The Agreement

The weeks and months went by and contact was becoming better each time with Sonny. Now we were all heading over to Dronfield every other week, not just me, the family and we were all able to enjoy our time with Sonny together.

We were still limited to 2 hours every other weekend but Sonny was getting to know us better, we were having some really nice times and fun with him.

Again we couldn’t really go very far because we only had him for 2 hrs but that didn’t matter.

I remember one weekend we were there the weather was torrential. So we picked him up and we thought the only thing we can do is go to the garden centre and have a look round. Unfortunately for us it was closed so we had to have our contact with him in my Dads car! 2 hours of Sonny sitting on our knee in the driver seat pretending to drive to the seaside! We all took turns to have him on our knee and he loved pressing all the buttons on the dash board and radio!

The next court hearing was due. Unbeknownst to me when the date was set it was in essence to be our final court appearance for the first set of court proceedings I’d made against Sarah. There may have been at least one prior to this but it would have been irrelevant as we was waiting for the Cafcass’s report to be submitted.

There had been some communication from Margaret to try and set up a meeting between me and Sarah. I was reluctant to be honest because I was extremely sore about having to go to court and the imposed contact arrangements but I agreed in the end just to see what Sarah had to say.

At one point during the contact period I’d had a blazing row with Sarah on the phone on the way over. I can’t exactly remember what her problem was this time but in the end I put the phone down on her. I didn’t need the headache as I was with my Mum & Dad and we were about to see Sonny. It didn’t end there though as when we arrived at Margaret’s house she began bleating to me about putting the phone down on Sarah. When I questioned there and then what Sarah had done to us I remember Margaret throwing her hands up in the air shouting “what has she done, what exactly has she done?” to which I replied – “Margaret, look around – we are in court because of Sarah and we are in your house having a contact visit because we are in fu**ing court” to which she just scoffed then huffed her way out of the living room.

Margaret lived in her own fantasy that Sarah’s was somehow a victim – she also liked her own way and didn’t like being told otherwise.

Anyway we did agree to meet up, we met in a pub in Dronfield. We sat outside on the benches and Sarah arrived just after I got there. It was civil, we spoke about Sonny and Sarah explained that she thought it would be a good idea to chat and try and work out some long term arrangements for Sonny. She was also upset, she wasn’t enjoying court and I think the process was bothering her. She’d got us to this point though so there wasn’t much I could say to her about that.

In my opinion I found that Sarah could be a liability. She would scorch earth a situation if she wasn’t getting her way. “Throw the baby out with the bathwater”, “shit on her own doorstep” – whatever metaphor you want to use the fact of the matter is Sarah would fuck things up if she thought she was losing control of something she wanted to control, irrespective of whether she was right or wrong – she could be a wrecking machine and she knew it.

In regards to courts, she would have known it wasn’t the right to do ethically to force me to this point for Sonny, for my parents. She was never going to back down though when things became heated so rather than take a long term view she’d resort  to shouting down the phone at me “Sonny’s mine, he’s not yours and you’re not seeing him – and I’m already taking legal advice” – I had to listen to this garbage before I even took her to court for the first time.

Anyway, it was at this meeting that Sarah approached me with an offer. It was in essence a long term agreement for Sonny to contact with us. It was appealing to me, it gave me what I wanted (or as much as I could expect) and it would have set us up for the future – I suspect the offer came from the fact the Cafcass had now compiled the report and at the next court hearing it was going to be submitted.

I, along with Sarah, both had visibility of this report beforehand and from Sarah’s perspective it hadn’t gone her way. What I mean by that is not only was there nothing in the report at all that would suggest to any court that I should be stopped from seeing Sonny and that Sonny should not have contact with his Dad. It was very encouraging to the opposite, that it was clearly in Sonny’s best interest to be in contact with his Dad and his paternal family who were themselves experiencing grandparent alienation.

Sarah obviously knew at this point her game was up. Unless she wanted to expose her real intensions to the court of active parental alienation, throwing more money at rebutting CAFCASS’s reporting and still refusing my contact with Sonny, she was going to have to accept the inevitable – the courts were going to order contact via a court order.

Upto this point Sarah tried her best to play down the parental alienation both her and Margaret had invoked between me and Sonny, she had always claimed I didn’t care about him and he would be better off without me in his life. Laughable as it sounds given here I was forcing her to let me see him via a court room, this was her defence to stop me seeing Sonny. She used a difference tactics the second time I had to take her to court but on this occasion unless she wanted come across as unstable she was forced to have to accept that she could no longer be able to resist my attempts for me and Sonny to have a relationship.

When we got to court discussion I was there with my solicitor, Sarah if I recall was on her own. At some point Sarah sacked her Solicitor, I can’t remember at which point she he’d got the chop but at some point she sacked him. I suppose it must have been due to him not being able to stop me seeing Sonny. She did tell me years later that she wasn’t happy with him and they argued a lot, who knows. Anyway, there was a sudden shift in Sarah’s position – rather than continue through the courts she wanted to put and end to it by making me an offer rather than having it set in a court order whatever the judge determines.

A court order in the context of family courts refers to a formal directive issued by a judge or magistrate in a family law case. Family courts handle legal matters related to family relationships, such as divorce, child custody plus various other domestic issues. When parties involved in a family dispute cannot reach an agreement on their own, they may seek resolution through the court system.

A court order outlines specific instructions or decisions regarding various aspects of the family law case. In a child custody case, the court order may establish a custody arrangement, outlining which parent has legal and physical custody of the child and the visitation rights of the noncustodial parent.

Once a court order is issued, it is legally binding, and parties involved are required to comply with its terms. Failure to adhere to a court order can result in legal consequences, including fines, contempt of court charges, or other enforcement measures.

Family court orders are designed to provide a clear resolution to family disputes, protect the rights and well-being of all parties involved, and ensure that the decisions made are in the best interests of any children affected by the case.

So in brief, a court order is a legally binding document that all parties need to adhere to, Sarah didn’t want that she wanted a verbal agreement. This is how it was set to me and I agreed to take it out of court that day:

Sarah would allow the following –

·         Overnight with Sonny every other weekend from Friday to Sunday

·         Sarah would commit to supporting the contact by assisting with the travel by driving 1/3 of the way meeting me at the Ladybower Inn on the Snake Pass on Friday.

·         Half of Sonny’s holidays

·         Freedom to take Sonny on holidays with sufficient notice.

·         Alternate Christmas’s

On consultation with my solicitor this was a good offer, she insinuated that if I didn’t agree to that then she would let the court decide and it was likely I would get less contact at this particular time. Sarah also advised that she wouldn’t agree to this being put into a court order, so it wasn’t legally binding. It was an offer only conditional by to her that I agreed to notify the courts on that day that I would be withdrawing my application.

My solicitor advised that I just needed to be aware that as it wasn’t legally binding Sarah in no way needed to honour the agreement if she decided she didn’t want to. If at some point she reneged on the agreement then if I couldn’t find a solution with her I’d have to take to her back to court thus starting the whole process again. It was a risk, but it was one I was willing to take, so I agreed.

I was satisfied with arrangement – I discussed it with my solicitor and he was as well, I understood his concerns about it not being in a court order but he also understood why I’d agree to what she had offered, because it was more time with Sonny and much sooner.

He was right, I was wrong and Sarah was about to play her first move.

#SonnyKing #ParentalAlienation #DadsandSons #TheTruth #Dronfield #Sheffield #Familycourts