Hi all,
I am a new user on here who found the forum while searching for background and trying to educate myself. I need some advice or opinion on OCL (ontario case), and what my options might be for next steps.
I have been divorced for 5 years now (2013-2018), we have one son, who will soon be 13 years old (mom moved out when he was 7).
I will try to summarize the back-story and highlight the issues at hand as briefly and accurately as I can.
Prior to finalizing the separation agreement, we used a parenting mediator to write our co-parenting agreement, but my ex didn't genuinely want to accept it, even from the beginning. The mediator saw no reason to not have 50/50, and cautioned about too much and too frequent transition.
Basically, we started the separation (different houses) in 2013 with a co-parenting agreement that had our 7-yr old son at 8 days with mom, 6 days with dad (on a 2 week schedule), with either 2 or 3 days on/off. The agreement was to help ease mom into not seeing her son for long stretches, and it stated that after 6 months, when family got used to the schedule, we would move to a 50/50 week-on week-off schedule. For the next 3 years, my ex flat out refused any efforts to amend the schedule, decrease the transitions, or move to 50/50. Due to the stress and difficulty and the impacts it was having on my son as a result of her high-conflict personality, and malicious refusal to cooperate or communicate or focus on our son and his activities and best interests, I initially did what I could to avoid escalation and court action. From the time my son was 9 yrs old, she had engaged in calling the police to the house when they would have arguments and fights. To put it lightly, her "parenting style" was not well-received by our son (control, punishment, removal of privileges, shaming, withholding affection, and projecting hatred for father on the son), nor was her co-parenting approach productive or constructive (refusal of access requests, non-consent to activities and development, vacation and holiday requests, nickel and diming and demanding reimbursement prior to agreeing to registrations, paying for pizza days, etc.).
There was co-parent conflict over almost everything. Basically, I let her aggravate me and push my buttons, and bought into the unproductive arguing. I was not able to find a way to have discussions and considerations about our son's activities and especially custody and parenting issues. All the while, the conflict and difficulties with my son and her began early on (before she moved out) and continued and escalated over the next few years. Their relationship is characterized by systematic emotional and psychological abuse, shaming, punishment, and extreme conflict. During arguments between them, mom would call police, crisis lines, her family and friends, etc. in an effort to threaten and control and intervene in the fights by embarrassing and shaming our son. Son would self-harm, shutdown, and basically be traumatized for hours and sometimes days. General theme was he was always happy to leave her care, and quite often very upset returning to her care.
Dad found new partner in 2015 and in 2016 partner moved in. Incredibly smart and supportive, fully engaged and committed to being an amazing stepmom. Son has a very strong relationship and feels loved and supported by both dad and stepmom.
Long story short, in late 2016, pressure was increasing to move to 50/50 and renegotiate the co-parenting agreement. Son was seeing a psychologist, whilst mom refused to engage or acknowledge the breakdown of their relationship and her role in it. A crisis event occurred on a long weekend that he was away with mom, and an argument in the car resulted in mom slamming the brakes on the highway, and threatenening to crash the car and kill them both. Dad responded when he found out 2 days later from son, and
called CAS and the police to report this incident, along with the 3 years of conflict and poor behaviour, and misguided "parenting style". Pending the CAS abuse investigation, dad "withheld" son as he was too traumatized and afraid to return to mom. Mom brought an emergency motion to regain access. Judge allowed for a couple of supervised visits, and ordered that her access gradually resume. Judge recommended OCL involvement and OCL agreed to assess the case. OCL started in early 2017. 3 month report took almost 5 months. Interim agreement acknowledged the high-conflict mom/dad issues, the troubled state of the mom/son relationship, put son with dad for 10/14 days, and said that all efforts had to go towards trying to improve the relationship between son and mom. Although the custody and decision-making went to father (80%), OCL report #1 appeared very biased against father, portrayed the mother as the victim, took every opportunity to downplay the abusive mom/son relationship and level of crisis and refusal for mother to accept responsibility, focused on historical aspects of the mother/father relationship, blamed son (victim) for his "sensitivity", over-reacting, and his role and behaviour in conflicts with mother, etc. Basically, OCL said that the son will only listen to and do what his father says and "if father does not improve on his work with mother, and does not support the improvement of the son/mother relationship, then she would flip her recommendation and take the son away from his (unconditionally loving and supportive and committed) father and put him with emotionally and psychologically abusive mother." OCL was to make a 6 month update and final recommendation. This took almost 10 months. OCL refused to interview child after December, even though she was aware of repeated crisis and conflict in the following months. The past 5 months have seen continued conflict between son and mother – rarely are the alternate weekends with mother completed, as son requests and leaves mothers house during fights. Final settlement meeting was April, and OCL refused to provide her report until the parties verbally said they would accept her initial recommendations. OCL acknowledged that child does not want to increase time with his mother, but in the report she insisted that all parties agree to do just that, add a day in the Fall, add a day 6 months after, and then to get back to 50/50 within a year.
