# Leave to remove



## hazelbrook (Jan 27, 2009)

I am currently fighting a court battle with my ex to take my daughter to live in the usa. My husband relocated in August and my ex has denied my daughter the right to come with me. We were never married but he does have parental responsibility. I went to court for a specific issues order to ask the court for permission and from this point he launched an all out attack on me and my husband attempting to paint us as unfit aprents going as far as calling social services with an anonymous call saying my daughters were being neglected in some way. This was sorted out as nonsense quickly enough but since then he has lodged statements with lies and character assassinations. It has therefore had to go down the route of a full welfare report. I will give him one thing his solicitors are very good at managing to stall the whole process as long as they can with these allegations as the court is obligated to follow them up. I of course have lodged my statement with an abundance of eveidence to prove that he is basically not of sound mind and a liar and his parenting skills are not far behind. All of which I would have preferred not to have done but because of where he has pushed it I dont have a choice.

I am at my wits end as I am in limbo land and more seriously so is my daughter. She wants to go and everytime we plan for a date he does something and pushes it back further again. He is forcing us into financial hardship and my daughter and I have been living with my mother as I rented our house. My furniture has been shipped and my job is due to end very soon as it has been readvertised and they are ok with me staying until the position has been filled. My eldest daughter at the last minute decided she wanted to stay and complete exams in the uk before she comes over. She is 16 and not the biological daughter of my ex however he is attempting to use this to say that she doesnt want to go because she is afraid of the situation. She is 16 and changes her mind depending on her friends and her own life and I facilitated her decision by arranging that she stay with my sister until her exams are finished. This was heartbreaking for me to do but I did not want to force her at that point and I am praying that she makes the right choice when all is said and done. 

My husband and I have jointly cared for the children for the last 5 years and they have had a very nice life and have wanted for nothing. They are both A grade students and are very stable, intelligent, sensible girls. My ex however is using a situation that occurred 2 years ago to try to establish that my husband is a violent alcoholic and I am a feeble, controlled abused individual and my kids only want to go as my husband controls them also. My husband took ill medically and was told that the condition may leave him incontinent for the rest of his life. His mother was in a near fatal car crash and he could not fly home to see her and he started to drink to cope. It was a manageable situation for a while but he got sadder and sadder and in the end was drinking way too much. He was certainly not abusive just depressed and the air in the house was also. I tried to talk to him to get help but he was too ensconced in his "pity pool" to care. It may sound harsh but he just needed to snap out of it and wasnt. I basically said that unless he stopped and went to see someone I was not going to remain in the situation and took the children to stay with family for 3 weeks. In that time I spoke to him constantly making it clear that everyday that rolled by was a day closer to me calling time on our marriage if he did not get help. In the end he did. 

He phoned a local AA group and they came out to speak to him and he became an AA member and from that day April 2007 he has not only got over his bad patch but he has never drank again. He decided that he handles stress wrong and alcohol was a crutch as much as he never drank much normally he felt that in stress he did so therefore he did not want to drink at all. To this day he continues to go to meetings and has gone through the 12 step programme and quite honestly is an inspiration to me and we have both become better people because of it. During this time I did contact many people as I have 2 children and I had to make sure that in the event he did not ask for help that I was protected. Foolishly I went to the local police station for advice. Sat down with somebody and asked them questions that I really should have directed to a solicitor. They were ok about giving me the advice but said that they had no part to play as no crime had been commited so their role was on an advisory level. Just questions about the house, where I stood should he want to continue living the way he was how I could get the house for the children as we paid the mortgage jointly. I did give them details of his drinking and his state of mind at this point. I had no idea that because I divulged I had 2 children living in the house, although not at that point, that they were obliged to contact the social services department to do an assessment. Talk about humiliation when a month later, after I had returned and my husband was getting well, I had a call from a socail worker. She was very nice and talked to us all and ascertained it was an isolated incident, it was all being dealt with correctly and wished my husband well. This however was logged onto the social services system as a referral from the police to social services. I can access this system as I work in the field....as can my ex's sister. 

