r/FathersRights

Recently had mediation. They try to get me to sign an agreement.

After reviewing the agreement, I noticed that the agreement wasn’t what was discussed in the Zoom break out room call.

Is this normal?

Also, I requested

-disparagement

-psych eval

Which are all on the agreement and has not agreed upon next to it.

I also requested right of first refusal. Which was also declined by my ex, but I noticed that it’s not on the agreement as not agreed-upon.

Is this a bit suspicious?

Thanks

I’m looking for advice on how to handle custody and next legal steps.

My wife and I separated in late 2024. We have two young children together. During that time I began a short relationship with a coworker, and she became pregnant while I was away at military training. Around the same time, I joined the military and was later stationed in Alabama, about 14 hours from our home state of Virginia.

My ex and I were only together a few months before I left for training. I told her she could move with me to Alabama when I received orders, and she chose to do so even though her family is in Virginia. A few months later, I ended the relationship due to lack of connection. She then moved back to Virginia while pregnant.

Since then, my wife and I have reconciled and are working on our marriage. She has been supportive of me being involved in my child’s life, and we have already started looking into legal options.

The baby was born recently in Virginia. My plan was to travel there to meet my child. Initially I was going alone, but when my ex asked why my other children were not coming, my wife and I decided to all travel together since it aligned with family visits and school break.

The day we were supposed to travel, my ex told me she would not bring the baby to meet me if my wife was present. She said my wife is not her family and should not be around the baby.

A week later, she sent another message saying she plans to seek primary physical custody, limit my visitation to Virginia on her terms, prevent the child from traveling out of state until age three, and require constant contact when the child is with me.

There are no safety concerns regarding my wife. She has no criminal history and is a great mother to our children.

My concerns:

1. Can she legally refuse to let me see my child based on my wife being present?

2. How likely is it that I will be limited to visitation only because of distance and military orders?

3. Should I go straight to a lawyer or attempt mediation first?

4. What kind of custody arrangement is realistic in a situation like this?

I cannot file anything yet until paternity is established, which is currently in process.

I want to be actively involved in my child’s life and avoid unnecessary conflict, but I also don’t want to set a precedent where she controls access.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Hey fellow abused men . Heres some of my story. Your not alone. Its a epidemic getting the rise of false allegations made by females. There not just abusing us but ower kids too. mothers, not all females but mostly females, need to start being jailed not reward for their crimes. There psychological and emotional abuseing ower kids for there own pleasure and self gain. Dont listen to the , all fatheres bad shit, mothers abuse there kids far more than males and its a statistically proven fact. More needs done to punish mother's thst use kids as weapons. Start protecting ower kids.

All this happened in a 16 day window. from the day i took out court orders and had a specific order stopping my ex moving with ower child that was granted and a court date as the persure set for a months time.

It all worked. i have not seen my daughter in over 10 years even thought i was never charged and i won 2 civil case were my exs was found in finding facts and in law to have made mutiple false allegations in a attempted to blacking my character and in a attempted to persuade the courts, had a warrent issued for her arrest and mutiple court orders against her. I had a contact order to see my kid every month, im scotland her england, and it was never enforced . The warrant was not enforced. Contact order never enforced, NOTHING WAS ENFORCED.

My life got destroyed on the word of a female with no evidence, none, available, just her word alone.

I had a warrent for her arrest mutplie court orders and she moved illegally against a sherrifs order were she had to get the court permission first. Shes psychologically and emotionally abusing ower daughter while the police know, cafcass now and the courts know and they all sat back and let it happen.

My kids lifes destroyed by a mother who made false allegations to be able to move and for her own self gain.

She done worse than gypse roses mother. Why ? . shes told 1 kid it was raped, another her dad did it, put my 2 sons through hell at 12 and 14 and tried to put me in jail for fuck knows how long. AND SHE IS FREE TO ABUSE.

my life got destroyed with no evidence but when a court finds the mother guilty of making false allegations, has a warrant issued, mutiple court orders and is abusing kids, they are left free by the system to abuse.

