Pulaski

I suspect the clue is in the words "... it may get dragged out & cost me more .... ". I think the solicitor is planning on fighting a war of attrition - basically scheduling hearings after hearings, until the father either runs out of money to pay his legal team and/or runs out of holiday time to attend court hearings and/or represent himself. Eventually most people will just get ground down and give up.

BEVS

What is your nationality OP ?

LittleGreyCat

Family judge tells father to use Skype to see his children - Telegraph

Makes both interesting and relevant reading.

"Family judge tells father to use Skype to see his children

Britain’s most senior family judge has overturned a man's attempts to stop his children emigrating to Australia with their mother - saying they can keep in touch by Skype."

Hazelnut

For those feeling bad for taking their children away from extended family please don't flog yourselves. I moved away from my family once I married and had a career, I see my cousins once very 10-20yrs and I only saw my parents once every year or two for a very long time. Your children may well have moved away from their family regardless of what you chose to do.

Bo-Jangles

There's a vast difference between growing up with family around you as a child and then later in adult life deciding for yourself to do your own thing. I would give my right arm to have had my aunties, uncles and grandparents in my life as a child. We 'only' lived a few hundred miles from them but in those days it may as well have been the other side of the world, with only annual visits to see grandparents and aunties that we hardly knew (or cared about) at all. In adult life my cousins are strangers to me but we do have precious and life long memories of the times we did spend with them.

Granted we do now have Facebook and the likes, so I do have some of my cuzzies back in my life thankfully.

I see the relationship with my own Mum and her grandkids has taken a completely different tangent. Grandparents and estranged parents today are very much relied up to share the load and much more involved and active in sharing childcare than they were when we were kids. My Mum most certainly plays a very big role in childcare; picking up kids from school, taking them on days out so that their parents can work and have time. She's taking care of them during school holidays, spoiling them rotten, having fun times and weekends away and all kinds and I think it's that additional support that so many people miss out on when they emigrate.

Certainly my mums life is all the richer for participating in the kids lives and nephews and nieces would feel a massive hole and be missing out on a lot if she were not there picking up the slack. Of course a time will come when the kids don't want to, or can't be arsed to hang around with nan and grandad anymore but I certainly wouldn't like to be the one responsible for denying either the kids, a parent or the grandparents that opportunity right now.

simonsi

But just to show how varied the factors are, the fathers relationship is described as "embryonic" (by him!) despite the fact that the children are also described as "pre-teen", and the mother has had to demonstrate being "isolated, trapped and depressed" in Britain, and (importantly), the children were keen to go with her.

There is much in that case that won't translate to cases of one parent simply wishing to go abroad with children who have full, normal relationships with both parents and families.

bourbon-biscuit

The very fact that she cited being "isolated, trapped and depressed" in Britain suggests there is a family or relationship reason to go to Australia. Perhaps her own parents live there now or she has a new partner to join. Something had to be pretty significant for the judge to rule that.

Kotare

The parents mainly. Many families grow up fully independent and quite happy to see each other once a year or so. Very few families live next door to each other any more. When our first grandchild was forecast (in UK) we quickly moved back to NZ. Absolutely no desire to spend the the last quarter of our lives acting as a free nursery/kindergarten . My grandson has his AB rompers and will get a rugby ball next year - what more could he want?

bourbon-biscuit

Quite a lot actually. Possibly the saddest, most misguided post I have ever read.

scrubbedexpat094

I felt that too.

simonsi

Hope that was tongue-in-cheek, the number of lonely old people doesn't need to be increased...

If it wasn't then I am amazed you can willingly put a knife through relationships like that for that reason.

barnsleymat

indeed

Pulaski

Now I am not sure whether I feel more sad, neglected, or a delinquent parent. ..... My family is very small - my mother was an only child, my father had one brother who he was not close to, I have one sister who I am not close to, my wife is an only child, and we only have one child ourselves.

I would have loved to be part of a bigger family, but in three generations, there are simply very few of us, so "leaving all my relatives behind" when I emigrated, wasn't really a consideration.

FWIW My inlaws used to live next door, and what grandparents wouldn't love to live next door to their only grandchild? ..... When my daughter was only three years old, and she was just getting used to the idea that Granny and Grandpa lived next door, they moved away, to the far end of the state. Now they complain that they rarely see us!

Kotare

What a sad lot of the usual miserable suspects - so much for the so called Brit sense of humour. My comment was partly tongue in cheek but just accept that a lot of families don't live all their lives adjacent to each other (or in each others pockets). Both my children went to boarding school at 8 (and had a happy school and home life before you all bleed all over me).

Since when, we have lived all over the world (son Army, daughter expat corporate lawyer) communicating weekly by Skype/e-mail and seeing each other once or twice a year.

I repeat why would parents having committed the middle third of their lives to their children want to become free childminders as they get older, rather than enjoying life spending their childrens notional inheritance. If that is all you want go for it or of course you could get a life.

Why would we be lonely in old age - my grandmother had a boyfriend and was drinking (medicinal) champagne for breakfast at 80 - only way to go :-)

bourbon-biscuit

I have an excellent sense of humour but I am also a smart woman and know that if you want to make a joke on a forum then you either need to possess the literacy skills to get that across or use an emoticon.


You're doing that thing of presenting an either/or argument; there is an awful lot of happy ground between being your grandchildren's carers and living half a world away and seeing them every few years.

Good for her! But we do know that a lot of older people are very lonely and it's not because they are weak or choosing not to live it up. Anyway, I think grandparents can play an important and mutually satisfying role in the extended family life without either sacrificing their freedom or moving as far away as possible. I think living half a world away compromises all relationships but that is up to us all to decide if it works for us but we shouldn't pretend that kids don't miss out.