Need advice about my abusive husband and contact

HI I am new here but really need some advice, i seperated from my husband last august and we have a 22 month old little girl, he is currently having her mon wed every other fri evenings, then all day sunday.
He is currently living with his mum and 3 people in there smoke as our daughter has breathing problems i said when he gets his own place one night stay at the weekend too, he says this isn''t enough and the police have had to be called 4 times due to abuxive behaviour and texts, i went to a solicitor who says he should have her wed and fri eve and all day sunday, he will go mad when he gets this letter and i''m really worried about this whole situation, i also have two older children and he has made it very clear he only wants to see one of them and ignores my 14 year old daughter???? What should i do please??? x

Have you spoken to your daughter''s GP about the smoking issue? I would have thought that spending time in a smoky atmosphere during the day (when people are more likely to be smoking) is likely to be a bigger problem than her being there over night (less liklihood of people smoking during the night, and she is more likely to be further away from them)

If you get specific advice from your GP, it may be worht asking your solicitor to pass the GP''s advice, and their details, on to your ex so he can speak to the GP directly if he wants to, to clarify or confirm what is said.

How serious are your daughter''s health problems, and did your ex smoke when you and he were together? Do you smoke at all?

It may be that you can offer contact on the basis that he agrees to ensure that no-one smokes in the house / room that your daughter is in, while she is there.

So far as his behaviour is concerned, one issue os making sure that you are safe, which may involved getting an injunction, and speaking further to the police, if his behaviour continues, and, in relation to the contact, may involve looking at handover arrangements involving a 3rd party or taking place away from your home, so that you feel safe.

On the basis that your solicitor is advising you to offer contact I assume that your ex has not been violent and does not present a risk to your children. if you feel that there *is* a risk you need to speak to your solicitor to consider how the children can be protected.

You cannot force him to have contact with the older children, so I would focus on helping your daughter to deal with this - perhaps you can set aside the time the younger ones have contact to be a ono-on-one mother/daugther time when you and she do something together, so there is a poisitive benefit to her?

I am sorry to hear you are going through a hard time. Seperation and divorce is very stressfull and there are no quick fixes I''m afraid.

I have been seperated for over 7 years, divorced for 2 years of those and I still have to phone the police for assistance when dealing with my abusive ex on ocassion. My advice on this would be to keep every abusive text and voicemail message and note any evidence of abusive episodes in a diary, clearly stating times, dates and events. It may well be that you never use this as evidence but I have found that looking back at events over the years helps me to realise how far I have come and how much better I am at dealiing with my ex. You could maybe think about contacting a Domestic Abuse Support Agency for advice on how to deal with abuse? The best advice I was ever given was to ignore his texts - if you do not reply, he has no sounding board to bounce off. Simple but I can assure you, it works!

On the matter of Contact, as long as you are reasonable in your facilitation of contact between your children and ex, you should be fine. I have always encouraged my kids to see their dad, even at times when he wasn''t bothered if he saw them or not. I think it is important to remember that it''s not the kids fault that their parents can''t live together anymore and they should never be used as ''weapons'' against fighting parents. My advice would be to try to sort it out between the two of you but if that is not possible, go through a solicitor and get a legal document of contact in place as soon as possible - that way, you both know where you stand. It took my ex and I 5 years and about 30 court appearances to finally get some sort of finalisation on Residency and Contact arrangements (please note, ours is an extreme case and it should never be this complicated) My ex kept breaking the contact order and either not bothering to collect the kids, or not returning them to me after a contact visit!

Similar to your situation, my ex then decided he no longer wanted to have any contact with our eldest child so we had to go back to court again to change the order. You cannot take responsibility for your ex''s actions (especially since they make no sense)so all you can really do is support your eldest child as best you can and hope that your ex comes to his senses and decides to rebuild a realtionship with your eldest some time in the future.

Good luck and rest assured, it does get easier.

Hi, firstly thank you, I have been to our GP but they say they won''t get involved, they obviously say it''s a bad inviroment but they can''t do anything legally.
The last episode of her breathing problems (she''s too young for them to diagnose asthma, but has had a few episodes), was one eve up A & E with a nebuliser then the ward was shutting so we were sent home with a puffa to take regularly 8 puffs, she got worse overnight so i took her back to a and e and she had another 4 nebulisers steroids antibiotics and her puffa, so each time she gets an attck they get worse, when she has any sort of cold or cough it normally brings this on (hence my major frustration in the smoking house),
Neither myself or my ex smoke and bith destest it with a passion, yet another one of my frustration moments as to why he''s ok to take her to his mum''s now?? He has said that they don''t smoke in the same room but to be honest although it''s better it''s still not ideal, he doesn''t want to leave his mum''s as he pays hardly anything to her £100 pm and only £150 child support and won''t give up his weekend drinking and partying, to grow up live in his own house and look after his daughter.
He hasn''t been violent so far although each time he''s threats and aggession gets worse and to be honest we weren''t together very long so i really don''t know what he''s capable of, I do know that he had a row with a teacher years ago who ended up leaving the school and having a breakdown, this came from his best friend!!

Ellie T, Oh my goodness you poor thing that sounds awful, i hope i don''t have it for that long, my step mum was with me the other day when my ex came to collect my little one and ended up calling the police and she was shaking for hours later she said she doesn''t know how i cope, i said i''m getting used to it, which my dad says it not good, but if i don''t get used to it i think i''d break down.
I have been in touch with women''s institute who say they can get an injunction if needed and the police say they can arrest him and charge him with harrasment, but i really don''t want to have to do that, 1 as i think he wants that to make me look bad and 2 i don''t think i have the strength to go through too much more, my solicitor says to get a divorce but i can''t even think about that yet!! plus i saw my solicitor 9 days ago he was going to write a letter wich i paid £200 for and still heard nothing, not very impressed with him!!
Thanks for your help xx

No one should feel threatened, especially not on your own doorstep! If you are able to find the strength from somewhere, get his bullying behaviour dealt with now or it will come back to bite you later. My ex was never physically abusive to me in the 20 years we were together but within a month of our seperation he had attempted to throw me down a flight of stairs - it pretty much escalated from there to a few years later, him having me pinned against a wall by the throat in a dark car park on one of the handovers for contact (with my poor little kids screaming for someone to help me!) Needless to say, I had to ask for another court date to change the handover arrangements so I was never put in that situation again. It was arranged that he would collect the children at my house but he was ordered never to get out of the car, he had to in his car and wait for the kids to go to him. I know your daughter is not old enough for this yet but it is something to think about in the future. There is no reason why your ex should be over the doorstep of your house.

I am not suggesting for one second that your ex will end up like mine but I wish I had stood up to him at the beginning because it impacted on every aspect of our seperation and divorce and even now, 7 years on, he still thinks he can bully and intimidate me to get what he wants - and I must confess, I still struggle to stand up to him sometimes (which is so out of character for me in every other aspect of my life) but I suppose that is the nature of abuse!

You should never get used to it!