Hi..I am new here, my name is Andie... I have a Dh named JOsh, a Ds who is 10 months old named Keegan, a DSs who is almost 5 named Jonathan, and a 2 year old Boston Terrier named Ozzie.
O.k. so...my dh was divorced here in FLorida about 3 years ago...he gave his ex primary custody and kept his son 40% of the week or more. The child support was reasonable...he agreed to let her move back to where she was from in Oregon with my DSS about 5 months after that because she just wouldn't stop harassing him and he didn't want my DSS to see that.
Everything was fine until she learned that he was married and happy and then the harassment started again. She would constantly tell him she would take him for everything he had. In January of this year she left a voice mail saying that she took my DSS to the Dr. and needed half of the $600 that it cost. We are willing to pay half...but, we have full insurance coverage on him and when I called them they said she hadn't even bothered putting in the claim. So, we nicely told her to put through the claim and when it came back for her to send us the bill and we would pay the Dr. directly...not just give her the cash...which is what she wanted.
Well...next thing we know we are getting child support modification papers in the mail...from her attorney here in Florida (the most expensive attnorney in the keys)
So, we had no choice but to hire our own attorney. On her financial affidavit she has lied and put that she only works part time, and she also put that he is in daycare...but, he isn't..after preschool his grandmother watches him
her lawyer wrote our lawyer and quoted the cs to be at $1050 a month....which is about $700 more a month, because before my husband had him 40% because he was in the same city, but now that she has taken him across the country we don't have him that much. Not only that, but my Dh is in the military and they are adding in our BAH (which is money that goes towards us living on base that we do not get "in hand") so...even though we only get $2400 they are calculating it on $4600. They do not take our child into consideration and they do not take into consideration that she lives in an area that is 1/4 the cost of where we live, and we have gov't orders to live here.

Not only that, but she was ordered to pay $900 a year to help out with travel (which she never has paid)

Our lawyer said it sounds like she is running out of money because her lawyer is trying to rush this thing. Her first offer was $600 a month...she doesn't want to help pay any travel and she wants to claim his as a dependent every year instead of every other year. We are very curious as to why she started with such a low ball offer.....she is not a kind or fair person , so its very strange. the thing is...once we move out of florida in a year we can send this to oregon and we will be paying around $450...so, we are proposing that she work with us now on a fair amount like the oregon amount...and we won't take her back to lower cs next year in Oregon....we counter offered $600 a month, we would let her claim him as a deduction on our years, but she still had to pay the $900 a year in travel (which isn't even half of what we pay) or.....we would pay $525 and let the travel money go and let her claim him as a deduction.

My question is...how do we bargain this out...our lawyer told us to take the deal she sent...but, everyone is telling me not to take the first deal. Should we just keep pushing it until mediation or should we chance it and take it all the way to court?