LEGAL EAGLE: My ex is becoming aggressive when it comes to trying to arrange time with our children

Firstly, if you have significant concerns about your or your children’s immediate safety due to your ex-partner’s behaviour we would urge you to contact the police. If however you do not believe this is necessary we can then look at the legal options available to you.

Our first port of call, depending on the severity of the behaviour, is that we could send your ex-partner a warning letter asking him to stop with the current concerning behaviour.

If this is not successful and you are significantly concerned for your safety we can explore applying for a Non-Molestation order to put formal protection in place.

Regarding the arrangements for your children, it is always best to try to reach an agreement; court should be regarded as the last option.

It is positive to note that previously you have been able to make arrangements between yourselves and therefore hopefully this is possible again.

Assuming we are able to get your ex-partner’s aggressive behaviour under control, we would advise writing to him, trying to resolve the situation amicably.

We would do this on your behalf and all correspondence would come through us, with you approving any letters in advance of posting them out.

We would set out your proposals for family time arrangements, with the aim that they either agree to your proposals or put forward their own proposals.

This hopefully will open the lines of communication between the two of you again and allow you to make arrangements for the holidays.

Our aim would be to make arrangements with longevity for the future so that solicitor intervention will not be necessary every time arrangements need to be made for the children.

If negotiations fail and we are unable to resolve the matter this way there may be other avenues we can take to resolve this.