Frans' Story
"My x-wife and i were happy for 20 years and then we met in 1987. She came from an abusive and poor family and she has been struggling with an underlying anxiety since. We were so happy until we had out first son born 1994, then together for 7 years. We started with nothing and I built a successful business making tons of money. We disagreed on bringing my son up and she was overprotective, hopefully insecure and her childhood anxiety overwhelming her protective nature.
In turn, i have always been thrown into the deep end, having to swim even in the toughest circumstances. I was ambitious and my ex-wife is placid.
Her reasoning ability was lacking and she would drive around at night to put my son to sleep, which obviously frustrated me. She was from Portuguese decent and I am a boertjie. I then had a fell out with her family in 1995. My first divorce letter came 1997 when we went to the Maldives and upon my return i got served divorce papers. Realising that the law is prejudiced against fathers, I decided to do whatever I could to rescue the family and keep it together. I realised that I was to lose my son and all the money i worked for.
I gave up my business and moved far away from her family, to Cape Town until 2004 when I bought a few properties for development. Being close to her family again the trouble started and she started to move out of the home. During this time she turned my son then 10 years old, against me by telling him untruths about his father and bad mouthing me. We visited a psychologist, needless to say the most unprofessional psychologist, at the beginning 2005 and he reported that my son was a bit scared of his dad.
We finally reached an amicable settlement agreement mid November 2005 and a week later my ex-wife applied for a protection order (which includes the children) upon which an interim protection order was granted (I don't know how). I got locked up a week later because i took my own car keys out of her hand (the car is incidentally unlicensed). I sat in jail for three days. What a nice December holiday! My ex-wife took the kids on holiday for the rest of the month.
Oh yes, before I forget, we stayed in properties back to back from each other. So in 2006 we become friends again and I had girlfriends visiting me. She in turn got fed-up with our three boys as they were busy bees being 2, 4 and 11 years of age.
In her testimony delivered in court she openly tells the "hang judge" magistrate that she planned the divorce many years before, unbeknown to me.
At the end of 2006 she fell in love with the worst guy you can imagine with a history of violence. The children had free access to both properties and I kept a great relationship with my boys, needless to say that when the guy suddenly visits the mother the children got so confused that they didn't know what was happening, especially the smaller boys. The new guy in her life then wants me out of the way as he realises that my ex-wife used to visit me all the time while he was dating her. I did not know they were dating and she told me he was merely a platonic friend.
The new guy the got terribly jealous and stopped the children from visiting me from January 2007. The children should have been able to visit me according to the high court order. Then my ex-wife started phoning the police when the children visited me and laying false charges to have me locked up because of the protection order.
I kept a detailed diary from the beginning January 2007 when the new guy moved into her home with the children. He then started to order them around and the children resented his bossy attitude. I was furious that my ex-wife allowed such an abusive guy into her home.
I then applied for protection of my children against the new boyfriend but my ex-wife was on a mission to lock me up after I enquired into the history of the new guy and he had indeed been abusive - he was psychotic and had a real history of violence . The police favoured the ex-wife and refused to take any charges from me as my children stayed with me most of the time. She then layed more false charges which were later "nulli prosecuted". I had to approach the high commissioner to have the irritating investigator taken off my case. In the mean time I had madee some friends high up and became more dedicated to get custody of my children.
I obtained excellent psychological reports that put all the pieces together and proceeded wih my high court application for custody.
A few months later I took a shot in the dark and went to court. I was given interim custody of my 12 year old son who was staying with me, and it was made an order of the High Court.
A futher 4 months later I gained interim custody of all three of my boys aged 3, 5 and 13 and they are now staying with me.
This is proof that you can gain custody of your children with a standing even with a protection order in place between father and children.
My suggestions:
keep a detailed diary and compile your stuff professionally.
get one good attorney and stay with him
build as many contacts as you can, don't back off from the police
You will need to dish out some punches to be respected, including SSR, police, magistrates, etc.
Make sure your children understand and don't let the mother bribe the children, you should just be "a safe heaven" for the children.
stay away from social workers!
Don't trust anyone...
Remember, it's a paper war!
download the acts and laws from the net and study them, know your rights.
It's not called a custody BATTLE for nothing.
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