Advice on informal arrangement

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Hi,

Happy New Year.

You could still apply for a RO or SGO; however I couldn’t say it would be without a fight. The children’s fathers would have to be served with any application you made and given the decision you granddaughter’s Dad has made; it is likely he would oppose it. You would therefore have to go through contested proceedings and the Judge would ultimately decide who they think it is best for the children to live with. It could easily take 9 months or so to reach the final hearing.

In terms of Mum being marginalised, this should not happen because she will always have parental responsibility (PR) that is equal to Dad, so should never be excluded from the decision making about her daughter (i.e. decisions should be made jointly) or be stopped from having information from school, GP etc shared with her. Schools are well used to dealing with separated parents so should be able to send her separate invites to open days, assemblies, parents evenings etc. If she is being excluded from making decisions and she doesn’t agree with the decisions Dad makes then she can apply to court the court to decide. As you don’t have PR, you don’t have these same rights however.

In terms of contact, if none is agreed, Mum has an automatic right to apply to court for it. You can also apply to court for contact but you need to get permission from the court first. Given the high level of involvement you have had with the children, I would not anticipate there being any problems with you getting this permission.

If you want to try to resolve it without going to court, which has its benefits in terms of it being less stressful, the time it will take and the cost but it will not be legal binding, you have a couple of options. They are mediation and a family group conference (FGC). Someone with PR will need to agree to the FGC going ahead. There is more information about both of these things in the previous message from us as well as in the links/advice sheets referred to in that post.

I hope this all works out and everybody is happy with the outcome.

Best wishes

Suzie.