Recovery Order?

[JadeGoldCoast]

Hi Sammy, we completely agree with you. The mother has sent two emails last week outlining how well the child is doing and that he himself is requesting more school work because he completes it so quickly. Never mind he's only doing simple maths and letter homework and is missing out on all of his other classes and the social interaction.

I don't think she has the capacity to understand how damaging this is to him. At parents evening we were told the child wasn't performing to year 2 standards. We've emailed his teacher recently as we are concerned he will need to repeat and how he will cope as he has been diagnosed with ASD. Unfortunately she said we will have to wait and see what happens. I can't believe parents can do this to their children and schools can't stop them.

 

[JadeGoldCoast]

Hi all,

After some advice if possible. Just received an email from the mother. She's advised she's set up a phone for the 7 year old child and provided the contact number for my partner to call him on. Also advised she's having problems with her phone (she also conveniently had problems with her phone last time we applied to court).

It looks like she is going to imply her phone has been broken for the past 6 weeks and that's why she's ignored all of my partners messages requesting to speak with the child.

Does my partner try to call the child on this new number? I don't even know if the child would know how to use a phone, he never has in our care. My partner has also previously made it clear to the mother that he thinks the child is too young for a phone.

Or does my partner ask (via email) for the mother to call the father's phone so he can speak to the child (as ordered) using a family members phone/partners phone at the ordered time?

 

[GlassHalfFull]

I guess based on what you've said, there isn't enough information to really make any judgements about whether the arrangement is suitable or age-appropriate. I mean, if it were my 7 year old child and I supplied them with a phone, it wouldn't be theirs to keep at all times. I'd let them use it to talk to their parent for the duration of the call, and otherwise only use it under supervision. I can only imagine the mother has done something similar. If so, your partner's belief that the child is too young for a phone is fairly moot, surely?

I don't think it's worth worrying too much about whose phone it is, as long as the call is made available to the child/parent at court ordered times. It may be that the mother is uncomfortable with the partner calling her mobile directly? But regardless of the reason, I don't really see the point in making an issue of it. Yes it's not fair or reasonable that she has ignored requests to speak to the child for the last 6 weeks if that were court ordered, and I have doubts that anyone in 2021 would wait 6 weeks to fix their mobile phone given how reliant we all are on them these days. But that's a separate issue that you may or may not need to raise in court. What matters more than anything at the moment seems to be the ability to make contact with the child in a consistent, reliable way.

 

[JadeGoldCoast]

Hi Glasshalffull, thanks for your response. The mother's email stated the child has been supplied his own phone 'to make and receive calls at his own convenience'. This mother is also allowing the child to decide what medication to take, whether he goes to school etc, so I cannot imagine the mother will he stipulating rules with the phone - but we obviously do not know for sure.

The mother is currently trying to force the child to choose between parents and to tell the father he doesnt want to spend time with him. She is refusing to instigate a phone calla as per the orders from her phone to the fathers phone. It appears like she wants the father to call this new number and when it isnt answered, inply the child is refusing the call.

(I also just realised her email was signed off with 'sent from my iPhone', which did make me laugh as her phone is supposed to be broken).

Maybe the best thing is to ask the mother to instigate the call as per the orders from the child's phone and hope she will call and my partner can finally speak to his son.

 

[sammy01]

Jade - upper cut from me....
Should we call the phone?
Should we wait for the kid to call?
Shoud we email mum?
Should we insist the mother calls as per orders? - oh and you can insist and she will not comply and what have you achieved? NOTHING positive.
Take yourselves to the shops, go down isle 5 and get a couple of cans of toughen the fcuk up. Eat them whole. Mate, you guys are walking around punch drunk. Over thinking stupid stuff. Do you think the mother is a bundle of stress? worrying about phone calls? and blah blah blah? Nope, me either.

Wow - talk about over thinking things.... BTW - I'll bet you a case of beer the mum didn't buy the kid a phone. Especially, not a 7yr old with austism. I'll double or nothing. She bought a new phone and gave the kid the old one minus a sim card, sure he can still play games on the wi-fi. But can't make calls. The kid thinks he has a phone and that dad doesn't call it. FFS. THis is called stupidity and you are stupid for letting yourself get caught up in her drama. The opposite of stupidity, isn't genius. The opposite of stupidity is common sense. More on common sense in a minute - keep reading. But right now she is being stupid and so are you...

So - call the kid. (or dont) Kid might answer, kid might not. Send a message. Dear kid. I love you. Talk soon.... You know, normal human stuff.

Oh and she sent the message from her phone. Which is broken. U'm yeah sure. Again over thinking things. MORE STUPIDITY - and you are buying into it. See it is called plausible denability. FFS The USA invaded Iraq and a16 year long war happened, people died, all because the USA claimed the Iraqi's had weapons of mass destruction. They didn't... BUT do you see my point. Sure, she can lie, sure you can spend your life trying to catch out these lies OR.... PLAN B.
Plan B - Let me tell ya a bit about plan B. See Plan B is good.
How to do plan B?
1. Don't overthink.
2. Do what common sense suggests. Judges like common sense. They don't see much of it so they get really really impressed when they see common sense. Read the last sentence again and think on it a while...
3. This is the tough bit - BUT you have to live common sense. You have to embrace it. Zen yoda.... Budda and Allah all wrapt in one. Let me learn you some homework

1. “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
2. “Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you, it will.”
3. “Patience you must have" Yoda

Now read back over the past page or 2 of this thread and ask yourself how much of it is focussed on you guys getting to see the kid and how much of it is you getting caught up and distracted up in her crazy BS stupidity? Remember - Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you, it will.