Heres a link to my X with court document added to it

https://x.com/i/status/2044877165854859487

Why did my daughter have to suffer like this at the hands of someone ment to protect them.

THE UK FAMILY COURTS ARE BROKEN.

Fathers have no chance in this system and it no wonder so many take action into their own hands as the police dont care, courts dont care and the social service dont care.

Femalse are just as capable of being a abuser as a males. Its not a gender issue its a human one.

Kids need protected from mothers to.

I wondered if my story might be useful to some of you. Just to know that even in the darkest of these corridors there can be light, sometimes completely obscured by tears and unimaginable pain. But it's there if you hold on. Nothing will ever be the same, but there is an opportunity to rebuild.

We'd been together over 24 years. Five kids. My ex had a long history of mental health issues, some of them serious. After about ten years it became very obvious she wanted nothing to do with me in any intimate way — unless it was entirely on her terms. By intimate I don't just mean physical. I mean any form of warmth or recognition that I was more than a carer and provider.

After our third child was born there were huge concerns that she would take her own life. There were also concerns she might harm the children — there was always this undercurrent that she was the *only* one who could care for them.

She refused all and any suggestion of mental health support — for herself or the children. I had to fight to get the kids medical help when something wasn't right, sometimes with serious repercussions. One of my daughters, eleven at the time, developed tiredness to the point where she was listless and sleeping twelve to fourteen hours a day. I tried for weeks to convince my wife to take her to the doctor. She would lie and tell me she'd been, that the doctor said she was fine. After another week of watching my daughter deteriorate, I asked my daughter about the visit. She told me her mum never took her. I was working twelve-hour days at the time, but I took time off and we went together. She was diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease and needed thyroxine immediately.

She told lies about everything. To me, to the kids. I remember one day there was a knock at the door. Our neighbour was standing there holding our children's pet rabbit. My wife said it wasn't ours and closed the door in the neighbour's face. The kids were standing right behind her. They knew it was their rabbit. Nobody dared say a word. Not because she'd scream and shout — but because any challenge to her would send her into a deep depression, and we'd all be back to fearing she'd take her own life.

After 24 years, I dared to say I wasn't happy. I didn't ask to split up. I didn't ask to separate. I just said I wasn't happy.

It was like a plan she'd been preparing for years suddenly unfolded.

I had to go abroad for two weeks. While I was there, I was served a restraining order. I remember it clearly because it was my birthday. I was utterly shocked. I tried to call her. When she picked up I just asked what this was about, why she was doing this. Her response chilled me to my bones. She hissed down the line: *"I will destroy you. You will never see your kids again."* Then she hung up.

At the time my two eldest daughters were at university. Within two weeks she had blocked them from coming anywhere near her or their siblings. Then the most despicable part of her plan unfolded. She accused me of unspeakable things and began pushing these stories into the minds of the three younger children — the youngest was seven. She surrounded herself with social services and the police to convince the world I was a monster. She demanded a "safe house." The kids were ripped out of their home and placed in sheltered accommodation. She forced them into a siege mentality — continuously telling them I was outside, that I was going to kidnap them, that I was going to kill them. She would shout at them to come away from the windows and they would hide behind the couch.

During all of this, I was 2,000 miles away. After the shock of the restraining order and that phone call, I knew my kids were in mortal danger from her — not from me. So I stayed where I was, hoping that the distance would at least protect them from physical harm. I wasn't allowed any form of contact.

A family court hearing was scheduled. The closer it got, the more she ramped up. She had three children still in her direct care. When the eldest of them began challenging her narrative about who I was and what I'd supposedly done, she engineered a police intervention to have him removed — over a play fight with his brother. He was fifteen. She literally had him thrown out of the house with a bag of clothes. The court order stopped me from having direct contact with him, so I had to get a family friend to take him in until I could sort things out.

To show you the depths of this — she decided to prosecute him. She forced the younger two to be interviewed by police and coached them beforehand so that the central story was that the violence happened because *that's what he saw his father do*. My son was at least physically safe, but I wanted to bring him to where I was. His mother had taken his passport and refused to give it back. It took me six weeks to get a replacement, then bring him safely to me.

