Still not quite ready to discuss it, but French Kitty asked me a question on this thread that I never answered because I was upset, and I wanted to write down my GAL work in order to help with PMA.
French Kitty - The law in the UK around child custody is as follows:
1. All birth mothers and adoptive mothers have automatic PR (Parental Responsibility) which means they are entitled to raise their kids, direct their education etc etc.
2. Only married fathers have PR - therefore unmarried fathers have no parental rights over their children and could not even sign a dental form. Mother would be needed for all consent issues. If the unmarried couple separate, the children go to the mother and father cannot go for custody of them.
3. Unmarried fathers whose partner's sign a parental responsibility agreement can claim PR but it has to be with the mother's consent, and if she says no, he would have to challenge her in court for his PR. A lot of fathers lose unless they can prove they have been heavily involved in the child's life from day 1 or they have been the primary caretaker.
4. Unmarried fathers with children born after 2002 who attend the register office with the child's mother and who sign the birth certificate, can obtain PR.
5. If the mother goes and registers baby's birth without father's presence, he does not have any PR rights over the child.
6. Fathers who are married to the mother have full PR from the day of marriage even if the children were born before the marriage. He also has full PR of any children born during the marriage which means he has equal rights to the mother. If they divorce, he still has that PR due to the fact that he used to be married to the mother.
I am unsure of the law relating to children concieved by mother and father AFTER divorce and may well look into this myself.
All mothers and married fathers have PR and this means that if they want, they can move the child anywhere in the UK WITHOUT the other parent's consent as this is not considered illegal. It is only illegal if you take the child to a foreign country.
This is what happened with Andy and I, as he took them without my consent and because I married him, the police would not get the children back for me. If he had been my boyfriend, I would still have custody as he could not have taken them from me. This could happen to anyone, regardless of depression.
Also, any court orders that are made in relation to child custody and contact, are CIVIL orders which means they are not criminally enforceable so you can break them without going to prison, which is also what Andy did.
So in essence, his court orders states the 3 older children should reside with him. But that's all it states. I still have full PR, i.e, the right to raise, spend time with, direct the education and medical care of my children.
The trouble is, the children's act assumes that the custodial parent will be reasonable and allow the other parent to exercise these righta. In truth, most separated parents with custody, do not allow their ex's to partake in the child's upbringing or education - so to all intents and purposes, my PR is useless.
I have read the legal documents in relation to PR, and in my sitch, with Andy not wanting any of my involvement with the kids, I can only exercise 1 of my PR rights. There is nothing in the law I can do to make him give me my rights, and I don't even know the name of my children's doctor.
They have something called mediation here, which is discussing with a counsellor the involvement which both parents will have with the child, but this is voluntary and when I was offered it, Andy said he wouldn't budge on what he was prepared to offer me, so I didn't see the point in going to mediation just to argue in front of the counsellor. I therefore turned him down.
If I cannot do something about this R, then I have come to the decision that I shall just not try to be a part of their lives until there comes a time when they are older and he no longer controls everything.
I feel he uses them as a control over me and I will not bow to this pressure.
I have spoken to some friends who went through all the court stuff with me, and they say that if I cannot make this R work, my kids would understand when they are older. They might even dislike him for not allowing me to be the mother I want to be for them.
I feel like I have done everything I can think of doing to fight for my kids and there's nothing left to do.
Ineffectual mother and victim is not something I intend to be.
