My ex & I have joint custody of our 7 year old son. We went the Collaborative route with our SA; everything was pretty much agreed upon except how to split our time with our son. Ex wanted 50/50 time, one full week at a time. We saw a Parental Coach a number of times to work it out, and come up with a 2 week rotational schedule where he wasn't more than 3 or 4 days without seeing either one of us. It ended up being 60/40 split with me more time because I was willing & able to be more responsible for school preparation & pick him up if needed -our son is ADHD and has social/behaviour problems, and we regularly get calls from the school about behaviour, need to pick him up, or meet with someone after school to discuss incidents immediately.
The problem now, is that his father is giving up more & more time with him. The two days in the 10 school days he is responsible for him, he has a babysitter one day, and his Mom the other pick our son up from school and give him dinner. He's given up a mid-week visit, now our son goes a full week without seeing his Dad, and often goes the week without even a phone call.
Our son misses him, and I want him to have a good relationship with his father & truly feel like he has two equal homes and two parents who are equally responsible & interested in his life. We worked so hard on all of this, I've made every effort, go out of my way to make it convenient for Ex to see his son, willing to drive him & pick him up -anything. People warned me this could happen, but I just can't believe it is. We've only been living separately for 3 1/2 months! I can't even think about what could happen when he gets into another relationship & if he has other kids!
The end result is that it now works out to about an 80/20 split, and during his time, he has someone else looking after him about 20% of the time -time when I could be available!
I'm reading on these boards about all the fathers who would do anything for more time with their kids, and a cooperative Ex. I just don't get it.
09-23-2010, 07:37 PM
Joint Custody, Father giving up more time
Similar Threads