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This is for them

Roberty_Bob
Blue Voices Member
Blue Voices Member
I'm putting in some hard yards for two beautiful young people and it is starting to pay off, slowly but surely and not without pain. I'm not going to let my ex-wife deny them their father. I'm not going to let the system allow me to fall through the cracks. There is still a long way to go but this is for them.
17 Replies 17

Firstly - do not accept this as a challenge to your circumstances - as I feel pain too.  My heart is broken - my son's father took him from the school yard last October ( he is unemployed and twice bankrupt and he walked when I was pregnant as I was "getting fat" best thing that happened) - fast foward - the system has failed me beyond belief.  I work full time in a government job - squeaky clean history, pay bills, good community member, JP,  blah  blah blah and I have been stone walled on every occasion, mediation, Child Support, I even had to answer charges in court  for child abuse which were fabricated by the father, this was thrown out but none the less, the humiliation of facing a court room, first time ever for something I did not do!!!!. Friends in good places and 20 years standing, cannot believe this has happened. One friend offered $50K to start the court proceedings to have my son returned to me, another offered to get Andrew Bolt from the media involved and get this system exposed - I had no leg to stand on BECAUSE there was no court order in place and the father has not broken the law!!!!.  My son had been well coached and poisoned and at an age (13) where he has a voice.  Private legal advice was it will cost $10k's and years of emotional stress,  could I handle that.  My thoughts were I would be viral at the end of day in the court room as the nutter who launches across the court room and assaults the father. I can attest the system does not inherently favour the mother - they favour the best bullshitter.  This does not take anything away from what you are being dealt but I can say, by biding my time and not reacting to a situation which was deliberately created for the drama, and having sat through a painfully lonely Christmas and both our birthdays without my son, I am now getting little taps on my door peppered with love from a young man who should never have left.  So hang in there - I do not believe the Courts are necessarily the right place for a child to learn from an 'old man', who they do not know, what is the best for them - and trust me - they will begrudge the interference from said 'old man' who would prefer to be on a golf course not a bench.  The system is not user friendly!!!  Our children do not need to be dragged into drama that others may need in their lives to validate themselves.

Roberty_Bob
Blue Voices Member
Blue Voices Member

Thanks all for your words of support. I was thinking about my life today. I wrote this in my head while walking, walking, walking...

The beauty of being forced to reset is that I can reinvent myself until I am happy with what I am. There is nothing as clarifying as living hand to mouth with no fixed address. I am a pile of Lego blocks from a dismantled old project with the potential to be the best construction ever. Daunting but exciting.

BeFree08, fair call about the system not being on the mother's side just the best bullshitter's side. I apologise for my generalisation. I am sorry about your circumstances. I don't think you are trying to out victim me at all. I went through all this crap ten years ago with a previous marriage. The boys, now 21 and 17, have only just come around to realise that their mother was a good bullshitter and their father wasn't half the things they we told. Pity it destroyed me and triggered my first mental breakdown. Yes, I could reconcile myself to the fact that in ten years or more my little ones may seek me out however I don't have ten years to wait. I'm old and tired. The next breakdown will kill me.

dear RB, as much as it may sound to be futile to say this, but we never know what's around the corner, what's going to happen tomorrow, because life is full of unexpectations, and yes when our luck in down then everything may happen or presume it to happen because we are feeling down, and this has happened to me many times.
I can tell someone not to think in a negative way, but I'm not sure that it would help them, because that has to come from them, so the disappointment goes both ways, with me and with you, but we can still be there for you.

BeFree, I like what you have written and sorry to hear what you have said, because depression will never win in a court room when it comes to custody. Geoff.

loouuiiee
Blue Voices Member
Blue Voices Member

I work with quite a few disadvantaged children & each day i hear and see many of their little hearts morning that they do not get to see their father very often, do not have a positive relationship with their father, or some have never even met their father.

it is a breath of fresh air to see that you are determined to have a positive relationship with your children.

Roberty Bob

Re: "The next breakdown will kill me."

I'm not going anywhere. Be here for you.

Tony WK

My advice to you, and you should take it :-), don't have one (a breakdown that is)........  Some situations are just out of our hands, you need to at times be a spectator in your own life and let it be what it is.  As hard as that is the other option could potentially be the last straw.   I know if I took on what you did I would have been in the same boat.  That is why it was very carefully considered the options, as mentioned I had the financial resource but could I do it.  NO - I don't think so.  So - BOB the Lego Builder - take a step back, breathe in, and for your OWN sanity step back from the fight but be there when the fight implodes on itself - in the interim go and live a little.   Don't lose your mental health or good health over it.  You are still a person that deserves a life worthy of being lived.  Keep putting the pen to paper - you never know where it might take you.......... x

Thank you all for your wise words and kind support. Their mother probably was sick of them on Sunday morning and apparantly they were asking after me so much that she had to leave them with me for the day. AWESOME! We went to the World Science Festival snd had a great time. We were also to go to the school picnic but it got rained out. Ate some good food and a lot of junk. It sort of destroys her argument that I'm a bad father who can't be trusted with the children, doesn't it?