Moving and Shared Transportation
Was reading another post in a forum and was interested in everyone's input on this slightly different situation.
BM and FDH used to live in the same neighborhood, literally 3 minutes apart. Without notice, BM moved 20 minutes away from FDH house. This was only just weeks ago. They share transportation since the move. She sometimes drops them off to him at his house and he sometimes drops them off to her house. No big deal.
Once we are married, FDH and I will be moving 15 minutes in the opposite direction. So one way trip will be between 30 and 35 minutes. Is it wrong to feel that they should continue to share transportation? Doubt it will happen that way.
The kids will be in a different state and school district while with us, but we are prepared for them to remain in the same school district, using BM address. We are, naturally, going to provide transportation to said school district and activities with no complaint, since it is not their fault we are moving to a different school district. Their school is also about 20 minutes from BM house.
But is it fair for FDH to have to transport kids to BM's house for every exchange simply because she beat us to the punch by moving first? I kind of tend to feel FDH should meet in the city where BM and FDH both formerly lived before either of them moved. What do you think?
It's 35 minutes one way from
It's 35 minutes one way from house to house. Their former city would be halfway, with her going 20 minutes and FDH going 15.
Yes I tend to agree with this
Yes I tend to agree with this as well. With our exchanges being so frequent (many times a week, sometimes multiple times a day) I just think things should be done fairly. It would be one situation if an exchange happened once a week and 35 minutes would not even be a big deal. But sometimes children go to Moms for a few hours and then back to dad's and then back to Mom's. That's not fair for one person to be doing all the driving.
We also do "whoever is
We also do "whoever is retrieving, will pick up."
Another perk to doing it this
Another perk to doing it this way, is that if the family who is retrieving shows up late, then it's a loss of THEIR time - if you have to wait for the kids to be delivered to you, then you are at the mercy of the parents and their scheduling - if they decide to show up late there's nothing you can do about it.
Yep. With my BD17, I used to
Yep. With my BD17, I used to always feel like me going to pick her up for visitation insured that my time wouldn't be messed with.
I like the idea of the parent
I like the idea of the parent picking up from the house although I doubt in our case it will ever happen that way. Thank you for all the responses. I just wanted to make sure we were being fair in our expectations since on the other thread the consensus seemed to be that the parent moving is responsible for travel arrangements.
That does suck. It's not
That does suck.
It's not quite that far for us to school, but some sporting events will be a drive. But I can't see uprooting a kid because we chose to move out of state. However, since BM moved in the opposite direction I still don't feel it's fair for is to have to take on all the transportation. Had she have stayed where she was, we would have taken on all transportation which would have only been about 15 mins one way. So for me the only fair thing is to meet in the place as though neither party had moved. What is really going to suck is if fdh and I have a child and that child will go to a different school district, but it's still our choice to do so and not the sks fault. Ideally, since we have them most of the time I would love for them to go to our school district. It would make things so much easier. But We will never push the issue and it would have to be sks choice to do so - which they may at some point in time. There are a ton of kids in my neighborhood and they are going to make friends. They may eventually want to go to school with their friends. Oh daydreams.