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I agree with the last poster, your state has jurisdicition, but after time, she can say the child is established wheree she is, and they will not want to uproot.

As for the grandmother, I would make another call to her and see if you can get her to discuss the argument again, and record the call. I beleive, one party recordings are allowable as evidence.

The U.S. federal law allows recording of phone calls and other electronic communications with the consent of at least one party to the call.

Good luck!

Most states, give joint custody, unless there is some proof of abuse etc. The amount can vary, as 50/50 to 80/20 etc.

But, if he can prove he lived with her and the kids, and he is indeed the father, I would think he can prevent a move.

We had similar situation, and had a written clause in our parenting plan that if BM moved father got custody (also unwed father). (Our case the BM moved regularly, and was unstable).

Sounds to me he can also use her "night job" as a good angle for more parenting time, if he is available during those night hours while she is at work, or times she is sleeping, and children are unsupervised. He should expect to have this time to parent during those hours, as it is better to be with a parent then running free etc. etc.

Our case the BM tried over and over to get sole, and move away, she never was able to do either, as the court always ruled BOTH BIOLOGICAL parents have a right to be involved in the childs life. (Unless abusive situation)

Just make a rock-solid parenting plan, state times for parenting time, rights of refusals, and moveaway stipulations.

Case that states BOTH parents have a right to be equally involved in the child(ren) life.
Davis v. Flickinger (1997), 77 Ohio St. 3d 415, 419. Cordon v. Gordon (October 19, 1987), Athens App. No. 1334

I posted back in October about throwing in the towel.

Basic summary, is we have a 50/50 plan, verbally hostile BM, who takes us to court every opportunity to try to get sole custody. Each attempt by the mother has failed.

Last case was dismissed over the past summer.

My step daughter is now 13 and is begining to resist seeing us. Even though she had enjoyed being part of our family for her entire life.

SD now, simply says she does not want to come, after her dad takes the time to drive over and get her. She is rude, about it as well. She acts as if we are an inconvenience to her life. She says she has plans with friends, and rather be at her moms. (We live 40 minutes from her social setting).

She never asks her dad for permission to do things with freinds, she just refuses to come.

Her dad is extremely nice, and flexible and told her he is OK, with being flexible. But he just wanted her to communicate with us, and no more no-shows, etc. Show some respect for this family. But she literally cut us down from a 50/50 situation, to a one weekend per month. We even had a birthday party planned for her, and she refused to come, said she made her "onw" plans.

He is at a loss as to handling this properly. To physically "force her" to get in the car and come home with us, would be upsetting for all. Yes he has a legal right, but if she doesn't want to be there, we certainly will not enjoy the time with her.

Her mom (BM), naturally, says "it's between you & your daughter now". (Gloating)

Her BM has been fighting for the "one weekend per month" plan for several years. Wellm I gues she finally has got it by way of having the daughter turned so completely cold towards us.

She even lied about a school function and said she was not going to participate and found out she did participate later on. It's very dis-heartening to know she is willing to lie to avoid us from coming to her events.

Legally on paper we still have 50/50, and her dad wants to just step back for a little bit and give her some space. Maybe she will come around on her own. Or get into a fight with her mom. Ha Ha!!

We also understand that the teen years, are self-centered, and being with "friends" is above everything. So we have backed off for now, to let her find herself and are glad she is enjoying friends.

But many times she is not even there for the pick-up, and or very disrespectful to her dad when he shows up. "What are YOU doing here" instead of " hi dad". When we do get a weekend it feels like a "mercy" weekend. She, in fact, will shorten it to 1/2 a day, and ask if she can go back, to "study".

Any suggestions to handling this better? It's like we have NO parenting power, as she seems to call the shots, I mean if she is mad, all she has to do is not answer the door, and aside from getting police to bring her out, we can't do much. Court is a NO way at this point, as we have been in court for 9 years, and are $$ done with it.

For now we just call before we come & hope she says OK I will come.

I was thinking he should just write her notes from time to time. She refuses to give us her e-mail, or at least plays like she can't remember the address, so e-mailing is out. They have caller ID, and do not pick-up when we call, or return calls.