The OCL report is rife with inaccuracies, it is extremely biased against both father and child, ignores and does not mention the reason for this case coming to light (mom's abusive parenting, crisis and conflict between mom and son), and then threatens that "if the parents are not able to cooperate and improve things, she will consider referring the case to CAS". Absolutely no mention of the positive developments with son regarding school, sports, his improved attitude, happiness, decrease in stress, etc etc - instead only highlighting the negative comments from his psychologist about him and father. No mention of the continued mother/son conflict and breakdown of their relationship, and the mother's inability to accept her role and responsibility, and continued provocation of conflict and refusal to communicate with father.
Sorry for the long story - now my question.....
Is it worth rebutting or fighting the OCL report, even if I do partially accept the recommendation (which is status quo 10 days with Dad)? I also agree that a son needs to have a mother, and do want to help support the mother/son relationship. I want my son to love his mother, and for her to treat him well - but this has just not come to be, and it will require a lot of time and work by everyone, but most importantly, by mom as the adult. Seeing as my son is almost 13, he now has a very strong idea of where he wants to spend his time and live primarily, and why (because of his positive feelings for dad and stepmom - and because of his negative feelings and ongoing conflict experiences with mom).
Why is the OCL insisting on forcing a 50/50, in light of the difficulties between mom and son?
What are my options?
Should I even bother with submitting a complaint or rebuttal about the OCL, the bias, the very questionable report, the questionable level of "investigation", etc.?
I apologize for the length of the post, but I do look forward to learning and hearing from the very impressive and experienced people on this forum. Some of the stories and advice I have come across are extremely relevant and interesting....and hopefully helpful.
I am a new user on here who found the forum while searching for background and trying to educate myself. I need some advice or opinion on OCL (ontario case), and what my options might be for next steps.
I have been divorced for 5 years now (2013-2018), we have one son, who will soon be 13 years old (mom moved out when he was 7).
I will try to summarize the back-story and highlight the issues at hand as briefly and accurately as I can.
Prior to finalizing the separation agreement, we used a parenting mediator to write our co-parenting agreement, but my ex didn't genuinely want to accept it, even from the beginning. The mediator saw no reason to not have 50/50, and cautioned about too much and too frequent transition.
Basically, we started the separation (different houses) in 2013 with a co-parenting agreement that had our 7-yr old son at 8 days with mom, 6 days with dad (on a 2 week schedule), with either 2 or 3 days on/off. The agreement was to help ease mom into not seeing her son for long stretches, and it stated that after 6 months, when family got used to the schedule, we would move to a 50/50 week-on week-off schedule. For the next 3 years, my ex flat out refused any efforts to amend the schedule, decrease the transitions, or move to 50/50. Due to the stress and difficulty and the impacts it was having on my son as a result of her high-conflict personality, and malicious refusal to cooperate or communicate or focus on our son and his activities and best interests, I initially did what I could to avoid escalation and court action. From the time my son was 9 yrs old, she had engaged in calling the police to the house when they would have arguments and fights. To put it lightly, her "parenting style" was not well-received by our son (control, punishment, removal of privileges, shaming, withholding affection, and projecting hatred for father on the son), nor was her co-parenting approach productive or constructive (refusal of access requests, non-consent to activities and development, vacation and holiday requests, nickel and diming and demanding reimbursement prior to agreeing to registrations, paying for pizza days, etc.).
There was co-parent conflict over almost everything. Basically, I let her aggravate me and push my buttons, and bought into the unproductive arguing. I was not able to find a way to have discussions and considerations about our son's activities and especially custody and parenting issues. All the while, the conflict and difficulties with my son and her began early on (before she moved out) and continued and escalated over the next few years. Their relationship is characterized by systematic emotional and psychological abuse, shaming, punishment, and extreme conflict. During arguments between them, mom would call police, crisis lines, her family and friends, etc. in an effort to threaten and control and intervene in the fights by embarrassing and shaming our son. Son would self-harm, shutdown, and basically be traumatized for hours and sometimes days. General theme was he was always happy to leave her care, and quite often very upset returning to her care.