The court process was still going. The closer it got, the more I feared she might hurt the two children still in her care. Her own family — who were also dumbfounded by what was happening — let me know she had said she would rather they all die than have them with me.

So I backed off completely. I let her have her day in court. I wrote to the judge explaining why I had stepped away, but because I wasn't present, he had no choice but to rule in her favour. As painful as that was — to be validated by the court system as a vile and dangerous man — it was better than risking my children's lives. I hoped that backing off would give them some respite.

It didn't. Things got much worse for them. She pushed and pushed until my other son was placed in a mental health facility. She'd fabricated stories about his behaviour, told the psychiatrists things he had done that were just lies. He'd started questioning her narrative about me too. He was a threat to her reality, so she manoeuvred him out.

Then she made a disclosure to social services that she would take the children's lives rather than have them anywhere near me. And for the first time in this entire nightmare, someone actually woke up.

All the professionals finally got together and cross-checked their information. They realised they had all been told something different. They realised the only source of all their information was her. And incredibly — in all that time, through everything that had been said and done — not one of them had spoken to me. Not one.

The two children still with her were immediately placed in foster care. The second I knew they were safe, that she could no longer hurt them, I applied to have the original court order and findings overturned. I was told this almost never happens in family court. But the inconsistencies were so extreme that there was felt to be a chance. Finally, a judge looked at everything and ordered a new hearing.

I remember very clearly wondering whether I should even proceed. By then the two youngest believed I was the monster their mother had made me out to be. There was one report where my youngest had said: *"If he was dead, I would dance on his grave."* She was a child when she said that. A child who'd been told every day for years that her father was going to kill her.

During discovery, everything came out. How she'd lied to every professional involved. Detailed fabrications about the children's behaviour fed to doctors, social workers, police. They found a notebook where she'd been working out with the youngest — day by day, on the run-up to the hearing — exactly what they should say in order to "get me." Every day my solicitor was sending me more of this stuff. Page after page of it.

The hearing lasted a week. Four sets of solicitors and barristers — because the children were in care, the local authority had to represent their interests too. It's far too long to go into detail here. During the hearing, after my ex gave her testimony, she tried to take her own life — though she told people beforehand she was going to do it and where. This was an attempt to frighten the children who were due to give evidence and stop the whole thing. She was found and placed into forced psychiatric care. The proceedings continued.

At the end of it, I was completely exonerated. Social services were forced to accept that they and all the "professionals" involved had behaved in a catastrophic manner. The judge ordered every service to review their processes so this could never happen again. My ex was banned from having any contact with the children, especially the youngest. She was in a mental institution for over a year.

---

I got my kids back. That was incredible but also heartbreaking. They were not the same children I had last seen. We were all broken. The whole thing had taken around four years.

I was in a relationship that had been incredibly restorative for me, but it couldn't survive the onslaught of what the kids were dealing with. So it had to end, for their sake. I wasn't allowed to take the children out of the country — we owned a house in the Mediterranean — so I had to give up my businesses and connections to care for them full-time. I couldn't work. I was a single dad.

Very slowly, they began to recover. Very slowly, they went back to school. Then when they were ready, we moved to our house in the sun, and they rebuilt themselves there. I rebuilt myself alongside them.

Today, fifteen years after this nuclear bomb went off in our lives, all five of my children are doing amazingly. Four completed master's degrees and are thriving. The other lives an incredible life in a beautiful part of the world with his wife.

My ex has never stopped trying to poison them. She gets into their heads by being overtly "nice," waits until they let their guard down, then uses their vulnerability to hiss her narrative at them. It often takes them weeks to recover from a single exchange. They're all thousands of miles away from her now, so at least there's some protection in that.

As for me. I never gave up. Hoping, waiting, screaming at the injustice of it all. At the pointlessness of the pain my kids went through. We are all changed. We are all somewhat broken. But we hold each other while we try to build the best life we can.

Don't ever give up. Ever.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19j177WVmg/?mibextid=wwXIfr