even if a form was signed, you could go on holiday..up to a month is fine, anything after needs fathers agreement, well if he had parental rights..lol

hehe **evil grin**

I've been married twice and have 2 children from each ex (ie i have 4!) I'm in a rather odd situation in that i know what it's like both sides of the coin. My 2 youngest live with their dad and I have the 2 eldest. We did all kind of get along, even if it was for the sake of the kids, but my 1st ex remarried sometime ago and the woman is poison. Thanks to her, the eldest 2 haven't seen their dad for over a year now and only get a five minute call most (bit not every) week.

I live with the prejudice shown by folk for 'giving up' my boys and the hurt of trying to get the girls to see that their dad loves them very much but his own circumstances make it difficult to be there for them as much as he'd like. I do my best to for all of them tho' not always easy.

Its all for the women, its the way the whple system is set up, Been there done that, still won but did`nt feed the solictors pocket, My kids know how much i love them and No mattere how much she tried to use them as pawns, it never worked. Ireland is a joke when it comes to family Law, Its like bringing lambs to the slaughter, I was One Of the lucky ones

you all say that the men have no rights but sometimes the men have no right to have rights.

take my ex. we split up in march of 05. he didn't see his kids for two months. after that he took them three times. once every two weeks. the last time he was supposed to take them he stood them up. i had to pick their little hearts up off the floor. he didn't even give a reason for this. i used to text him and ask when he was going to see the kids. but after that i stopped texting and said to myself well if he wants to see them he will get in contact. he didn't. he waited until june of this year. a whole year after he saw them last to ask to see them again. in the space of that year my kids' hearts mended and they forgot about him. was i about to let him into their lives just so he could hurt them again? no. i have every right to deny him access and i will... right up until the day he brings me to court. i did tell him a while back that he could see them for an hour in their own home and reintroduce himself. he wasn't happy with that. he wanted to take them for the weekend!! he's a stranger to, if not my eldest then certainly my youngest who was only just gone two when he upped and forgot about them. no xmas presents, no birthday presents, no phone calls. and at times like this i love the fkd up irish family law. i will get him into court and i will make a laughing stock of him. and he deserves every sly grin, every teeny snigger that comes his way. his loss. he should have remembered he had kids while he was forming his romance with his new wife. kids were not even invited to his wedding. scuse me while i just say...... ASSHOLE!

so, sometimes yes men do deserve the treatment they get off their exes and the courts.

oookay, you guys have every right to be pissed at the system. My 2nd husband was fleeced by his 1st wife, she took him for everything, and I mean everything... souvenir plates that he'd collected on his travels around the world with the Navy, even a chess set that was his on the grounds that their little girl (who was about 1 year old at the time!!) played with it, plus nigh on £350 a month maintenance ... BUT, it doesn't always go the womans way.

All 4 of my kids were living with me when I split from my 2nd husband. I refused, and signed a piece of paper to say i refused, to touch his Navy pension believing that having only been with him for 6 of his 24 years of service that it was unfair to take what he'd worked so hard for from him, nor would i take a sizeable chunk of his handshake (well over £30,000).. then he had us turfed, lawfully, out of the marital home.

The ensuing breakdown is part of the reason my boys now live with their dad. Guys can be bitches too.

Hm - well it's because of all this that me and my ex try to stay friends, even good friends. We do argue more than we used to and it's better we get out of each others' hair if possible, but we buy each other presents, he comes back here and we still tell the old jokes and cook dinner for each other, and generally hang out. In two years he takes over custody (as long as sprog doesn't seriously protest) and I'm cool with that. Definitely better than all the "My other half was a bitch and fifteen years later I still hate him/her." There's a time to get over it, yeah? I'm missing teeth to my old man from when I was a kid, and if I can get over it, anyone can.