Limited access to my son HELP!!

Lostdad

Hi, I am new to this and, I am in despair. I had to make the hardest decision of my life in May which was to leave my home and my 5yo son due to sustained and threatening verbal abuse by my wife and her 22yo son - this involved threats of violence and culminated in both of them involving my litle boy in a scheme to try to get me to react to subtle intimidation while secretly recording me - thankfully i didn't but made the decision to leave that day and then sought legal advice.
The thing is that my wife is totally controlling when i see my son and for how long. 30 mins mid week and 4 hours weekend. I am very close tomy son and he to me as I was his only source of fun and play while at home and I spent all of my time with him right up to when he fell asleep each night - partly the reason for the downfall in my marraige. Anyway, my son has gone from daily undivided attention from his dad to brief and controlled access overnight - even calls to him are on speakerfone.
My solicitor has requested agreed access (every 2nd weekend etc) and the response has been favourable consideration to this request subject to co-parenting counselling first. While on one hand, I see the benefit in this, I know my wife, and she will use this to slow up the process and retain control for as long as is possible.
My solicitor has suggested divorce and I am seeing barrister today but I am a complete passenger here...and don't know what all of this involves...apart from hefty legal bill.
Thanks for your patience here and finally here is my dilemma - all I want is to be allowed to have a proper father/son relationship with my son rather than a visitor at times and days that suit my wife. My son misses me and wants to be able to experience the stories at night, the songs before sleep, the breakfasts in front of TV, the weekend days of play and sport that he had with me in the past too.
How do I go about getting this agreed to by both of us as soon as possible - 9 weeks have now past and, while divorce is inevitable and I am not seeking resolution or anything, it seems like another process that will take ages and all the while, my primary concern is to have agreed time with my son...surely this is not as difficult as what I am experiencing...?

2xj3hplqgsbkym

Go to family mediation it is a free service in which you ca discuss maintainance and division of assests,there may be a waiting list dependi.g on your area.
Can you Skype him I stead of ringing?

Lostdad

Thanks rose bush - its a 12/16 week waiting list...3 to 4 months...!! Looking back now I kinda wish i had registered but now I am advised to stick to the path I am on rather than confuse everything. I could skype but it's not being allowed.
Just to clarify for anyone wondering - we both earn similar good enough incomes, I have gone from paying all of the mortgage and household expenses to half the mortgage and a mid average amount of maintenance for my son. I am also now paying rent and related costs which is starting to hurt...but this is just for clarification and to answer questions ppl might ask here. In essence, I am trying to be fair and I am only seeking the same in return..but OMG..that is not forthcoming. So..I'm forced to go on the offensive and try to force some issues (access to my son) onto the table. It has amazed me how, there isn't a structured and quick process in place in the this country which protects the child from deprivation of one or the other parent while the parents sort their crap out. I mean, I'm not the first person to separate...

rambutman

Go down the family court and make an application for access. Your ex will receive a summons to appear in court (usually takes about 6 weeks). Go to a good solicitor and tell them you want them to represent you in court and tell them what you want.

Don't let the legal profession steer you and where you want to go (as in my experience) they will be pushing you down the most expensive route.

I went to see a solicitor after my marriage broke down and i was in much the same situation as you. I didn't really know what was going on and she seemed to be more interested in getting me divorced than getting me access to see my kids. When i got it through that i didn't care about divorce right now. She tried pushing me down the collaborative law route where all parties sit down (with their legal teams) and thrash out an agreement on maintenance and access. They'll bring in a mediator (even though up to that point she'd told me mediation was pointless), and all in all the whole thing will cost a pretty penny, involved several meetings, a lot of paperwork, introductory sessions, paper signing sessions, etc, etc. At one stage before we went down that road i called my solicitor up and said "look we've come to an agreement ourselves, can't we just get this formalised and leave out paying everyone else to help us come to our agreement"...........she basically wouldn't do it...........and at this stage i cut her loose. In several meetings, she had totally failed to achieve anything for me that i wanted.

So i did what i suggested above and went down the family court. Now, I represented myself (which i'm not suggesting anyone else does) and made an initial application to have all day every Saturday with my kids, picking them up at 10 and dropping them back at 8, with a week at easter and summer. Without a good reason why I shouldn't be granted this, the judge granted my access fairly easily. Since then access (because the mother likes some time off) has been more or less straight after work friday til monday morning before school every weekend, but the access order gave me a bit more control over the situation so i couldn't be blackmailed with "you're not seeing the kids this weekend" - no matter what she said Saturdays were protected. After about 18 months of this, i got myself down the family courts and applied for varying access, went through same procedure as before but got from Saturday morning til Sunday night, this again was granted no problem.....so now weekends are safe. There's a lot of power games that go on and if people think they have a stick to beat you with they will..........take their sticks off them.

When you're in the situation you are now you'll find you'll have people all sides telling you this that and the other, what they'd do if they were in your situation and how they don't believe the law is actually like that, and i'd go down there and show her, etc, etc. BLOCK IT ALL OUT. Read citizens advice bureaux relevant information inside out, do keep records of the way things are panning out (even if you haven't up to now its never too late), there's plenty of advice to had trawling through these forums, and if you can - talk to people who have been down that road.

If there's any other advice or assistance i can be to you drop me a PM

wmpdd3

That's a really positive post.

Without a good reason why I shouldn't be granted this, the judge granted my access fairly easily.

I think this is the most important point, Even though in Ireland men can be treated badly by the courts , its not the US. Going to court for access is relatively straight forward.

As Long as you are a guardian and there are no safety issues, you will get access.

Enforcing the order when one person defaults is another thing.