Dad found new partner in 2015 and in 2016 partner moved in. Incredibly smart and supportive, fully engaged and committed to being an amazing stepmom. Son has a very strong relationship and feels loved and supported by both dad and stepmom.
Long story short, in late 2016, pressure was increasing to move to 50/50 and renegotiate the co-parenting agreement. Son was seeing a psychologist, whilst mom refused to engage or acknowledge the breakdown of their relationship and her role in it. A crisis event occurred on a long weekend that he was away with mom, and an argument in the car resulted in mom slamming the brakes on the highway, and threatenening to crash the car and kill them both. Dad responded when he found out 2 days later from son, and
called CAS and the police to report this incident, along with the 3 years of conflict and poor behaviour, and misguided "parenting style". Pending the CAS abuse investigation, dad "withheld" son as he was too traumatized and afraid to return to mom. Mom brought an emergency motion to regain access. Judge allowed for a couple of supervised visits, and ordered that her access gradually resume. Judge recommended OCL involvement and OCL agreed to assess the case. OCL started in early 2017. 3 month report took almost 5 months. Interim agreement acknowledged the high-conflict mom/dad issues, the troubled state of the mom/son relationship, put son with dad for 10/14 days, and said that all efforts had to go towards trying to improve the relationship between son and mom. Although the custody and decision-making went to father (80%), OCL report #1 appeared very biased against father, portrayed the mother as the victim, took every opportunity to downplay the abusive mom/son relationship and level of crisis and refusal for mother to accept responsibility, focused on historical aspects of the mother/father relationship, blamed son (victim) for his "sensitivity", over-reacting, and his role and behaviour in conflicts with mother, etc. Basically, OCL said that the son will only listen to and do what his father says and "if father does not improve on his work with mother, and does not support the improvement of the son/mother relationship, then she would flip her recommendation and take the son away from his (unconditionally loving and supportive and committed) father and put him with emotionally and psychologically abusive mother." OCL was to make a 6 month update and final recommendation. This took almost 10 months. OCL refused to interview child after December, even though she was aware of repeated crisis and conflict in the following months. The past 5 months have seen continued conflict between son and mother – rarely are the alternate weekends with mother completed, as son requests and leaves mothers house during fights. Final settlement meeting was April, and OCL refused to provide her report until the parties verbally said they would accept her initial recommendations. OCL acknowledged that child does not want to increase time with his mother, but in the report she insisted that all parties agree to do just that, add a day in the Fall, add a day 6 months after, and then to get back to 50/50 within a year.
The OCL report is rife with inaccuracies, it is extremely biased against both father and child, ignores and does not mention the reason for this case coming to light (mom's abusive parenting, crisis and conflict between mom and son), and then threatens that "if the parents are not able to cooperate and improve things, she will consider referring the case to CAS". Absolutely no mention of the positive developments with son regarding school, sports, his improved attitude, happiness, decrease in stress, etc etc - instead only highlighting the negative comments from his psychologist about him and father. No mention of the continued mother/son conflict and breakdown of their relationship, and the mother's inability to accept her role and responsibility, and continued provocation of conflict and refusal to communicate with father.
Sorry for the long story - now my question.....
Is it worth rebutting or fighting the OCL report, even if I do partially accept the recommendation (which is status quo 10 days with Dad)? I also agree that a son needs to have a mother, and do want to help support the mother/son relationship. I want my son to love his mother, and for her to treat him well - but this has just not come to be, and it will require a lot of time and work by everyone, but most importantly, by mom as the adult. Seeing as my son is almost 13, he now has a very strong idea of where he wants to spend his time and live primarily, and why (because of his positive feelings for dad and stepmom - and because of his negative feelings and ongoing conflict experiences with mom).
Why is the OCL insisting on forcing a 50/50, in light of the difficulties between mom and son?
What are my options?
Should I even bother with submitting a complaint or rebuttal about the OCL, the bias, the very questionable report, the questionable level of "investigation", etc.?
I apologize for the length of the post, but I do look forward to learning and hearing from the very impressive and experienced people on this forum. Some of the stories and advice I have come across are extremely relevant and interesting....and hopefully helpful.
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