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Sole custody when other parent lives out of province?

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  • Sole custody when other parent lives out of province?

    Hoping someone can help me with the best course of action. I have a ten year old daughter, her father and I split up when she was one. Since then she's lived with me, and he's had access as often as he wants or is able. While in town, he would take her every other weekend, or every weekend, and most recently he was taking her every weekend and sometimes a day through the week, dependant on his schedule. There have been three different occasions when he's moved either out of the province for six months at a time, or several hours away. During the six-month-period times there was no contact, except occasional phonecalls.

    Now he's moved to the other side of the country (for work), and would like to have her for the summer. He had asked me just after he moved about her moving there and living with him. I told him she wasn't mature enough to make a decision like that (she spent days trying to decide who to stay with for Christmas, and ended up crying over it more than once.)

    I want to serve him with papers, and I'm hoping to get sole custody with reasonable access. I have always been reasonable with him, he has taken her out of province for the summer before, which I'm fine with. I'm only afraid that this time he may just keep her once he has her out of province, and then I'll have to fight to get her back, while he's establishing a new "normal" and can use that to keep her. There's nothing wrong with him as a father, I just don't think he understands how moving across the country could affect her. She also has aspergers and adhd, which he completely denies, despite being given a copy of the assessment done by a professional, which bothers me as he doesn't want any treatment being done. He lost his mind when I told him I was going to try her on medication to see if it helped her. And he disagrees with her having a tutor, or any extra educational help (he says I'm just too easy on her and she needs to work harder )

    Am I right in assuming that I've had defacto custody all these years? Is there anyway I can phrase this to be as non-confrontational as possible in the papers I send him? I don't want a big fight. I just want the arrangement we've always had anyway to be on paper so he can't just take off with her without me having any ground to stand on.

    Thanks for your time!

  • #2
    Yes, you have an existing status quo of you as sole custody, him with reasonable and generous access.

    Given the instability in his work/living arrangements (where he is away for 6 months/time), etc. then you should have no issues getting an order to reflect it.

    If you decide to allow him to take her for the summer, then you would have grounds for an ex parte order if he refuses to return her. (ex parte is essentially an emergency custody order, a half decent lawyer can get one in 24-48 hours for a cost of a couple grand).

    Get agreement in writing as to where/when he will be taking her and when/where she will be returning to you.

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    • #3
      Thanks for you reply! Any idea what his chances would be if he tried to sue me to remove her from my province and to his? His work is now stable. The "trips" he's taken in the past for the better part of a year at a time were because he felt like travelling. He'd tell you they were for work, but each time he left a fulltime job here to go to those
      Now he's in the military, and his current place is where is permanent posting is supposed to be. As far as the facts go, she's always lived with me, very stable home life, I take great care of her, and she has two siblings here with me. She is very close with my family, has several cousins her age and we all get together as a family frequently. We live next door to my mother. Her paternal grandfather lives 30 minutes away and she goes to visit him every other weekend since her father moved.
      If he moved her to his new province, she would be moving away from everyone except him and his new wife. As far as I know, he and his wife don't even know anyone out there, except maybe some work contacts.

      I could see him using that he makes more money than I do as an argument. Does that hold any water at all?

      He had her all talked up about moving, and I notice he never explained to her that she would be leaving all her family here for a year at a time, to visit during the summer. She was under the impression she would be visiting us twice a month (from across the country ). Once I explained the actual distance, she changed her mind completely and said she doesn't want to leave her siblings for that long. He said I had "talked her out of it" but I really don't think I did. I made it as unbiased as possible, but I feel the kid deserves to know the facts, and the facts are that she would be moving away from most of her family, and couldn't just come visit whenever she felt like it. Could that be used against me?

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Gracehana View Post


        There's nothing wrong with him as a father, I just don't think he understands how moving across the country could affect her. She also has aspergers and adhd, which he completely denies, despite being given a copy of the assessment done by a professional, which bothers me as he doesn't want any treatment being done. He lost his mind when I told him I was going to try her on medication to see if it helped her. And he disagrees with her having a tutor, or any extra educational help (he says I'm just too easy on her and she needs to work harder )
        I'm sorry but I've got to say, that one statement is completely contradictory to the others. Those are huge issues that are not ok with being ignored and his lack of refusal to even acknowledge them much less learn to deal with them can be enormously detrimental to a child.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by blinkandimgone View Post
          I'm sorry but I've got to say, that one statement is completely contradictory to the others. Those are huge issues that are not ok with being ignored and his lack of refusal to even acknowledge them much less learn to deal with them can be enormously detrimental to a child.
          Sorry, I should have said "nothing wrong with him that I can prove". If asked by people who carry weight, he'd tell you he's all over her issues, but in reality, when her doctor and I tried her on medication, I had to get one that she could miss for a day or two without it hurting her, because he wouldn't give her the meds while she was at his house. This was over three years ago, and I don't have any way to prove it now.

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          • #6
            Hindsight is always 20-20...but I digress....

            Unless he has the best lawyer I've ever heard of, or you are actually a drug addicted, escapted mental patient who has CAS watching you like a hawk to take the kids from you if you so much as look at them funny, he has no shot. 0, zilch, nada.

            The one exception to this is if the child is 12 or older and expresses the desire to live with her father. In that instance I'd peg it at ~ 50-50 chance. (Only given the medical issues with the child, ordinarily it'd be pretty close to automatic, once the child hits 12, their wishes carry a LOT of weight)

            Forcing a custody change creates a move, which would obliterate the established status quo (strike 1), it would split her from her siblings (strike 2), and would take her away from her family (on both sides)...(strike 3). Oh and you are the MOTHER... (Strikes 4-9999999999).

            If he's making more money, are you receiving more child support? Is he current on it? Whether you have a signed support order or not, he's still legally obligated to be paying table amounts of support. If the answer to any of that is no, should he try to haul you to court to argue for a custody change, THAT gets brought up too.

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            • #7
              Aside from the meds, I wonder if we were married to the same person, lol. I can certainly sympathize.

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