Unfortunately, during a relationship break up, it is common for one parent to deny the other parent access to see the other child.  This affects not only the non resident parent, but it also affects the child who may already be struggling to accept the changes that are occuring within their family structure.  If you find yourself being denied access then read on.  This post looks at why a parent may deny access and what to do in this situation.

Why Am I Being Denied Contact?

There is no one reason as to why you may be being denied contact with your child.  your ex partner may have a number of reasons which they may or may not tell you including:

• They may be using access as a bargaining chip to try to get more child support payments or to get something else that they want.
• Your ex partner may have a new partner and they may want to try to erase you from their life so that they can creaste a “new” family unit with the new partner.
• Your ex may be trying to hide a new relationship from you and denying access may be their way of preventing the child or children from telling you about the new relationship.
• It could simply be for revenge for the breakup of the relationship because your ex may hold you accountable for it.

You may find that after the relationship ended, you were able to maintain some contact with your child or children but after some time, you may find that your ex partner is suddenly deciding to refuse to make arrangements for access.  This is quite common and is possibly due to one of the mentioned reasons.

What Can I Do About It?

It is important to act as soon as possible so that any issues can be resolved as quickly as possible.  You should communicate with your ex partner about your concerns and what you expect to happen.  There are different ways of doing this and some are more effective than others.

We recommend that you write your ex partner a letter and send it recorded delivery.  Make sure that you keep a copy of the letter for your own records. This will enable you to have a receipt of delivery so that you can show that you have made an appropriate effort to ask for contact. When things are already bound to be difficult between the two of you, we definitely don’t recommend a face to face confrontation and whilst text and email communication would be an appropriate alternative to contacting your ex if you don’t know their address, a letter is always going to be the best way to communicate when you are considering court as a possibility.

Make sure that the letter that you send is free of emotive language and doesn’t place any blame on the other parent.  You simply need to explain that you want to see your child or children and give an idea of how much contact you think is appropriate.  Remember to think about how the contact may affect your children, for example if you ask for several days contact midweek but you live a hundred miles away from the other parent, this may affect your children’s ability to attend school.  Be reasonable in your request.  Once you have established a routine contact, there’s no reason why you couldn’t then try to make the contact you have more subsrtantial if it appropriate or feasible to do so.

You may find that you don’t get a reply or that the reply that you do get is not suitable, for example you ex may reply saying that they are going to continue preventing access.  On the other hand, you may find that your ex decides that they are willing to cooperate and you may find that this opens an avenue to better communication either between the two of you or via mediation.

Going To Court

If you decide that you need to sort matters through the court, you must first attend a MIAM.  This is a mediation meeting that will introduce you to the mediation process and the mediator will give you an opportunity to invite your ex to mediation.  If you and the mediator agree that your ex won’t attend mediation, you don’t have to ask them to, but it is crucial that you attend the MIAM first because otherwise you will not be able to proceed with your case through the court.

Once you have had the relevant page signed in your court form to say that you have attended a MIAM, you can then go to court.  We recommend that when you make your application to the court that you mention that you would like the court to make an order for interim contact.  This may or may not be granted, but if it is, it will mean that you will get some contact whilst the court is dealing with your case.

Interim Contact

This is a tmeporary order for contact and will allow you to continue to spend time with your children whilst the court is hearing your case.  It may not be as much contact as you would like but it will mean that your children don’t miss out on spending time with you as the court procedure can take many months to sort out.  If you are granted an interim contact order, it is important that you accept it and make sure that you stick to the order.  It may not be as much time as you are hoping for, but remember that it is temporary.

The contact may be in a contact centre, or it may be unsupervised.  If the contact is in a contact centre, you may find that someone sits in the room with you whilst you spend time with your children. This is nothing to worry about but the worker who sits in with you will be making notes on their observations during the session.  Making sure that you fully comply with the interim ourder will ensure that you have the best chance of getting the contact that you’re seeking when the court makes the final order.

Once You Have An Order

Many people make the comment that there’s no point in having an order for contact when they KNOW that the other parent will break it.  If this does happen, then it is important that you keep a record of any breaches of the order.  If you can provide evidence to the court that your ex partner is repeatedly and substantially breaking the order that has been made, then you can apply for an enforcement order.  Sometimes, these orders can be effective in ensuring that you and your children can have the contact that has been ordered by the court.

We encourage those who come to us to keep their families together even after a breakup.  Dealing with the breakdown of a relationship, no matter how long the relationship lasted for, can be a difficult process for adults.  Even though it is the adults who have made the decision to separate, it is never easy for anyone involved.  When you consider this, it is easy to see how the impact that the breakdown of an adult relationship could have on the children within the family unit.

Whilst you struggle to deal with your own feelings, keep in mind that this break up is completely out of your children’s control.  They have been living in a household with 2 parents and suddenly, those 2 parents live at separate addresses and in some situations one parent may try to prevent the other parent from seeing the children so that they can maintain the same level of contact with their child as when the parents were still together.

What this can mean for the children involved is that they feel isolated and afraid.  They don’t want to have to pick sides, but in order to make one parent happy, they may push the other parent away or say things like “I don’t want to see the other parent” simply because they feel that this is something that they need to say to stay out of trouble.

In order to help your children to deal with the separation process as well as possible, it is cruicial that you do your best to establish a routine early on along with good communication with the other parent.  Good communication doesn’t mean that you have to be good friends or even friendly with the other parent, but the main thing is that you should remain as amicable as possible when it comes to discussing your children.

The court does not like having to intervene when it comes to family matters.  Sure, it has to happen frequently because parents find that they can’t agree on things, but the more that you can agree on without going to court, the better.

You should make sure that you pick your battles with the other parent so that your children don’t see you to be fighting all the time.  Although you are not in a relationship with the other parent any more, there is no rason why your children should be made to feel as though their family is complicated or that they shouldn’t or can’t see the other parent.

If you are struggling with communicating with your ex partner, or if you’re not sure how to move forward from your current situation, feel free to make a comment on this post and we will do our best to respond with some helpful advice.