Child custody modification

[CABSR811]

In 2002 my child's father and I entered into an agreement in court to have joint custody of our daughter. The agreement states that he has her every Mon and Tues, I have her every Wed and Thurs and we alternate weekends and holidays. Prior to this agreement, relations between him and I were not good, almost every minor issue became a major deal. Since the agreement, he and his wife, and me and my husband have grown and the relationship has been much improved. During the past almost 7 years our daughter has grown into a wonderful young lady who is now 15. She is a solid A/B student, very smart, very kind, and quite responsible to be a teenager. The most trouble we've had with her has been her cell phone!!!! Until...August of 2008 my husband and I were told by my ex that our daughter wanted to live with him full time, and visit with us on the weekends. After much debate and thought, we agreed to let our daughter try living with them full time. We did NOT change the legal agreement in place, and we were all clear that this was something we would try, not a permanent situation. Since the time we've made the change, we have seen our daughter's grades in school decline drastically, she had a 35 in one class at the end of the first quarter. Her second report card wasn't much better, and we recently received her progress reports for the 3rd quarter, with only very slight improvement. Whats worse is that her motivation to do any of the work or study is null at this point. My husband and I feel very strongly that we made the wrong choice in making the change in her schedule when we did. While we expect times of lack of motivation, our child has never been completely unmotivated to improve her grades. She has never shown any disinterest in school until we made this change. This school year alone, while living with her father, she has at least 5 absences in each class....this was something we never dealt with. There are no other changes in her environment that could have contributed to such a drastic decline. No indication of drug use or alcohol use...and I'm not a naive parent. I know what to look for, and none of it is there. Additionally during this time, the relationship between the parents has gone down hill, every request we make to have our daughter on one of our normal days for a family activity is either denied, or we have to argue for days before we are "given" what is legally ours all because it doesn't fit their plans. And, we've not made the request often, so its not as though we're constantly interrupting their schedules. The decline in the parental relationship is also impacting our daughter, and the other children involved. We recently indicated to her father that we felt that it was time we changed back to the original schedule at least for the rest of the year and mabye over the summer look into other options if they felt that the current legal agreement no longer met everyone's needs. We've been told flat out by he and his wife that they are not willing to make the change now. Without going into all the back and forth with them, what I need to know is do they have the right to NOT change the schedule back until such time a revised legal agreement can be worked out?

 

[irish223]

I think the problem is that she's lived there for more than six months with your approval. I believe status quo has been established. If your ex heads to court to modify the plan, then it may be difficult for you to argue, although her downward slide in school will probably help you.

You should really consult an attorney before you do anything.