Served BM with Modification Paperwork!!
We served BM with modification paperwork yesterday and going to court in August. She is spitting mad and has had the kids calling us all night. Here is what we asked for - any advice on whether you think we'll get it would be great:
1. Equal transportation - there is no transportation agreement in place right now. DH used to live 5 minutes from BM and we are now about 45 minutes from her now that we got married and he lives in my home. We are asking that she provide drop off of the kids - is that reasonable? If we don't get this, I have to do all the driving because DH does not have his license right now. I am considering just telling her that I am not going to do it so she can either have an unlicensed driver (DH) do it or do it herself. Thoughts on that?
2. Equal holiday visitation - BM has a CRAZY family and isn't in contact with almost all of them. DH didn't used to really celebrate holidays because of religious beliefs he grew up with, but we do now. BM tells us that she will fight tooth and nail not to let the kids have any holidays with us because she wants them.
3. Calculation of the child support using the CA guideline - DH agreed to $2000 a month of child support for two kids on a $4400 a month gross income (sigh). We are requesting that the judge us the guidlines which would be about $800 to $1000 per month. I make twice what he does and I did list my salary. I hear they are not supposed to use my salary to calcuate the guideline - any input on that? I am married to him, but we don't have joint bank accounts or property. I just don't care if BM knows how much I make and I didn't see any sense in making the judge mad by refusing to disclose my salary.
4. Termination of spousal support - Again DH agreed to $500 a month for her. We are asking that they terminate it since she works a maximum of 32 hours per week for the school district and gets weekends, holidays, and up to 30 days at a time off (its a year round school) but hasn't made any effort to get additional work or education to support herself. The kids are old enough to be alone and so childcare isn't an issue.
5. No badmouthing the other parent - BM continuously writes horrendous posts about DH, child support, etc. on Facebook, which the kids see (she is friends with all her kids). She then claims she never badmouths him to her. It's in writing lady. Any chance this request will stand up and how to do they enforce it?
What do you think?
Hi all - thanks for the
Hi all - thanks for the responses, I really do appreciate it and am welcoming any more comments. However, I have the following questions for those who responded:
1. We didn't move out of state, we are in the same general mountain community. They have joint custody so I don't agree that she shouldn't drive 50% of the time. People have to be allowed to move into different towns). In addition, we have her nephew (who she is sole guardian for) for visitation with the stepkids, which gives her time off that she really wants. If she wants to go completely by the order than she can keep him 24/7. Believe me she doesn't want this. When he acted up the past couple weeks and DH talked to them both about it, she acknowledged that there is no obligation on our part to take him and he doesn't need to come over. We'll both need to give a little.
2. Agree with Krisnkids. DH celebrates holidays but it isn't a priority for him. In any case, I am really close with my stepkids and my DD is 2. They are her brother and sister and she wants to spend time with them. Holidays should be 50/50 regardless of the reason. We are a family now.
3. There are two kids. One will be 18 next June. We just asked the judge to go by the guideline.
4. It is a CA state requirement that the BM eventually work towards supporting herself. She hasn't made any attempt and thats why we asked for termination. Nothing to do with income of DH.
5. thanks! We are printing out her nasty public comments and will bring them to visitation mediation.
1. The courts will look at
1. The courts will look at who moved away creating more distance between you. Had you stayed where he was you may have had some success at this one. While it is possible that he could prevail it highly unlikely.
2.Standard visitation plans split all Holidays so this one should go your way. My suggestionis to have a SPECIFIC plan laid out and be sure every detail is in your plan. Does transportaion issues change for holidays, specific pick up and drop off times. Who has even years and who has odd, which holidays are you including. Note: Labor DAy, Memorial day, Halloween, valentines day and such usually are not included.
3. Again, if you follow state guidelines this one should go your way as well.
4. A lot in this one depends on how his court orders read. There are some that are liftime alimony awards except for death or remarriage. Look closely at how his is written.
5. While its good to have this put in the orders, its often hard to enforce.
Thanks Ex4life:) 1. Guess I
Thanks Ex4life:)
1. Guess I will have to play the "fine then have no weekends off" card, and I will. She either pitches in or she keeps all the kids/or just the nephew permanently. She is very busy getting drunk with her friends on her days off, and constantly talks about her days off from them, so I can promise we will meet a compromise on this. If SHE met someone and decided to move, I promise she would expect us to be driving full time.
2. Agreed - split holidays are a done deal. At least that was how things went when I was a teen and had divorced parents. There was no proving you were adamanently celebrating.
3. Agreed - all we put in the request for child support is "guidelines". It certainly can't go up.
4. There aren't any details on the alimony. Again, it wasn't ordered by a judge, it was agreed to by DH and BM so there are no details on how long it lasts.
5. Agreed - but when you are dumb enough to post those comments publicly on Facebook, it doesn't look good. We'll be printing them all.
Sonya -- We're in CA also.
Sonya -- We're in CA also. The usual guideline for spousal support is 1/2 the length of the marriage UNLESS is was a "long term marriage", meaning they were married more than 10 years. If it was a long term marriage, she can be awarded spousal support indefinitely, or until she remarries. It would be very unusual for the spousal support to not be in the legal paperwork somewhere.
As for finding a job/increasing employment, my DH's XW was supposed to find a job, was even court ordered to provide monthly logs of at least 15 applications a month and NEVER complied (seriously, for 3 years!! she did nothing to comply with the court order). The only thing that happened was they imputed minimum wage income to her for the CS calculations -- it had absolutely no bearing on spousal support (and he was paying her $2K a month!)
Anyway, good luck!
Ugggh Soygirl! It was a long
Ugggh Soygirl! It was a long term marriage - we'll see what she gets. She only dates complete losers so I don't see remarraige anytime soon. Was your DH paying child support too?!
Yep, he was paying child
Yep, he was paying child support on top of that. (He ate a lot of soup, and shopped in my pantry!
)Luckily, his kids were already teenagers and they eventually came to live with him. She ended up owing him child support -- which she never paid, and had no consequences for!
The kids were 8 & 6 when they finally got married (LONG story, but it wasn't because of him)...He was VERY grateful for that in the end, because they'd only been married 8 years at the time he filed for divorce. She is such a piece of work, he'd be paying her for life if she could've made it happen. OH, and in CA, she can shack up with somebody and it won't affect her getting spousal support, only if she remarries. I actually knew a couple women who purposely never remarried in order to keep the income -- DEFINETLY not friends of mine }:)
If they are legally divorced, I'd double check the paperwork and see where it addresses spousal support. (It's usually based on each party's income, so if they made close to the same amount it may have been waived.)
Thanks Soy girl:) So we just
Thanks Soy girl:)
So we just got a call from BM - she wants to negotiate and not go to court. We also asked that she not be allowed to drink around or 24 hours before having the kids. We have a police report from a nasty episode where she got stinking drunk at a school function, ended up puking in the bathroom with her 16 year old daughter holding her hair back, called the cops on us after the 11 year old begged us to come get him, and threatened to report her car stolen after the 16 year old fled to her mother's best friends house to get away from her. She doesn't want to give up drinking and wants them for all holidays.
So far we've negotiated her driving one way for visitation, she can't drink around the kids, but can drink 24 hours before having them, the kids get to decide where to go for holidays, and she and DH are going to fill out the guideline calculator and compare assumptions to see if they can come to an agreement on support. If not, he'll just see her in court. She seems to be running scared a bit.
Good luck with the
Good luck with the modification. I'm not sure how you'd verify not drinking 24 hours before she has the kids...Hopefully it will work out without going to court -- It's amazing how expensive it gets!