Short story is that a couple of years ago, I was the primary carer of my daughter when she was a baby/toddler. When she was 2 years old and we had just had a second child, my ex and I separated because of a false allegation made against me (there's no way to explain properly that with a short story, but in summary, my 2 year old daughter who was barely verbal told my ex I blew on her while changing her nappy and she thought it was a fun game), she went to child protection, child protection asked me to leave the home until they had investigated. Then she took out an IVO based on lies against me a couple of weeks later (almost certainly calculated to permanently exclude me from the house and to assume full custody of the children). If anything, my ex was actually abusive to me over the years.
At this point, I went to a lawyer and filed an initiating application in family court. Because of the seriousness of the allegations, I had to have private professional supervision with the children for about 9 months (at a cost of $100+ per hour). Had to submit to a forensic psycho-sexual evaluation which looked at various reports and all the court affidavits etc which effectively found that child protection had been overzealous and biased and there was no evidence to suggest I'd done anything wrong and that there were numerous innocent explanations. The evaluation and a subsequent family report recommended supervision be removed effective immediately. However, because the mother had by now assumed primary care of the children and was not agreeable to me having any time with the children at all (she said to the family report writer that it was her preference that I not have any contact with the children until they were old enough to decide for themselves - they were 3 and 1 at the time!), I had to fight in a number of hearings to increase my very limited time with the children. My ex's default position is pretty much "no" to anything and everything, and so far there has been no repercussions. When backed into a corner on the day of court, she makes concessions to 'appear' reasonable, but it's clear I have to litigate at every stage.
We've now been in family court for two and a half years and I've now got every second weekend and 2 days for 6 hours during the week (I'm currently not working, so we have orders that allow this but if and when I gain employment, I will lose this time and fall back to just every second weekend) with the kids but only one overnight a fortnight. The kids (now 2.5 and almost 5) and I have a great relationship, I've since re-partnered and they have great relationship with my partner too and are very relaxed and happy with us, no anxiety about returning to mum or missing her when they're with us. I'm trying to increase this time to more than one night at a time, including some weekday overnight time but because the mother is so resistant to any agreement and the court is so conservative about giving the father substantial time when there is conflict between parents, so progression is very slow. We're now waiting in the trial pool for a trial date and while there, it's difficult to get any new court orders. Our current interim orders don't extend any progression into 2021 despite the family report recommending increases in time for me (for example, the family report recommended we split summer holidays 50/50 on a rotating 3 or 4 day rota, my ex ignored it and said no and because we had no orders relating to holiday time, there was nothing I could do), so we're all stuck where we are for now.
At least things are out of the weeds now as far as serious allegations go and I have a mostly normal court case of how to best split the time between parents, but there's still an undercurrent of concern on my part - my ex said to the family report writer, after being told that supervision cannot continue, that she will just have to wait and see and will go straight back to child protection if she had any more concerns or disclosures. So I can tell she's still gunning for me despite there being absolutely no evidence of any abuse. I just have to be extra careful not to give her anything that could be taken out of context again.
OK, so that wasn't short in the end. It's a long messy cautionary tale about being careful who you end up procreating with.
At this point, I went to a lawyer and filed an initiating application in family court. Because of the seriousness of the allegations, I had to have private professional supervision with the children for about 9 months (at a cost of $100+ per hour). Had to submit to a forensic psycho-sexual evaluation which looked at various reports and all the court affidavits etc which effectively found that child protection had been overzealous and biased and there was no evidence to suggest I'd done anything wrong and that there were numerous innocent explanations. The evaluation and a subsequent family report recommended supervision be removed effective immediately. However, because the mother had by now assumed primary care of the children and was not agreeable to me having any time with the children at all (she said to the family report writer that it was her preference that I not have any contact with the children until they were old enough to decide for themselves - they were 3 and 1 at the time!), I had to fight in a number of hearings to increase my very limited time with the children. My ex's default position is pretty much "no" to anything and everything, and so far there has been no repercussions. When backed into a corner on the day of court, she makes concessions to 'appear' reasonable, but it's clear I have to litigate at every stage.
We've now been in family court for two and a half years and I've now got every second weekend and 2 days for 6 hours during the week (I'm currently not working, so we have orders that allow this but if and when I gain employment, I will lose this time and fall back to just every second weekend) with the kids but only one overnight a fortnight. The kids (now 2.5 and almost 5) and I have a great relationship, I've since re-partnered and they have great relationship with my partner too and are very relaxed and happy with us, no anxiety about returning to mum or missing her when they're with us. I'm trying to increase this time to more than one night at a time, including some weekday overnight time but because the mother is so resistant to any agreement and the court is so conservative about giving the father substantial time when there is conflict between parents, so progression is very slow. We're now waiting in the trial pool for a trial date and while there, it's difficult to get any new court orders. Our current interim orders don't extend any progression into 2021 despite the family report recommending increases in time for me (for example, the family report recommended we split summer holidays 50/50 on a rotating 3 or 4 day rota, my ex ignored it and said no and because we had no orders relating to holiday time, there was nothing I could do), so we're all stuck where we are for now.
At least things are out of the weeds now as far as serious allegations go and I have a mostly normal court case of how to best split the time between parents, but there's still an undercurrent of concern on my part - my ex said to the family report writer, after being told that supervision cannot continue, that she will just have to wait and see and will go straight back to child protection if she had any more concerns or disclosures. So I can tell she's still gunning for me despite there being absolutely no evidence of any abuse. I just have to be extra careful not to give her anything that could be taken out of context again.
OK, so that wasn't short in the end. It's a long messy cautionary tale about being careful who you end up procreating with.
