Step Lair

Slug,

There appears to be some misunderstanding regarding the phone I have provided for the children’s use.

This phone has not been provided for SS12’s use only, although as the older child he has been tasked with looking after it. As per your suggestion, I have provided the phone to enable both children to contact me whenever they want, at my expense. The other motivator for the provision of the phone was to reduce call costs, as calls between the children’s phone and mine are free.

SS12 tells me however that the phone has been regularly confiscated and I am not able to contact the children on it during my court ordered contact time. This has increased my call costs significantly, as due to the timing of the calls in the new orders, I have to call from my mobile phone and can’t take advantage of the cheaper costs of calling from home.

I have no issue with you preventing SS12 using the phone to contact his friends as punishment on your contact time, however, please make the phone available for me to call him on during my contact time.

With the current costs of fuel and the increased costs of calls, the Child Support Agency can reduce the amount I pay in child support as my costs of contact have become higher. It will financially benefit us both for the phone to be used in the manner I envisioned when I provided the it to the children.

Please also ensure that the phone is returned with the children when they come for their weekend and holiday contact at my residence.

Thanks for your co-operation.

CF’s DH

She confiscated the phone over our contact time, which I don’t think she has any right to do and she also confiscates it for the most minor infractions, for weeks at a time. She’s just a who get’s a kick out of running up DH’s phone bills, by forcing him to call to a different network.

I guess she is hoping she can interfere with his phone contact and stop him calling if she can make it as costly as possible for him.

It was her idea originally for DH to buy a phone for the kids. Now he has called her bluff, she doesn’t like it!