Oh my God, this is ridiculous. There is absolutely NO WAY I would allow this intrusion.

Thank God, my SD25 did not have a cell phone when she was doing visitation, so was not even an issue.

Why do you want it on? Why do you need to know where the child is?

The only, ONLY time I'd say it was ok is if the kid in question has a habit of sneaking off to be in places s/he shouldn't be going and the CP BioP is trying to prevent it from happening on NCP weekends also. Of course in that situation the CP should already have told NCP what is happening.

This is happening in my brother's family right now, which is why I'm a little more hesitant to jump on the "Hell no" bandwagon. Niece16 has been caught in a dangerous area after lying to SIL about it. BD is aware of the tracker, though Niece16 isn't, and while he disagrees with the need to track her he hasn't turned it off. Probably because SIL is so insistent on the tracker and BD is busy with a cranky 2.5yo and a pregnant wife.

NOPE not in my house that phone would be gone back to the BM before it entered my car.

End of story.

On the sliver possibility there are restrictions on the parents movement 'allowed', that is the point I would say SEE YA we will catch UP when your older. No one will invade my privacy. DOES dh have an ankle monitor on? Does he have to call daily and blow into the receiver because he is a repeat dui offender?

Your house, your rules, your decision whether or NOT to undo your privacy rights.

unless court ordered by a sitting Judge you can say NO cell phones allowed inside your home period.

Have bm get it court ordered. PHFFTTTT

I have a gps device on my DD's phone. She is 16. For me, it is a safety issue. She doesn't sneak off and she keeps me posted on her plans.

What BM does on her time is BM's business just like it should be during your DH's time. DH can shut off the gps when she arrives and turn on at drop off. Your DH should send her an email that this is his plan so BM doesn't ask SD to turn back on. SD should be told that gps is off during DH's time. Your house, your rules. It is not asking SD to defy BM but rather sticking to YOUR house rules.

dup.

With the new info, nope. I wouldn't allow it. Phone would be off for duration of visit with BM having the option of keeping the phone during DH's time. But DH needs to be the one to tell SD and BM.

My SD11 has a cell phone. She's only allowed to use it afterschool (since she has to wait for me to pick her up as I pick up from 3 different schools all at the same time) and when she is home alone since we don't have a landline. The phone stays on the charger in our living room, in plain view of all of us. DH is planning to provide a phone for her when she is old enough to carry one at all times so that he has the right to put on the tracking apps he wants to use. He does plan to tell BM he's tracking the phone so she has the option of refusing it at her home.

I think it's controlling and obsessive to use a tracking app on your kid while he is with his other parent. I guess the only way to avoid it is if you ban the phone all together. I mean is your DH really going to remember to check to make sure the skid turns off the location services for each visit. Just put the phone in a drawer and let the kid use it at certain times. If BM is checking it then it'll just bring up your home address which she should already know about.

To me the app is one problem, the waking up an 11 year old at 1 am to interrogate or scold her or boss her around is another.

So I would forget about turning the app off.

The phone itself has been misused 6 ways to Sunday. It's toast.

If you want to avoid a confrontation with BM just make sd leave the phone at your house whenever she is on visitation. After all, BM already knows your address presumably so she will learn nothing new. If your sd goes out somewhere the phone stays at home, so BM will not see where you go. That way the phone is on and you are not disabling tracking, just sd is not being tracked the entire weekend.

We don't allow cell phones to come with skids because BM uses them as spies enough already. We flat said "no". Did BM pitch a huge fit? OMG yes. But we held fast.

When SD(27) went to Europe for the summer, BM had a fit. Crying, screaming, blaming, guilt, everything she could think of to get SD to not go.
Yes, SD was originally planning to go alone but ended up traveling with another girl for the majority of the trip.

