Vivienne Crawshaw: Sparks fly over straying dad's access to kids

"The adulterer is not always the worst sinner."

Mark seemed to recall these were the words of the avuncular and somewhat renegade priest and friend of his family when his aunt ran off with his uncle's best friend.

His uncle had been a dreadful alcoholic and his aunt had suffered long and hard before her escape.

He recalled the words because he was about to perform the same trick as his aunt, but was searching fruitlessly for some justification for his actions.

Mark's wife Vanessa was nothing if not loyal. She certainly displayed no alcoholic tendencies. She had raised their two children with immense love and care and had been patient with him in sometimes trying times.

But when Mark met Diane he knew instantly he was in trouble. It was like trying to prevent the tide from coming in and though he had tried valiantly to stop seeing her, it was no use. The tide had overcome him and he was a goner.

Diane had three children and was long since separated, quite cheerfully so, Mark noted. In fact, her ex lived four doors up the road and the children went between households with ease.

Mark wanted to take things slowly and tried to approach the separation from Vanessa in as calm a fashion as possible.

He thought it would be better to leave Diane out of the picture at the early stages.

As luck would have it, on Mark's first post-separation foray into the world of dating, he ran into Vanessa's sister at the movies, moments after engaging in a passionate embrace with Diane.

Vanessa's sister wasted no time in assessing the situation and Mark grimly predicted that within 15 minutes Vanessa would know the brutal truth. And indeed it was so. What had begun as a resigned but dignified approach to the separation on Vanessa's part instantly orbited out of control.

Vanessa, who had previously insisted that the children spend as much time as possible with Mark, suddenly curtailed access.

Mark had been working as a teacher but was between jobs so did relief work. She insisted that the only time he could see the children was during the day when she was at her part-time job. She told Mark the children were far too young to be spending time with him overnight and was adamant they would have nothing to do with Diane, or else, she said, she would cut access altogether.

Mark by this stage thought he clearly was the worst sinner and with his tail between his legs agreed to Vanessa's conditions. He was missing his boy Jacob (4) and daughter Amy (3) acutely and was terrified Vanessa would stop him having them in his care.

He tried to arrange his relief teaching around the children's arrangements and with some juggling managed to accomplish that.

Gradually Vanessa allowed Mark to have the children on some weekends as long as Diane was nowhere near them and as long as it suited her.

Sometimes she would ask Mark to have the children only to cancel at the last minute because Amy had a party or Jacob a special event at Cubs.

On other occasions Mark would plan to spend the weekend with Diane, only to be rung at the last minute by Vanessa, who would tell him she was going away for the weekend and she needed him to have the children - without Diane there.

As the months passed, Diane told him in no uncertain terms that she had had enough and it was time they cemented their relationship. But that was an impossible task under the terms for access laid down by Vanessa.

Mark asked a lawyer if there was anything he could do about his restricted access to the children. The lawyer filed an application for access, though he noted that from July 1 the application would be called an application for a parenting order (for day-to-day care or contact with the children).

The application was referred to an independent counsellor whose role was to mediate between Mark and Vanessa. Unfortunately Vanessa heard about the application and refused to attend.

Instead she decided to fight what she perceived as "fire with fire" and filed an application for spousal maintenance against Mark, as well as notifying the Department of Inland Revenue that the children were solely in her care and she should be receiving child support from their father.

Not to be fazed by that approach, Mark's lawyer asked for a mediation conference to be convened before a judge to determine access and filed a defence to the application for spousal maintenance, noting that Mark could barely afford to pay child support after meeting his bills, let alone further maintenance costs.

Once Vanessa received notice of the mediation conference and Mark's defence to the maintenance application, she stopped access without warning.

Mark tried ringing. She hung up on every call. He stood outside her front door, begging with no shame to see the children, but she refused to answer, though he could hear the children crying inside.

Eventually his lawyer made an urgent application for him to have contact with the children. The court took three weeks to set down the case for hearing, during which time Mark became a stressed-out mess.

Finally a short hearing was convened before a judge. A lawyer for the children was appointed who submitted that the children had a positive relationship with their father and that court orders were necessary to secure their relationship with him.

There was no reason from the children's point of view for there to be conditions relating to whom Mark spent time with when the children were in his care and it was important that they be with him overnight regularly.

The judge noted that although the separation had been extremely traumatic from Vanessa's point of view, the children's relationship with both parents needed to be promoted in their interests.

She ordered that care arrangements restart immediately three days a week, including overnights. No conditions were imposed but the parents were referred to counselling for conciliation purposes to assist them in coping with the co-parenting they were obliged to undertake in the future for their children.

The application for spousal maintenance was adjourned to be heard at a later date but the judge commented that from the information available it was unlikely to succeed because of Mark's limited income.

Mark's children needed to be with him consistently, despite his new relationship and even though he might have been the main offender in the marriage break-up.