried mediation to sort out contact arrangements order but he didnt wish to continue, we then had a court hearing for c100 child arrangements order which he didnt attend ..so i now have a court order which states the chilldren live with me and are to spend day time twice a week with dad .. he now is taking me to court for overnight access which i feel the children wont cope with at this moment in time as they are very young and never stayed away from me or there own home.
There is also 3 older children who live with dad now and im also concerned there is not enough room for 5 children to share 2 bedrooms. The children are all girls age 8 10 and 13. Its alot of change for my little ones and think it will cause more disruption and they wont deal well with being in a house overnight with 3 older children and sharing a room. they have separate rooms at moment and use to just the 3 of us. The find it overwhelming when they have been to dads as there alot more people around and are hard to settle when they come home. i want to wait til they are a little older to stay overnight. My court order was only issued a month ago . How will caffcass see this and do you think i can stop overnight until there is sufficient space and they can deal with being away from me as the whole sistuation has made them very clingy to me.
I separated from my Wife in February 2017 when our son was only 10 months old. Since April 2017 we agreed in mediation to have shared custody and I have looked after our son for half the time single handily whilst having a full time job. Since the beginning of January 2020 our once amicable relationship has broken down to the point it become untenable and now without any notice has reduced my visitations with my son to one night a week without a court agreeing to it.
Can my Ex Wife dramatically change our sons routine which has been in place for over two years without the courts approval? I was supposed to get my son tonight and she has not dropped him off and will not answer my phone calls so I can try and reason with her. I'm absolutely devastated and do not wish to battle it out in court for two reasons. 1) Going through an unnecessary potentially lengthy court battle would have detrimental impact on our son as it is a stressful situation for all involved and 2) Paying unnecessary legal costs which can be expensive when the monies could be better spent on our son and each other.
What is the first step I should take?
Hello,
I have been divorced for my ex wife for over ten years now and my daughter is now 15 years old, whom live with my ex wife and I have noticve in past few months that my ex wife has made contact arrangements more difficult by doing things like changing previously agreed dates like for things like hoildays. that daughter does not want go on or times and places for collection of my daughter at which is not all possible for us to do at the short notice. I try to accomate my Ex-wife as much possible with dates and times were I can, but feel like it getting more difficult and I am considering weather to speak family lawer about my concerns that my ex wife is not upholding her end of our argreement made in 2008 in family court..Any advise please thank you
My concern is I can see her going for custody of our son, purely for the money. How would a judge see it if my son has lived with me for the past 7 months and I have allowed full access to the mum whenever she wants but she now insists he lives with her and her new fella. Even a 50/50 living arrangement split would be detrimental to his progress as she would rather put an ipad in front of him than read to him or help with his homework (something we do every night but she never did in the 5 years we were together.
Any guidance would be greatly appriciated
I previously had to seek legal advice and participate in mediation when my ex stopped me and my wife from seeing the children, but I incurred huge debt from this which I am still paying because my ex is a lawyer and did everything she could to ramp up my legal fees as high as possible. I cannot really afford to go down that route again and she wasn't truthful during the mediation anyway.
If this were to go to court, would it be considered reasonable for my ex to arrange weekend activities for the children in her local area, not mine (without any consultation) and insist that I take them to those activities if I want access? The main problem is that these activities do not involve all the children and so the practicalities are not straightforward. Firstly I don't always have access to the car for the full weekend because my wife works long hours and is often away from home for work (and her company car is our family car). In addition, unless I expect the child/ren not involved in the activity to wait around for the whole time that the other children are participating, it means a minimum 1.5 hour round trip to come home again and then another 1.5 round trip to pick up. Because my ex has arranged activities on both the Saturday and the Sunday, if my wife is away and I cannot leave the remaining child/ren at the house, it means the children spending 5-6 hours in the car during every 2 day visit that I have them!
After we returned from a recent holiday, my ex began causing problems again and has now stated that because the children only stay with us for 20 hours in total each visit (bearing in mind this is because of the activities she has arranged and so I put my foot down
My ex has been removing my access week on week at short notice.
She has requested a letter/email of my proposal for shared access.
I have replied several times but the format of my proposal is 'unacceptable';
not the times just the layout.
Is there a standard template for such arrangements? I cant find one.
ps I am well aware she is just being difficult, but need to clear this hurdle.
my works changed so now can have the girls every wednesday & thursday but when i ask my ex for thursdays she said no ,take me to court .can anyone help me
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