custody/immediate hearing

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caringdadof4

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Where to begin? I am the father of an 11 year old boy. His mother and I were neer married. BM has was the sole custodial parent for the first 7 years and I had pretty liberal visitation. For the last 4 years, we have shared custody with BM being the residential parent for school placement purposes.

Since November of 2005, my son has been staying with me more than BM. BM lives about 15 miles away from me and I would pick son up after school and drive him to school the next day at least 4 days a week. BM had son an average of 1 day a week. In Feb. 06, my son told me that he wanted to move in with me full time. We discussed it with BM who thought it was a good idea, but was afraid she wouldn't be able to make ends meet without the child support that she was recieving from me every week. We discussed it further over the next few weeks and finally came to an agreement that after the school year was over, our son would move in with me.

So, in June of 06, my son moved in with me full time. BM would pick him up every other weekend, sometimes more often for visits. I had my attorney draw up a motion to change residential custody and BM and I both signed the agreement. It was filed with the courts in late July 06.

My son started school in the district that I live in the next month. We kept waiting for the judge to sign our agreement but heard nothing. Meanwhile this time that my son is living with me, I am still paying BM weekly child support and she is only having every other weekend visits. I offered her more time, but she said she was too busy with work (part time) and school (part time) to visit more often.

Now we will jump to Oct 06. BM got upset after a disagreement we had and said she was going to revoke her signature from our agreement. It has been almost 3 months since we filed our motion with the court and the judge has still not signed it. I got a notice from my attorney stating that the judge had set aside our agreement and set my motion for custody for hearing. I filed for temporary custody of my son until the hearing and the judge granted it. BM was awarded every other weekend visits with our son which she did not practice for almost 6 weeks.

When she did finally come and pick him up, BM told me that she wanted to settle this out of court. She stated that our son could live with me but that she wanted 3 weekends a month visitation with him. I told her that I would discuss this with the attorney and get back to her. So my attorney presented a proposal to BM which named me the custodial parent, gave BM three weekends a month visitation and offered to deviate from the child support guidelines 50% while BM was still enrolled in college. BM basically told me to get bent that she would not agree to pay child support. Mind you, I was still paying HER weekly child support all of this time even though our son was with me!!!

So another month or so goes by with BM calling our son an average of once every two weeks and picking him up for her every other weekend visits. The visits are getting harder and harder for my son because BM is becoming verbally abusive towards him because he doesn't want to move back in with her. The straw that broke the camel's back was when in December 06, BM pulled up in front of my house to drop our son off and sped away, my son came up to the porch crying. He stated to me that his mom told him that she was going to sign her rights away and he would never see her again. He also stated to me that his maternal grandparents told him that if he wanted to live with his dad then they wanted him out of their house and they didn't want him to come back. They told him that they would adopt a new grandson and give him all of my son's things. This upset my son deeply and he said he didn't want to go back there. This is just a sample of the things they have said to him, they have said many more nasty things.

So my son met with his counselor the next day and told her of the events. With her help, we filed a motion to make visits with BM supervised. The judge granted the motion and set BM's visitis to supervised visitation in late Dec of 06.

Now it is Feb 26th '07. BM has not made any attempts to set up her visitation and has not seen our son since Dec. '06. She calls our son sometimes once a week or sometimes it's a couple of weeks in between phone calls. When my son asks her when she is going to come and see him, she tells him "in time".

I was just notified by my attorney that BM has filed for an immediate hearing to address the accusations in our ex parte order for the supervised visitation. We go to court this week for this. Our actual custody hearing is two weeks later.

I have years worth of notes and logs of time with my son and times that she was supposed to pick him up and didn't. I also have statements from my son's counselor as to my son's issues with BM.

I guess my main question is, why did BM wait for two months before trying to reverse the supervised visits? Why wait until two weeks before we go to court? What are my chances at retaining custody of my son? He has lived with me now for about 9 months. BM has not been involved in his schooling, extra curricular activities or with his doctor's and dentist appointments.

Not to mention that my son does not want to go back with BM. What are our chances?
 

I guess my main question is, why did BM wait for two months before trying to reverse the supervised visits? Why wait until two weeks before we go to court? What are my chances at retaining custody of my son?


No one, of course, can answer your questions.

All we can tell you is that you and your lawyer need to prepare the best cases possible and hope for the best.
 
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