Custody: At what point does...

Or more articulately - how many years have to pass by with his non-involvment before the court wouldnt consider forcing a parenting order or visitations?

i dont know if there is a time limit.
I do know years ago if a parent applied for a custodial agreement then the natural course of things was councelling for the parents first then if nothing could be arranged between the parents a lawyer could be appointed for the child and then it would go to court. i dont think they like to order you to do things but would rather it was a meeting between the parties to come to an agreement. i guess though if the parties couldnt agree at all then the next step would be for the courts to make the decisions.    

Yeah it all makes sense though. I dont want to/plan to stop Max knowing his dad. but i worry say, age 8, Max will suddenly become interesting to his father and he'll go to court and be granted weekends or something despite him not have being involved up until that point.

Unfortunately I have a friend who has this problem. Her DD's Dad never lived with them, basically denied her existance and saw her about a whole 3 or 4 times in the first 3 years of her life. He then got a new partner, got married and they had a baby together. She (his new partner) decided he should have something to do with his other daughter (my friend's DD) and so he took my friend to court and got every second weekend. Pretty much standard Dad contact. Every thing went as well as it could I guess till the little girl turned 6 and he decided he wanted to go and study (him and his wife had another kid by that stage) and he applied to the court to have shared care of her. Basically it looked to me like they wanted to claim more family assistance. Thats very cynical of me but he was hardly even looking after the little girl when they had her, she was being palmed off to various relatives (like her grandparents on that side) and/or used to look after her younger half siblings while they watched TV/played playstation etc. He didn't get 50/50 shared care but he did get 2 nights one week and 3 nights the next week (so 5 nights a fortnight). She was devastated. The court basically said no matter what happened in the past he has the right to decide to be a father.

My sister (who is a single mum with a 5 year old) was terrified her ex would do this to her as her ex is a drugie/in and out of prison (mostly for theft etc)/general all round loser. She applied for a parenting order for sole custody and he didn't respond to the court papers and they couldn't find him to serve them on him. So he had several opportunities to show up in court to disagree with the parenting order - from memory I think they advertised it in the paper classifieds and there was 3 dates he could go in and dispute the order over the period of 2 months. He never disputed it so she got the order, but from what I understand if he came along in 10 years time and decided he wanted contact this would not automatically exclude him from contact if he applied to the Court.

In my own situation I went to Court and got a parenting order as my ex kept threatening to not give DD back from planned visits, or to take her from daycare, and we couldn't agree on visitation etc. Even though I have an order stating the care (ie I am the main caregiver and he has contact at the times stated in the agreement) if he wants to vary it at any time all he has to do is go down to the Court and fill in and file a piece of paper saying he wants the order reviewed. Then we start down the whole councelling path to discuss custody again.

Sorry for the massive post but the general gist as BecBarrier says is that the Dad never loses any parenting rights despite how crap a parent he may have been up to that point. The law seems to say that if he wants to be a dad then he has the right to be as long as there is no safety issues (violence, drugs, abuse) for the child involved.

Thanks Shelt you managed to answer the question i hadnt even asked properly. Thats pretty much what i'm afraid off. Like i said i dont want to stop them having a relationship (and up until this point i've bent over backwards and sideways to get him to see his son but no dice...cancels for stupid reasons like he's tired.) just afraid DS will be forced to spend time with a stranger in the future. Because thats what it'll be - you HAVE to spend 4 hours with this man 2x a week even though you don't know him from adam. FUN. not.

Ange i know its the just a threat but it sh*ts me he uses the whole custody thing to get his own way. DS is a little boy not a bargining tool.

I think that they do ask the child's opinion from quite young (like about 5 or so) and take it into account - my friend's DD was actually asked her opinion when she was 6 about whether she wanted to spend more time with her Dad. The problem is that she didn't want to hurt his feelings and say that she didn't want to spend any more time with him....

I think when they get to about 10 or 12 they are allowed to choose what kind of custody they would like as long as the parents agree with it.

The problem I am anticipating having is that my ex buys DD's love with junk food and lots of TV and there is no rules at his house. She loves it there. I'm sure if you asked her she would probably love to spend more time there, well at least for a while till she worked out what living with him was really like.

On the other hand, things can work the opposite way. My uncle was really done over in this situation. His wife walked out when their kids were 4, 8 and 10 and didn't want custody of them. She came back after about 18 months (when they had been living with him full time and just having access visits occasionally with her) and fought him for full custody of the kids. The courts allocated the kids a lawyer and they told the lawyer they wanted to live with their mum so the court ruled that they would go back to live with her (after nearly 2.5 years of living with him) and he only got every second weekend plus one night during the week access. He was devastated and is still quite bitter about it. Kids can kick you in the arse sometimes. I think they just really missed their mum and they didn't have any concept of what their dad had given up to have them full time.

I hear they are really hard to get Bec. Even if you both agree they won't just hand one out. You gotta still do the counselling and go through the whole process. And they will appoint a lawyer for Bentley and work outwhat is best for him, and unless his dad is abusive or drug dealing etc they won't take away his rights still. I don't know about the child support if you did succeed though.