Because BM was so upset I suggested a tracking app, just to appease BM.
SD refused saying what good would it do? Being a world apart there was nothing BM could do if something looked odd or if the phone disappeared off to Moscow or something. It would only upset her and make her freak out more.
SD also said it would only reinforce BMs need to control her and she wasn't going to encourage that.

I think that's what's going on here. BM feels that she has some little bit of control when she knows exactly where SD is.

I actually like the passive aggressive move of putting leaving the phone on the counter and SD not taking it with her when she goes out. As long as SD doesn't talk about the things she does when she's with you BM will think she just spends all her time at the house.

I turn off the phone or leave it at home when we leave the house. After all the child is only 7 and we find it unnecessary for her to even have a phone anyway. She is ALWAYS with an adult with a phone incase of emergency. But yes I find it intrusive and uncalled for

I ran into this issue myself from my Ex Husband during my time. We shut the phone off. Did he throw a fit...absolutely! Did I care...absolutely not. It interferes with my visitation and my time. In our court agreement he was allowed to call Monday and Friday at 5pm to talk. And that was it. He had to call my phone in order to talk to them. It freed their minds of the stress of having to please him and their fear of getting in trouble for doing so. Ultimately it is your husbands time with the kids and it is an invasion of privacy.

OMG this is making me dread SD9 getting a phone someday, I could see BM trying to track her. I agree with the posters who say she can only use the phone at home. If we leave the house on a family outing the kid doesn't need a cell, she can borrow an adults. Same if she goes to a friends house, borrow that parents phone. If She goes to the mall or something alone with friends then it would be fine to take it. My biggest issue would be that we spend a lot of time with my family and definitely wont want BM to know their home locations! Psyco BMs!

My SD was 15 when she got a smartphone. We put a family monitoring device on it. Watched what she downloaded, tracked her location.
She was driving a long distance to BM's house and was going out with friends on weekends at both parent's house.
There was one time she was 90miles away from BM'S house on BM's weekend. We didn't think anything of it. When all three came home, we asked the typical, "what did you guys do this weekend?"
SKIDS answered, "nothing." So after some more questions we found out BM had gone out with her boyfriend and left them alone (they were old enough) but SD took the opportunity to go to a party without BM permission.
We got BM on our side and she was more than fine with how we knew about SD doing this.
SD is 20 now and she still has the monitoring device ap. BM and DH still help pay for school and apartment so neither one feels bad about it.

Turn it off. End of issue.

I know that many people consider tracking apps something inappropriate. However, I can't be totally agree with those opinions.

Well, ok, I used to think those programs that let you monitor one's phone are useless and privacy-violating.

However, many of those are actually reliable and very convenient.

Think about the circumstances we're living now: danger is everywhere - rebels with guns walking down the street, that pandemic thing, and people being completely exposed to the internet.  I wouldn't be so against any kind of tracking tools being installed on my kid's phone, considering all those things. I think the main issue is in choosing the rigjt one. Personally, I prefer going through some articles and tips before deciding on an app. For example, this website https://gotellmama.org/ — you can find many insights and recommendations there.

So, I think the first thing to do before saying that tracking apps are useless is to actually try them out. Judging from my own experience — I feel much more confident when I know where my kid is and whether he is safe online.

When my bios go to their dads I have find my iPhone on my daughters phone. This is because he frequently texts telling me he will be keeping them and not returning them. He has now moved country and because of my own anxiety I really need to know where they are. I will not check it unless they are late home because then I start to panic. I wouldn't mind if skids bm had it turned on on their phones either. I haven't checked whether it is or not because nothing to do with me. But as a previous poster said it would depend if bm was actually trying to be involved in your lives 

If the smart phone is intrusive to Skid visitation with your SO, SO should take the phone upon the start of the visitation and return it when they return to the other parent.  If the other parent has a tracker on the Skid phone, then they know that the phone is at the other parent's home.  Which is all the really need to know unless there is some hinky crap going on in which case there needs to be far more action applied to locating the kids than just tracking their phone.

IMHO of course.

Interesting thoughts