Is Easter your weekend with the children?

April 2, 2017 by Melinda at Giles Wilson Solicitors

Is Easter your weekend with the children?

Leigh-on-sea is a lively town at Easter where there are events arranged by Leigh Community Centre, and our local schools and churches hold Easter Egg hunts and bonnet parades. Children are seen gazing into the sweet shops in along Leigh Broadway, and Leigh Road at the displays of chocolate surrounded by little yellow chicks and bunnies. It is all picture perfect family time.

Or is it?

For families juggling split parenting, it can be a difficult weekend where arrangements are fraught as wider family invites put a strain an already stressful situation if you have to arrange time with your child or time for your child to be with the non-resident parent. Children can feel pulled in both directions and guilty at expressing their wish to spend time with one parent over another. It may feel as though every other family is having a wonderful happy time whilst you are caught in the midst of yet another argument with your ex over the arrangements for the children.

At Giles Wilson we do our best to support you through these times and to find solutions to situations that can easily get out of hand and those that can suffer the most are the children. Planning ahead and looking at alternative arrangements usually helps to deflect from tension and gives everyone time to adjust to a different approach; from suggestions that a celebration be moved to another day, to embracing your child-free time and enjoying your own friends and family without guilt!

Arrangements need not be set in stone; an agreement fixed at the time that you separated perhaps needs looking at as the needs of your child change, or life for either parent changes. Hopefully much of this can be sorted out without the need to involve a solicitor, but if you do, then usually the sooner the better rather than allowing things to become entrenched and your child to be caught in cross-fire.

And remember, that a quarter of all families with children now have a single parent. So you most certainly are not alone.

This article is by Melinda Giles at Giles Wilson Solicitors.
For legal advice please call 01702 477 106 or visit one of Giles Wilson's offices: 1711 London Road Leigh, 54 Leigh Broadway, 5 Roche Close Rochford
Website: www.gileswilson.co.uk
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If you would like to put forward a question to Melinda, please comment below or email joanna@leigh-on-sea.com