need help with child support and visitation
I haven't been on here in some time but I didn't know where else to turn.
Long story short- I left my son's dad about a year ago. He sued me for visitation, we went to mediation and settled on a custody agreement. He agreed to pay child support.
He has now decided his child support amount is too high. He is willing to sell his days in exchange for lower child support. He is willing to take half of the time we agreed to for $100 less a month in child support. He knows I am agreeable to this since the money doesn't matter to me. My issue is his living situation as he has 8 people living in a 2 bedroom house. (After I left, he got a new gf, got her pregnant, moved her and her 2 kids into his place that he and his 2 oldest children shared. When our son is with my ex, he make's the 8th person in the house. yuck!)
Part of me wants to draw up a new custody agreement, on my terms, and allow him to pay less child support. I would like a custody agreement better than what we have now, and this would give me the opportunity to have that. I am sympathetic to my ex's financial situation, and don't want to see him or his family suffer while our child benefits. At the same time, my son will always have needs to be met and don't feel like I should compromise on what my son is entitled to. Has anyone ever dealt with these issues? What do you think is best?
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Comments
What a piece of work. This
What a piece of work. This guy is willing to sell his son. It's a good thing you left him.
I wouldn't budge on it. Your son deserves both his parents supporting him. If he doesn't want the kid to visit, better for your son and for you. Your x is a real shit.
I can understand your
I can understand your viewpoint that he's selling his time with his son. It certainly does not reflect highly of his character. My reaction is that at least he's being upfront about it vs dragging you through numerous court hearings and shenanigans. And if you want to renegotiate the Custody Agreement this may be a good opportunity and you'd have the upper hand.
Another option may be to include a time period associated with the lower amount of CS (maybe for the next year) so you can reassess in the near future and readjust it if appropriate at that time.
BM here argued and won additional visitation in an effort to lower her CS payment. She did not use all her visitation (she didn't really want it) and it took almost 2 years to document that, in fact, she did not have the kids the number of days to warrant calculating CS as joint custody. The process was expensive, frustrating and, of course, heartbreaking to the kids to get "stood up" by their mother over & over. I highly recommend avoiding the nonsense of that process, if at all possible.
If your son is happy with his
If your son is happy with his dad and comfortable being around all those ppl... Whom are his siblings and family. Then if it were me I would try and have my child spend as much time equally with each parent. I understand you do not like the living situation but there's not anything you can do about his financial hardships. I think its wonderful that you are sympathetic to his situation! Shows that you are a very kind, understanding, sincere, caring person. If his dad truly wants his son there and you do not need the money, then why not allow your son as much time with his dad as possible and just lower the CS amount? Then again if your ex is struggling that bad, can he support your son while he is there? How often does his dad have him now? Maybe you could just I've him $100 dollars back each month instead of going thru all the court process? Save you both money and time?
He currently has our son 10
He currently has our son 10 days a month split into 2 visits of 5 days each. Our son is under 2 years old and we live 4 hours apart. The visitation plan doesn't work because it's too much time for my son to be away. Our son comes home and sleeps about 18 hours a day for 3 days after his visit with his dad. There are so many children in dad's house that it affects my son's sleep. Dad sometimes doesn't take all of his monthly visitation because he can't afford the transportation costs. The child support off
sets my transportation costs for the visits. I really believed dad wanted a relationship with our son but he allows many things to get in the way of taking his full visitation time. I do try to cut dad a break by sending everthing my son needs (diapers, juice, toys, clothes) so dad doesn't have to spend money he doesn't have on these things.
My heart is so torn on what to do. I want dad and son to have a relationship but I hate what the environment does to our son. I want to give dad a break on child support, but I want him to be responsible for our son.