hi Thanks all,
the legal situation is complicated.
he has parental responsibility (a legal definition) for the children, which means I can't take them out of the country without his agreement (and vice versa) either or both of us can agree schools, medical treatment and other major life decisions etc. it gets tricky if we disagree. When it comes to residence and contact, neither of us have any absolute rights at all (scotland has a different set of laws to england) but the children have the right to maintain a relationship with both parents, and neither of us have more rights than the other, unless and until a court decides upon contact and residency rules, the police will not intervene if one or other of us stops the other one having contact: but that works both ways.
My kids are young, one is a toddler and the other has just started school, explaining isn't really going to help any just yet.
I don't have any wish to try and stop them having a relationship, the oldest particularly would be devastated if that happened and AH loves his children (plus that really wouldn't even be an option in court, they pretty much wait for something BIG to happen first). They deserve to see their father, and he would not knowingly hurt them or put them at risk.
But he doesn't see being too drunk to talk as risk. and as he never thinks he is unsafe to look after them and we have had a lot of incidents of extremely poor dangerous judgement when he's drunk, they deserve to have a responsible adult make sure they are safe. I don't need or want that to be me, if it means I have to assess how capable their dad is.
he has agreed that until I am comfortable that he is sober all the time, he won't have the children overnight but, he may change his mind on that, especially if I can't build any trust or he doesn't stop drinking and yes, I'll only know if he's drinking beforehand, not during.
of course if I could trust him then we probably wouldn't be seperating.
I just don't know what to do about this.
I know I can't control this, but if I'm missing a trick here, because of some twisted thinking patterns, you know?