Now this is a definate no no to use this information, accessing it is one this but getting this information and passing it over is another. However my ex's arguement is that there has been police involvement and in his words "I cant divulge how I know it but I know there has been police involvement" as written in his statement. Of course I cannot prove she did this but besides me and the police no one else know of this visit I made not even my kids. When the social worker called they thought it was to make sure my husband was doing ok. So this information he has gleaned is the basis of all these allegations stretching it into unbeleivable realms to substantiate these ridiculous allegations. I am understandibly concerned as he is taking it totally out of context but hopefully this welfare report will access the information and all will become clear and I have been totally transparent in my statement to the court regarding this time 2 years ago. 


My youngest daughter has chosen not to go with her father anymore as she is so upset about the way he treats her when she is with him, telling her she is giving him a nervous breakdown, he is spending thousands on going to court and its all her fault because she wants to go. She has simply had enough and just wants us all to be a family again, me, my husband, her and in the future her sister. My ex has already been given clear information that we will make sure they see him for long periods of time during holidays and as much as he is an idiot for the children's sake if he did decide to want to visit them in the usa we would facilitate his visit and the girls could go with him the whole time school permitting. 

Has anyone else been in this situation or know of anyway around all of this from experience. I have just been told this morning that the hearing that was set for Feb 20th has now been pushed for another month to March as the welfare report request was sent to the wrong department and they need 8 weeks to prepare this. By this point my job could be gone and my daughter is going to be stuck in limbo for another long period of time. Any onformation will be greatly appreciated.


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## Fatbrit (May 8, 2008)

One child is 16 and the other is.....?


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## hazelbrook (Jan 27, 2009)

sorry 16 and 12


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## Fatbrit (May 8, 2008)

Difficult situation, then. The 16-year-old is already at that stage where the court (if it even still has jurisdiction!) will give her wishes the greatest weight. However, this is not the case for the 12-year-old.

Even assuming you get the court's permission to remove them, there is still a long delay in terms of getting your immigrant visas. If your husband files the initial petition from the US, the visas take in the order of 8 to 10 months before you receive them can travel out and take residence in the US.


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## hazelbrook (Jan 27, 2009)

Excuse me I forgot to say. We have our visas, well I have mine and my 16 year old has hers sitting in the embassy waiting to be sent. The reason my 12 year old does not have hers is because this was part of the dirty tricks her dad pulled. He knew we were going finally for our visa interviews, having gone to London twice which entailed flying from Northern Ireland where we live and stying in hotel in London for the medicals weeks before. This 3rd occasion went perfectly. No hitches, they took the money and we were called finally for the visas and myself and my daughter were granted ours but my daughter's father had apparently contacted the embassy telling them that if my youngest daughters visa was granted it would be in breach of his parental responsibility rights and I would be using it to "kidnap" my daughter. 

Well I explained to the official that there was a "specific issues" order already underway in court and that "kidnap" was never an option. He was very very nice and explained we had 2 options, take ours and wait for my daughters to become available or leave them all and collect them all at the same time by contacting them and they could collect the order from the court and then would return the 3 together. I opted for this as ours would have needed to be used from that date within the 6 month period and we were going nowhere without my daughter. Oh yes he has been very underhand about the whole thing. It was an appalling thing to do and my daughter was so upset.


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## synthia (Apr 18, 2007)

I've talked to a couple of people over the years who have wanted to move to another country with their children, although they were moving from the US, not to it. They were not able to move. Not only did the courts not want the children taken away from the other parent, but they didn't want the children out of US jurisdiction as long as there was any dispute whatsoever. In the US, one parent can often stop the other parent from moving to a different part of the country without the consent of the parent staying behind.

The problem is that once they are out of the country, the stay-behind parent is essentially left without legal recourse.


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## twostep (Apr 3, 2008)

Synthia - a parent can move anywhere. The issue is shared custody and visitations. Skip one and the other parent has somthing to take to court.


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