Whats a court order?!

[pippy0512]

My Story - I am a father of a wonderful 8 year old boy from a broken down marriage. I have currently been separated for over 3 years and have my son from Thursday after school till Sunday morning. I pick him up and drop him off. I pay the correct amount of maintenance as worked out by the online CSA calculator as well as providing for my son when needed ie - school uniform etc. All this was agreed verbally, which is where my problem begins. My ex wife is now demanding he attend a Polish school on a Saturday between 9am and 1pm, she is Polish and obviously he is dual nationality. I am trying to fight this as this is my time with him and the school is a massive disruption to our day, travel to and from the school included. She is not interested in listening and try's to manipulate me by throwing digs at me about my responsibility as a father. I should say i really dont want to swap days as these fit into my pattern at work which can be very unsocial hours.
So the time has come to think about setting up a court order,so really my questions are;

Do i have a chance at keeping him on a Saturday or does the fact he is half polish and the school is helpfull go against me?

Are my work patterns taken into consideration when requesting to have him certain days?

Do i request to have him or draw up a plan/statement of the way i think is fairest?

What do i try to do? A solicitors letter? A court order? where to start

Do i include the maintenance in all this to the court even tho that hasn't been brought up by her?

Thank you all in advance!!

[leclerc]

Re: Whats a court order?!

You need to do what is in the interests of the child. I would say that you should look at extending your contact or changing your contact so that it is after this Polish School is finished unless there is parent participation involved which means that you can have an activity that is both educational and that you both can do which shows that you are interested in his cultural heritage.
I would look and see if there are any such Polish schools in the area where you live so that you can suggest an alternative that might be acceptable to her and that this agreement is put in writing so that the informal agreement has at least got a written form.

What is taken into consideration is what is in the best interests of the child. The best thing is to work this out informally rather than going down the line of doing it more formally but I would suggest that a written agreement is drawn up and witnessed by both someone she knows and someone you know(so that there is no issue of unfairness later on down the line). Going to court should be the last resort rather than the first one.