So, Im comming to the end of a 20 month court battle. As soon as ex partner seperated. I put in my application for contact. I now have my final hearing listed for January.
Going in to my final hearing I would have completed 14, two hours a week supervised contact sessions and also 2 unsupervised sessions of 5 hours each week.
The section 7 report found no safegaurding concerns with either parent and also reccomended me the father to have more contact but gradually increasing but no mention of any clear long term reccomendation from cafcass. Only to say contact should increase with father and that I have good relatiionship with my child ect. Report was quite in my favour. They reccomended 5 hours of unsupervised contact a week and then to increase gradually from there. They said the long term order should reflect my rights of having parental responsibility. The report acknowledged my request for 50/50 at this stage as it would be to disruptive to the child as there's been a big gap of contact. They said the priority would be building up contact gradually.
My original hope was to somehow get 50/50 contact. But that does not seem likely at this stage.
Now Im just hoping to get the standard alternate weekends and 1 day in the week. Ie pick up child on Friday and drop back off on a Sunday. Which I've been told is quite standard. But not even sure I will even get this bare minimum. As they might say I've not had enough contact with my child to award this as I'm still practically a stranger to the child although with no fault of my own. As the mother refused contact without any valid reasons.
What are my chances of getting alternate weekends?
I dont want to have to go down the road of having to vary/ amend this order which ive been told is a long process. Also there is a possibility of asking for the January final hearing to ajourned for a few months in order to build up some more unsupervised contact time for about 12 weeks. I have some genuine reasons for ajournment. As my current order is 5 hours of unspervised each week. But that only starts in 5 weeks time. Would it work in my favour to ajourn and build up unsupervised contact for the final order so the judge has something to go on.
Going in to my final hearing I would have completed 14, two hours a week supervised contact sessions and also 2 unsupervised sessions of 5 hours each week.
The section 7 report found no safegaurding concerns with either parent and also reccomended me the father to have more contact but gradually increasing but no mention of any clear long term reccomendation from cafcass. Only to say contact should increase with father and that I have good relatiionship with my child ect. Report was quite in my favour. They reccomended 5 hours of unsupervised contact a week and then to increase gradually from there. They said the long term order should reflect my rights of having parental responsibility. The report acknowledged my request for 50/50 at this stage as it would be to disruptive to the child as there's been a big gap of contact. They said the priority would be building up contact gradually.
My original hope was to somehow get 50/50 contact. But that does not seem likely at this stage.
Now Im just hoping to get the standard alternate weekends and 1 day in the week. Ie pick up child on Friday and drop back off on a Sunday. Which I've been told is quite standard. But not even sure I will even get this bare minimum. As they might say I've not had enough contact with my child to award this as I'm still practically a stranger to the child although with no fault of my own. As the mother refused contact without any valid reasons.
What are my chances of getting alternate weekends?
I dont want to have to go down the road of having to vary/ amend this order which ive been told is a long process. Also there is a possibility of asking for the January final hearing to ajourned for a few months in order to build up some more unsupervised contact time for about 12 weeks. I have some genuine reasons for ajournment. As my current order is 5 hours of unspervised each week. But that only starts in 5 weeks time. Would it work in my favour to ajourn and build up unsupervised contact for the final order so the judge has something to go on.
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