Excessive Driving
My brother and I got into this discussion and we both can't seem to agree.
Situation: Your children live 45 minutes from you. Your ex is already in violation of the original court order by moving that far away but the court has done nothing to change it. You have two children. One child is involved in an activity that is every weekend (almost every Friday night, Saturday day and Saturday evening) for months. You would need to make upwards of 6 back and forth trips (one and a half hours of driving) throughout the weekend (some at 11pm to 1am in the morning) to have your child at the correct meeting place for these activities and then picked up from the same place at the designated time. The meeting place for the activity is five minutes from their present residence. The actual activity is held somewhere else and the children get there by bus. Your other child has no interest in going to said activities every weekend, but your ex is hell bent that they can't be left at your house alone. So what do you do?
If you're the non-custodial parent, what do you do?
1: Forgo your visitation with both children until the activity period is concluded.
2: Allow the one child to participate in the activity and stay home while the other child comes for your parenting time.
3: Drive the entire amount and force your second child to sit through the entire weekend for their siblings activity.
4: Drive the repeated trips and force your second child to get out of bed at 1am for an hour and half trip, while basically being at the mercy of the activity times throughout the weekend.
5: Deny your child their activity and enforce your visitation.
If you're the custodial parent, what do you do? Do you demand they take both children and do the driving? Do you allow one child to stay home and do their activity and allow the other to go on their visitation? Do you tell the NC to kiss your ass and that you'll have them in court?
What would you do?
You tell the C parent that
You tell the C parent that visitation trumps any activity, unless you support the kid being in the activity. then you make a decision which matters more....if the kid understands, maybe you forego your visitation for a bit of time or you make a special trip like once a month with the other kid to see the activity and see the activity kid. There are lots of options you can play with.
Well in a perfect world the C
Well in a perfect world the C and the NC would be able to communicate with each other and deal with the situation like grownups.
Unfortunately they can't and I just don't see this situation ever being one where they will come to an agreement.
I see court in the future.
Hmm. I'd tell BM that she can
Hmm. I'd tell BM that she can come and get the 1 during his time to run him around and she can bring him back to his house at 1a. He'll stay with the other one so that they can enjoy their visit. If NC so decides to attend whatever event, that'd be by choice but if not, SHE has to do the running around on his weekends too.
If she didn't agree, I'd tell the BM that she can't dictate what happens at my house when it's our visitation and that I'd see her in Court for 1-Creating a hardship by moving too far away (which is already known but I'd pile it up with) 2- Impeding visitation by engaging child in far-away and lengthy activities without consultation and 3- dictating visitation activities of child #2. She'd get tired of being dragged into Court by me eventually.
If there was no money for Court, I'd simply get children on my visits and let her figure out how they were to get back and forth to things she made unilateral decisions on signing them up for. She can't make him do it. Unfortunately the kid could suffer f he likes the activity until she acts right but hopefully that'll teach her to be more cooperative.
The stupid wildebeest BM in my life was notorious for signing her kid up for soccer or sports camps that were more than 30min one way away from Either house and then never going to the practices and hardly the games. She'd sign him up, then ask for half the money and tell us when he had to be at practice, when he had games, etc so WE could make sure he gets there. So on Friday nights she'd dump him somewhere so she can go party and on Sat mornings, we'd have to go fetch him from this friends house or that friend house. During week, we had to pick him up from school, then run the opposite direction to get him places on time. Then when event was over & we take him home at agreed time, she'd never have her sloppy ass home so we'd have to sit in her driveway and wait for another 30 min or we'd be stuck with him overnight. This all required one or both of us to get off early, to run here or there to accommodate or pick up things she forgot to pack, etc.
I couldn't stand it and DH didn't like it but felt he had no choice. (It's not his bio kid so there's no court orders or legal protections). Thankfully for us, fate stepped in and in late April transferred DH 4hrs away so now we don't have to worry about the daily stuff as we did before. DH is all sulky that we are missing the weekend games but we get to one a Month so ... as for me, I'm happy as heck not to have to deal with the hefer.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^THIS!!!^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^THIS!!!^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
"I'd simply get children on my visits and let her figure out how they were to get back and forth to things she made unilateral decisions on signing them up for. She can't make him do it. "
Has anyone asked the court to
Has anyone asked the court to find her move in violation of the court order? Courts don't go around checking ya know.
Yes, twice now. But the
Yes, twice now. But the court, because she's on government assistance, has said it's not fair of him to be so restrictive and that it's not her fault on where she can live and that he wouldn't want his kids to be living in a homeless shelter, would he? So then he asks for custody since he has a job and a place to live, but that's denied because you can't just take kids away from poor people. You have to prove them unfit.
Oh and I should say she turned down places to live that were closer and within the permitted range because she felt they "weren't safe" and they courts said that was fine - though she offered no proof and they were in better areas and better school districts.