The End

So, after 15 months of being in court proceedings, 6 months of those with a solicitor, £4000 in fee's, numerous court hearings, a finding of fact heating in january that was cancelled due to the weather, and rescheduled for July (!!), a CAFCASS report, 2 meetings with the cafcass officer, and so little contact with my daughter that I do not know where her or her mother lives....I could go on. I have had to make the awful decision to pull myself out of the proceedings for contact.

From the start the whole thing has been a farce. How can I have been in proceedings for 15 months and made no progress? In fact, I have gone back steps, not forward. I have no contact at all. I have been waiting since November for Cafcass to sort out funding for 2 sessions at a contact centre. My solicitor has been chasing this up continuously (at a cost to me). I have not seen my daughter since October, and of course that has had a detrimental affect on my case.

But the most upsetting part is admitting to myself that I often forget that I have a daughter. She was 4 months old when proceedings started, and contact has been very scarce. I have not bonded with her, she would not recognise me.

Cafcass, and the courts have single handedly destroyed any chance I had.

When will they learn?

I am sorry to hear your situation but dont give up! Your daughter needs to know who her dad is and be able to bond with you. If you can no longer afford solicitor fees self rep you will get lots of help on here if you decide to self rep. Our sourt case has been going on 13 months so I can sympathise and it is hard, stressful and demoralising but DONT give up and let them win!

The court system at times is very frustrating but finish what you started and then complain thats what we intend to do!

Krth,
I am currently on a warning from the admin of this site,otherwise I would be now ripping into you.
So instead I had a cuppa and thought about my reply.

Look mate,
You've been involved with this case for just over a year now,and you want to give up?
My case took over 3 yrs and I didn't see my daughter for over a year of that.
I was accused of everything possible and even had to wrongly admit coMmitting domestic violence just so that things could move faster (I was later cleared of DV).

I had to endure losing my home and my business, threats of violence and brought to the very brink of suicide.
I was left broken and broke.
But one thing I was damned sure of was that I would never give up on my daughter.
She loved her dad immensely and she was my world.

I came to the edge of giving up many times.
It would have been so easy for me to walk away and start a new life, but I only had to look at some pictures of her little face to remind myself that she was relying on me to fight on, because she deserved a dad, and one who loved her enough to put her first and foremost.

You Krth have had the odds stacked agains you in the past regarding the allegations of DV and the court orders issued against you.
For gods sake man you've even had a judge warn you for posting your business on Facebook.
I feel you've brought a lot of trouble on yourself because of your impatience and anger.
If you were seeing your child even for a few hours every week why mess it up by angering the mother by getting involved in who she sees etc:?
You even slept with her after she stopped you seeing your child.

Look, this is what I'm going to say now.
You give up on that child and you'll regret it for the rest of your life.
I'll be like a hump on your back and you'll never get rid of it.
You'll always be sorry and wondering what she's doing and what she looks like.
It'll haunt you until the day you die.
I hope one day you can explain to a teenage girl why you were too weak to continue to fight to be her father,
I know I couldn't face that.

My daughter now has her dad and all the love that a dad could possibly give her, and she's a very happy child indeed.
That's all I wanted.

WHAT DO YOU WANT?????

BTW,
You mentioned in one of your posts that the contact centre charged £70 per hour.
Where did you have contact?, in the Hilton hotel?
I paid for my 2hr sessions in a contact centre, the grand sum of £6.50 per session.

Don't give up, represent yourself. See www.fnf.org.uk for advice on contact and LIP. Attend their nearest branch meeting, if possible in Central london at 8pm on tuesdays.

There are people who fight for a decade for contact.

The contact centre is the brian Jackson centre in Huddersfield. I have to have fully supervised contact by two social workers.

krth1985 wrote:

The contact centre is the brian Jackson centre in Huddersfield. I have to have fully supervised contact by two social workers.

£70 per session is crazy though, how they expect you to pay for that?

Anyway, you read the rest of my post?
You still thinking of giving up?