I have been a SM for 7 years. I love my 2 SS who live with their BM 80 miles away. The BD gets access 1 weekend every fortnight and for 3 weeks of extended time each year. Or that is how it is supposed to be. My partner is a very loving and hands on dad. He drives 160 miles x 2 every weekend we have them to pick them up and bring them to our home. I am the main breadwinner in our house and have been since BD lost his job 3 years ago. He now does 3 jobs to help make ends meet, pays maintanance by DD, agreed to a 75% assets to ex wife in order to get a house for the boys and lent her the remaining 25% until they are 18 - a total of £200K equity from their house and marriage of 14 years. He came out of the marriage with nothing - but he was ok with this as he wanted the boys to have a stable home.
In all the time we have been together the BM has complained about money, has witheld access when he didn't agree to give her his savings when he was made redundant, made serious accusations and threatened with social services - we had to go to court for that one and it was judged totally unfounded and she admitted it wasn't true and withdrew the complaint. Now we were dealing with a situation where for the last 6 months since we informed her that we were getting married (SS delighted and we sat them down properly to tell them) she has been trying to dictate what we do with the boys on our weekends, changing pick up and drop off times and "swapping" weekends without any notice. BD has asked repeatedly for weeks he is allowed to have boys for holidays and she wouldnt tell him so his employers less than pleased. End of May one of kids let slip that they were going abroad so BD wrote to remind BM that it is law to ask permission from him. So she replied and told him she was taking them to france for 2 weeks and Greece for 1 . He agreed France but not Greece as it clashed with his access and also 3rd month she has removed one of weekends of access so he has only seen his children for 6 days in the last 3 months. She took him to court. He was notified on Wednesday and court was on friday. He had no legal rep as we couldnt afford it, she had barrister and solicitor. They ruled he had to be more flexible and he explained that he worked every second weekend so how could he be more flexible if she didn't give him notice so he could get time off? He lost his case and now access is still fortnightly but at her discretion. We are both devastated and can't understand why time with a father is not as important as the mother. It has put a massive strain on our relationship and we are on the brink of breaking up. We were due to get married the week she booked to go to Greece. She texted yesterday to say that as well as us not seeing them for the whole of August, the weekend we are supposed to see them in September she has arranged for SS to go to a party and we have to drive 80 miles to drop off and a day earlier. Is this all normal? Is this what the courts can do?