We have 3 other children, that are her "half siblings" and the oldest is 7 and she is more attached to her then the rest. More then anything this affects her, because she adores her big sister. This is heartbreaking.

This is a clean home, no funny stuff, no abuse, drugs, neglect, criminal time, etc. No court has found ANY reason to discontinue the 50/50 plan. In fact the last go around the GAL was starting to see the strong PAS and wanted to have custody given to dad as sole, but the BM dropped the case to get rid of GAL, and we did not want to re-enter court for the "possibility" of getting sole-custody. We figured it was nearly impossible to have it reversed, based on PAS alone.

We figure there is only a few years left of custody anyway, and by the time we win she'd be 15 or 16.

Any input would be appreciated.

Well, it's hot/cold. She called before this weekend with excuse that she needs help with math and her step-grandad (who actually is not even married intot he family) is going to help tutor her for Friday. (He is retired math teacher). So we said OK, since she could use some help there. But why do they offer to help her on our little bits of time?

Anyway DH didn't call her on Saturday, and waited for her to call him. She finally called around 2, and he said, Well do you want to see us or not? Cause I don't really care.

This would be the thrid weekend she had some excuse to cancel and he is pretty down and hurt by it all. She said she hadn't seen us in a while and wanted to come. Maybe she got scared that he was actually going to let go of her and maybe it struck some reality. Not sure. But at any rate sshe was out on the curb waiting for him to pick her up. Which she doenst normally do.

Well next weekend is our weekend and her 13th B-day. I usually go all our and make a big deal out of B-days for all the kids. But I heard her on the phone with a friend making party plans. So this morning DH took her to school and said are you having a party for your B-day? She said yes. He said when is the party?

She said next weekend. He reminded her that it is OUR weekend, and she can't make plans on our time without talking it over with him. She was quiet.

Now, here is the problem. If we let her go "another" weekend, with her BM, we are letting her call all the shots, and not teaching her anything about respect, and commitments, etc. Not to mention how disappointed her siblings would be if they couldnt celebrate her B-day.

If we make her come to our house for the weekend and celebrate her B-day with family she might be mad, cause it ruined her "Plans". Then we are teh bad-guys.

If we say she can plan her party at our house, I feel like we are rewarding in a way. For disrepecting us. As lately she has been treating us like very unimportant people.

To be honest, we have been sucking up to this situation for YEARS, always trying to make things perfect for her so she would have nothing to complain about to her BM. But we always get slapped in the face with "one thing or another" She even complains that the temperature n the house is uneven, and she gets cold in her room, or hot. This is the stuff we hear back from BM. She is uncomfrtable there, and gets cold. Good grief. Put some socks on!

Part of me thinks she might want DH to be firm about his time with her, and make her come. Then she can play the victim with BM. Who knows.....

We are really tired of the games..................

I keep hearing and seeing some posts that when a child has been PAS'd they eventually switch gears on the programmer in the teens and start asking lots of questions.

I am curious and interested in folks stories or experiences who have had this happen to them, and I 'd like to hear some more about it. Sorta the whole Karma thing.

About what age do they start seeing it?

What if they are totally enmeshed can they break out and individuate from programmer?

What if the programmer is scary and really good at programming?

What if the programmer parent lets them do whatever, will they want to go to the stricter parent's home if they can get more with the programmer. Afterall teens do tend to be me-thinkers.

Anyone with any experience with some of the above, please post your experience.

Thanks!

My personal story.

My dad left when I was in 5th grade, sister in 7th brother almost out of school. (I'm now 42) He never bothered with us much after he left. My mom took advantage of this and bad-mouthed him till blue in her face. I hated my dad for years, and believed every word of my moms bitter angry words. Saying he never cared about you kids, he has his new wife now, and her kids are his now. so on...

Despite ALL that, I have since told my mom no matter what my dad did she had no business bad-mouthing him to us as kids. All it did was make us feel rejected and worthless. We were too young to handle all that hate, and it never processed well.

I can tell you now, my brother, sister and I have tried to make contact with my dad and it BOTHERS us to this day that he will not extend an invitation to meet with him or get to know him. I wish he WAS around whenI grew up. I want him to be proud of me, and meet my husband and meet his "own" grand kids. But he avoids meeting.