 

[Atticus]

the child has been supplied his own phone 'to make and receive calls at his own convenience'.

Orders are there so everybody knows what is required of them .... Kids don't get to decide if & when it suits, especially 7 year olds .... Just another thing to add to the list I guess. ...Up to you if you want to call the provided number in the interim

As for mums broken phone, you used to be able to call telstra & get them to check if a number is working... Don't know if that's still something they do..

 

[JadeGoldCoast]

Hi Sammy, thanks for your response. Overthinking? Yes that sounds like me. Also, before we dispatched the lawyer he advised its extremely important to be able to show the courts that my partner actively trying to have a relationship with his son while we wait for the court date. Kind of a frustrating comment when my partner is messaging every week to speak with his son and being ignored, but this comment likely lead to me overthinking the mother's email.

Thanks for your response Attikus, this is the point I was trying to make, that we feel the mother is pushing her responsibility of phone calls onto the child, who cannot read or write and doesn't know how to tell time.

My partner is going to respond advising he is happy to receive a call from any phone while the mother's phone is 'failing' her, but kindly request the mother advise of a time that suits ahead of time, and ask if she can help the child to initiate the call.

 

[sammy01]

stay positive.
Dear ex,
No worries, will contact the child via the number provided but still expect the court orders to be followed. Thanks, miss you, don't go changing, loving how well we're co-parenting, wanna catch up for a coffee sometime soon to discuss our child?
BLAH BLAH...
Best advice I ever got. "Kill her with kindness". My response was I'd rather kill her with a bus....
BUT kill her with kindness worked. When she tried to apply to court to relocate because she was scared of me, she had nothing but years on nice emails. Meanwhile I had abusive crap from her. So she couldn't sustain the living in fear bs...

But for your own mental health learn compartmentalise this crap or it will dominate your life.

 

[GlassHalfFull]

One thing I would say about killing them with kindness though... There's kindness while still adhering to orders (and expecting the other side to adhere too), and then there's the sort of kindness that the other side takes advantage of, where concessions are constantly made to avoid conflict. I would say there are certainly times where you need to be firm and if that requires something less than kind to be said or done, so be it.

In my case, I currently have orders that for the children's birthdays, the children can spend the day with me if I'm not working, or the evening if it's a work day. There's nothing in the orders that say the same for my ex, who is the primary carer and has the majority of time/care with the children. It turns out this year that my daughter's birthday fell on a Saturday that was 'my weekend' with the children: Saturday morning to Sunday afternoon once per fortnight. My ex emailed me, assuming that since I have an order that provides time for me with the children for their birthdays, that it would and should be reciprocated and that she could keep the children for the entire Saturday. She asked for my confirmation that I agreed with her handing them over at 5pm Saturday instead of the usual 10am on Saturday. Now, I agree that our children should be able to see and speak to both parents on their birthday. That's how it SHOULD be in any normal split family.

But in my case, only two months earlier on Mother's Day (which the orders say she is to have Mother's day Eve to Mothers Day with the children), it fell on my weekend with the children and I lost the only overnight time that I have with the children each fortnight, meaning I effectively went a month without any overnight time. I tried to negotiate an overnight on another Friday instead of the lost Saturday as a catch up (for other reasons, I had to give up another weekend day with the children around that time so by then I was down two weekend days and an overnight) and my ex refused to consider any of my quite reasonable proposals, selfishly stating that she would "prefer to stick to the orders". This is just one of many many situations over the last couple of years where she's proven herself to be selfish, trying to restrict my time with the children whenever possible. So, when the time came for me to decide whether to extend kindness and give her some of my limited and precious time with the children or "stick to the orders", I chose to follow the orders.

Long story short, my advice: Don't give them any ammunition to use against you (be polite, as unemotional as it's possible to be under the circumstances etc), but don't let them take advantage of your 'kindness' either.

 

[Keeks]

Agree with both these sentiments (@sammy01 and @GlassHalfFull) - in our case (with my husband's ex-partner), all correspondence is polite and friendly and we always test situations out with the "do we want to be right or do we want to be happy?" question (mostly always go for happy).

That's sometimes a hard one for me, especially when it's blatantly obvious the other party is being unreasonable or outright lying. If we choose "right" and engage, instead of "happy" and ignore/move on, the email/text slinging match could go on for hours and no-one wins anything from that. As my husband says, we've already won the war (getting formalised care arrangements that are in the best interests of the children) and these things are just little battles that don't really matter in the greater scheme of things. Work out what you're actually fighting for and leave the smaller stuff by the way.

We also learnt very early on into our wonderful new world with court-ordered arrangements to drop all expectations that any changes we made at the ex's request would be reciprocated. They aren't unless they suit her. Unfortunately there's no automatic "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" in some family law matters. When we do accommodate a request for significant changes in the court orders, it's with zero expectation. Go in with that mindset and you should be able to weather each storm a little easier.