Originally posted by Selfrepmom
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Absolutely be cautious... http://canlii.ca/t/hwwzr
[48] The mother perceives herself – the mother – as the primary caregiver of the children “as of right”. This appears to be consistent with her own experience as a child following her own parents’ high conflict separation and divorce. As a result, she felt entirely justified to leave the matrimonial home with the two children “to protect them” from their father, without notice to him, and to deny him access to the children for lengthy periods of time for no other reason than forcing him to agree to her desired parenting schedule (giving her a tactical advantage in the litigation). She also felt entitled to make all decisions relating to the children, without prior consultation with the father, being of the view that her obligation to consult and inform was being met by simply relaying her decisions to the father after the fact, thus precluding him from being an active participant in the children’s lives.
[49] This conduct on the part of the mother left the father feeling completely marginalized as a parent. He felt entirely denied an opportunity to be part of his children’s day-to-day lives, including in areas that he had been actively part of in the past such as their health care, education and extracurricular activities. As a result, he fought back. Unfortunately, he often fought back in ways that were not child-focussed and which only led to more conflict. He also took unreasonable stances with regard to what were otherwise reasonable requests by the mother, for example by refusing to provide his consent to the mother’s travel with the children to Mexico to attend her brother’s wedding (and despite having been ordered by the court to provide such consent). As a result of what he perceived to be patronizing messages and unjustified attacks on his parenting abilities (and I do find that in many of her messages to the father the mother was in fact patronizing and at times even condescending to him), the father eventually refused to communicate with her at all, and unreasonably ignored all of her emails from September 2018 onwards.
End Result was 50/50... I sat in the trial... I heard all the evidence...The Judge made the right call!
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