SA Ex Withholding Son's Passport - Help?

[nicol]

Hi,

My son's Father has his passport in his possession and is ignoring me when I ask for it. We have a holiday booked for August 2019 which he is aware of.

Background: Ex took our son away to NZ on holiday in 2017. I signed and provided parental content for him to get our son's passport. Now that I am wanting to take our son away, he is ignoring my requests for the passport which is yet another controlling and spiteful behaviour from him (long history, he is a narcissist and I endured endless psychological, emotional and sometimes physical abuse in the relationship which ended 5 and half years ago).

To further complicate this, communication has broken down recently and my son is refusing to see or talk to his Father (he physically assaulted our son a month ago along with being aggressive towards son and me). I have always encouraged and facilitated but now it has taken an abusive turn (reported and working with a Psychologist). That is a very long story, cut very short!

Just wondering what is the best steps to take to recover my son's passport from his Father? Thanks in advance!

 

[sammy01]

Cancel all holiday. Flights / accommodation. Try and recoup all costs. WHY? You're gonna need to go to court to get the passport. Chance of getting that done before August? Not great.

 

[Tim W]

Cancel all holiday. Flights / accommodation. Try and recoup all costs. WHY? You're gonna need to go to court to get the passport. Chance of getting that done before August? Not great.

Doing this, of course, with the associated financial losses, is exactly what he wants you to do.
I suggest a phone call to the Passports Office.
They can't give you legal advice, and they can't solve your Family Law problems.
But you won't be the first person ever to ask this question.
So, maybe, they might be able to explain about what happens
with passports (and only about passports) in this sort of situation.

I do think however, that you're looking for an Order that he hand over the passport.
And that means a trip to court.

 

[sammy01]

Plan B - (with a bit of strategy). Write to ex. Dear ex, can you please confirm that you will be supplying XXXX passport. I would appreciate it if you could supply the passport before XXXXX. If you're not prepared to supply the passport I will provide you with a passport application form for you to sign so I can get a passport on XXXX behalf.

Kind Regards

My thinking is you'll have a solid paper trail - if this does go to court, you want to have a solid paper trail that shows dad is a twit.

 

[Essilaia]

My parents are also divorced, and I often see them alone, so I have to, unfortunately. But if your son is of age and does not want to make contact, then this is his business. There's nothing you can do here unless you agree with him. Recently, by the way, when I flew to California to visit my father, I lost my driver's license! I had to find and make fake ids so that I could safely drive a car. But in the future, I will have to restore my real driver's license; otherwise, I will have big problems with the law. I hope you will agree with your son and everything will be fine for you.

 

[GlassHalfFull]

But if your son is of age and does not want to make contact, then this is his business. There's nothing you can do here unless you agree with him.

Not true. It completely depends on the age of the child. If he's considered by the court to not be old enough to make that decision (there's no exact age, but usually I would say it would be 10+), the court may decide to enforce contact unless there's strong evidence of a risk of abuse. I've heard of very sad situations where a parent is forced to encourage a child who is literally in tears at handover...

In circumstances where there was serious and documented violence, I don't think a court would enforce contact, at least not unsupervised. But this is the reason why family consultants investigate (including with the children directly) and write reports, because each parent may have a very different side of the story.

 

[Tim W]

Not true. It completely depends on the age of the child. If he's considered by the court to not be old enough to make that decision (there's no exact age, but usually I would say it would be 10+), the court may decide to enforce contact unless there's strong evidence of a risk of abuse. I've heard of very sad situations where a parent is forced to encourage a child who is literally in tears at handover...

In circumstances where there was serious and documented violence, I don't think a court would enforce contact, at least not unsupervised. But this is the reason why family consultants investigate (including with the children directly) and write reports, because each parent may have a very different side of the story.

In this context, "of age" can only mean the age of 18.
And an adult is not someone who can be subject to a Family Law order.

 

[GlassHalfFull]

Yeah, sorry I interpreted that sentence as "if your child is of that age" but you're right and I think we can assume he isn't "of age" though given the context above.