Enforcing a contact arrangement

A cancelled Wednesday because a child is ill is not non-compliance. A third cancellation in six weeks, always at the same point, is. The difference is factual rather than emotional, and it decides whether the next step is worth taking.

So start by setting out what actually happened: which handovers were scheduled, which went ahead, which did not, and what was said at the time. Almost everyone overestimates the number of times, and one wrong figure costs you credibility in every conversation after it.

Not “you never stick to anything”, but: “over the past three months, six of the twelve Wednesdays did not go ahead, five of them cancelled on the day”. Facts are harder to wave away than accusations, and they make the conversation less threatening for the other parent — which makes the conversation more likely to happen at all.

Ask why, too. Sometimes the arrangement simply no longer matches a new work roster, and changing the arrangement is a faster route than enforcing it.

Put in writing what you want: the existing arrangement honoured, or an adjusted one that is actually workable. Name a date by which you want an answer. Writing is not a threat here, it is a record: anyone who later starts mediation or proceedings has to be able to show they tried to resolve it themselves first.

Keep it short, businesslike and free of accusations. Write it as though a judge will read it, because that can happen.

If you cannot resolve it together, a mediator is the logical intermediate step. It is faster and cheaper than proceedings, and a Dutch court will almost always ask whether you tried. If the other parent refuses, that in itself is information that counts.

If the pattern persists, you can ask the court to intervene. What can follow, from light to heavy:

• Compliance with the existing arrangement, if necessary reinforced with a penalty payment (dwangsom) — an amount the other parent owes each time the arrangement is not honoured.
• A change to the arrangement, if the current one turns out to be unworkable in practice.
• Heavier measures, which a court imposes only in exceptional situations and always weighs against the child’s interests.

Expect months rather than weeks, and legal costs. That is not a reason to avoid it, but it is a reason to take steps 1 to 3 seriously.

The thing that makes the difference at every step is the same: a chronological record of scheduled handovers, what actually happened, and what was communicated. Not as ammunition, but because “it often does not work” is a weaker argument than a list of dates.

In CoParIzi that record comes out of the log: every scheduled changeover, every swap request and every change is dated, and you export it as a PDF. See features for how it works. The side benefit is that you are not keeping it by hand at the moment you are least able to.

• Withholding maintenance. Contact and child maintenance are legally separate in the Netherlands. Stopping payments gives you a second problem, not a solution to the first.
• Using your child as the messenger. Routing messages through your child burdens exactly the person you are trying to protect.
• Cancelling once yourself. Understandable, and it turns you into a second party that does not honour the arrangement.
• Putting it on social media. It reads badly later, and it comes back.

Sometimes compliance fails because the arrangement no longer fits shift work, travel time or the child’s age. Say so out loud and make a proposal, instead of cancelling week after week. An arrangement you can actually keep is worth more to your child than a wider one that keeps falling through.

CoParIzi helps with the schedule and with recording what happened. For your legal position in a specific case, speak to a mediator or a lawyer, or start at Het Juridisch Loket. Are you a mediator or lawyer working with families on this yourself? See for mediators.