Can he expect any more?

Ive been using this site for a while but a good pal of mine is now experiencing some contact changes but the cave man refuses to get registered on here!
upto approx 2 months ago he was having his 11 year old daughter over night every tuesday, and every other weekend and thursday on the week he did not see her at the weekend. On the midweek overnight stays he picked her up at 6pm and had her back to her mums for 7.30am the following morning as he starts work at 8am.
The problems have started since he moved further away, only 30 miles away but due to finishing work at 6pm it takes over an hour to get home which obviously doesn''t leave him much time to spend with her before her bed time and has her up at 6.30am to get her back to her mums for 7.30am. Mum has complained that daughter is too tired the following day for this to continue stating that he can still have every other weekend but the midweek overnights must stop but he can spend a few hours with her any evening he likes with over nights during the school holidays.
He''s grumbling making the usual comments about solicitors and court etc but i feel this may be as good as it gets for him with him loosing the midweek overnights apart from the school holidays.

Can any one advise please

To be honest I don''t think he''s being reasonable to expect to have her overnight and take her back that early. It will be worse once she starts secondary school as that makes them very tired to start with. In any case, in a couple of years she will vote with her feet against having to get up so early. So I''d be inclined to agree with her mother here.

Best wishes,
Sadie

skint1 wrote:

He''s grumbling making the usual comments about solicitors and court etc

Ha. No judge would ever give him an overnight access that involves bringing her home at 7:30am. It is not in the child''s best interests at all. I suggest calling his bluff. Next time he mentions court or solicitors, say "go on then". Don''t allow these stupid scare tactics to work, else he''ll keep on using them whenever he wants something.

It seems to me a father wanting to spend time with his dtr is quite reasonable and commendable. Courts do routinely award mid week overnight contact. Even if the amount of hours he''s spending with his dtr is limited, those hours might be the best of her week, who knows.

Perhaps the solution is for the father to take the dtr directly to school, meaning he wouldn''t have the 7.30am deadline to meet at the mum''s?

Wanting to spend time with the daughter isn''t unreasonable but above all arrangements need to be practical for the child. Some courts will order midweek contact but others think it''s in the interests of children not to disrupt the school week.

The probability of courts awarding midweek contact when that means regularly getting home late and up early the next morning is lower than if the child can be collected earlier and dropped off at school.

One way round the problem might be to extend the weekends. For example, if your friend has his daughter one or two nights every other weekend that could be increased to two or three nights. Alternatively perhaps he could have his daughter more often during school holidays to compensate for loosing time during the week.

I can defo see were the mother is coming from and feel that is prob in the best interest of the daughter but also the dad doesnt want to lose contact so I would look at a good compromise along the lines of what Fiona suggested.

Thanks everyone for all your comments as usual. Its more or less what he was expecting i think, he''l be up against it with work not being very flexable but hopefully he''l have calmed down a bit by now!!