Yes, I know a lawyer in our state is best suited to answer these questions, and we are meeting with him this week, but I’m curious if anyone has personal experience with how judges tend to rule on these issues. My wife has been served papers to appear in a custody hearing because her ex wants to change the formerly agreed upon custody schedule, and wants to air some grievances before the court. Keeping this as short and focused as possible, the issues detailed in the summons are:
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He wants additional time in the summer (a reasonable request in the absence context), however he has made it clear that he will not spend his weekends or weeks with the kids where they live and participate in sports, family events, sleepovers etc and has only been motivated to take a child to their game when I offered to skip the first half of my shift and drive the child to his home the following day because he was unwilling to do so, and we did not want him to miss his first ever basketball game. Every other time one of the kids has requested to stay home or for him to take them he has scolded her for signing the kids up for activities on his weekend, meaning he does not want them playing sports or anything with a weekend commitment because he does not plan on supporting those activities here. He has said explicitly that if she does it is her obligation to “manage their expectations” about missing every other game as they always fall on weekends.
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He is complaining that he cannot choose whichever dates he pleases around the holiday (he views his 7 days as immutable and tells her when they will be with him rather than coordinate with her and take the kids’ local family schedule and other events into consideration). They alternate Christmas Eve and Christmas day but the rest of their 3+ weeks off from school is in play here. She has asked him every year since divorce to contact her in advance of making plans so they can work out an agreeable schedule but he refuses to do so, and defaults to telling her when he will be taking them. He did not say how he wants to resolve this in the complaint, only that they “cannot agree” on this issue.
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He is complaining that the 4.5yo calls me “Dada” and is upset that she “either encourages it or does not discourage it.” I have raised the boy on a full time basis since he was a year old, when the father had next to no involvement in his life for nearly 2 years. Additionally, he has all three kids call his new wife “Mama (X)” and the hypocrisy of his complaint, when he asked why the boy calls me Dada, has gone unaddressed. I’m not sure what the point of bringing this before a judge is but to attempt to make mom look like she’s trying to drive a wedge between them.
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He moved from rural VA to the far side of the DC beltway, nearly 3h from where the kids live. The judge ruled that he is responsible for transportation on his visitation weekends; we offer to drive on occasion when our work schedule makes that feasible. Since she now works part time close to his house, he is asking “for the children’s benefit” that she assume an equal part of the driving even though it in no way conveys benefit to the children, she did not move them away from him, and she has no control over which days she works. Currently she has a total of two full and four half days per month without kids and he is asking the judge to require her to spend nearly 6 hours on the road on half of those days.
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He is asking the judge to assign all legal fees for this petition to her.
I don’t expect this will go well for him, as the divorce hearing and subsequent dispute over him keeping the accrued interest on an equally divided investment account all went largely in her favor, including legal fees. I don’t see these complaints as reasonable and my expectation is that:
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The judge will take into consideration that he is asking her to pay for a change to an agreement that he formerly signed off on and one she has lived up to in every aspect, and assign him the cost of the hearing and lawyer fees
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Judge will take into consideration that he does not support the kids activities and may require him to do so on his custody weekends
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The above may affect the judge’s willingness to assign more summertime days or weeks (she has offered him more summer time days and weeks provided that it does not result in them being pulled away from their activities at home, he has ignored that offer every time it was made)
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The court has no interest in what my step-son calls me, or if she refers to me as “dad” in our home where my sons also reside part time, especially given his double standard on the issue and that there is no evidence of her trying to interfere with their relationship (she has not)
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The judge will note that she does 95% of all the heavy lifting of child rearing, transportation, laundry, cooking, etc and dismiss his request to require her to drive them to his home 3 hours away, where he voluntarily moved.
Not addressed in his complaint but an ongoing issue is that he has told her on several occasions now what activities they are not allowed to participate in, specifically riding around the farm on the back of an ATV or learning to ride a minibike. I don’t know if a parent with joint legal custody but who is not the primary custodian can dictate what legal activities the kids may or may not participate in when they are with the primary custodian. We will address this in the hearing as well.
I am obviously biased here but I don’t see how these are complaints or requests that a family court judge would be sympathetic to. All of her offers to coordinate, negotiate, extend his time with the kids and access to communication have been met with silence or diversion, they are all focused on the needs of the kids and not her own personal convenience, and it’s all documented via email, to the point where I think we could submit a small binder of these exchanges and never have to speak a word in our defense.
Am I being overly optimistic here or are these objectively frivolous complaints?