We would like to move forward, and forget the past, but he won't.

I still don't really know the details of the divorce, my my tends to be a bitter lady, maybe she has a right to be, but I wish she would move on too. She still bad-mouths him and I'm in my 40's !! She does not like the idea of us wanting to meet him either. She feels she did all the work raising us, why would we want to meet with him...so on so forth.

I am telling you this because I think you should write a letter to your daughter (or call) and try to re-connect. Try to heal those wounds. I wish my dad would. Time can heal.

I thank you for your post. It hits it on the nose. Sd is a weapon and othing more. I tend to think if we let go, BM will eventually wat us to take her. (who knows)
We jsut never wanted to risk it before.

We do the same at our hosue. We do not speak of BM, and try to inforce respect, if she were to speak poor of her BM. Which has not happened. She owrships her BM, and scared of her too. Someday that bubble WILL burst. As a teen she will bump heads with BM, and question things.

She has to know we are good people. She admits her mom constantly runs us down. She knows we do not. We never even talk about court stuff, as like you said, Kids don't need to worry about adult issues. But her mom discusses every single court detail with her. She even knows the terminolgy at age 12. Sad but true.

We will always be there for her. But we hope she will not return with a baby in tow, as the BM is loose with the rules as well. Gives her $20 bucks on the table on a friday night, and she is on her own with friends. Home alone, all summer for anything goes....Some parenting that is.

Wow! Sounds lvery simila to our life. Our (3) kids, and SD fight to. But it's the typical sibling stuff. But SD goes home to her bio-mom and naturally tells mom only her side of things. She gets the "Oh I'm so sorry you have to 'put up' with that over there" talk. So SD thinks her life is so horrible at our house. Things we really can't control, no matter how hard we try to please, her mom un-do's any good we do.

She is nearly 13, so I guess there will be little we can do at this point. Her mom has nearly completed her mission on severing all ties, and ridding us.

We did start counseling last year but BM will not take her to appointments, and bad-mouths the therapist too. So any good works the therapist does get's un-done as well. It's amazing how fast the PAS can work too.

But the counseling helps us, at least, makes us realize we are not these horrible people BM (and SD) are making us out to be. Afirms what we have been thinking all along too, that her BM is nuts and has no business having even partial custody. But courts don't switch so easy, and at this age, not sure if it would fly to try.

The therapist said as kids (with PAS) hit the teens, they start to question the "programer" and want to know what is really going on....

Maybe all that bad-Karma BM spews out will come back to haunt her someday...

Well we picked her up on Friday, and she was totally fine. Not a word about the "incident" –Nothing. So we just let it go for now.

She was pleasant, loving and affectionate. Shared details of her school on-goings, and was nice to her siblings, and talked of "future" stuff with us as normal.

As usual, we didn't want to rock the boat, so we never did bring up anything and just enjoyed the time.

I figure we should just wait and see what happens next. Maybe she felt she did what she was instructed (by her mom), and she is off the hook with her mom. Hate to tell her, but her mom will keep at it.

Poor kid.

You can always tell when she is being "worked on"

At what point can you just flat out tell these kids "Your being brianwashed -wake up!!" Is it that harmful for them to know the flat-out truth?

We pick her up tomorrow. But still have made no decisions on what we might do. I think hubby needs to sit on it for a month until he can get over the feelings of "rejection" right now. Knee jerk response it to let go...

The couselor suggested we either go for sole, or let SD come up with a new visitation schedule that would make her happy (Which would mean cutting our time down, until we are gone). But make it s temporary plan between her and dad, not legally.

But my thoughts are that her bio-mom will never stop (the fighting) until she has completely severed the ties, and a sudo-agreement with dad will not go over.

Another thought is, bio-mom is in this for "the fight" if we give up, she may give her back to us, after the novelty wears out. (it could happen) When she was small she wanted very little to do with her daughter, until "we" wanted to make it legal with us. Then suddenly she moved back into the state and stepped up to be mom. I think her "property" was threatened. She is an Narcisict Borderline personality disorder. Fits all criteria.

We have been through 5 rounds of court battles, each as ugly and costly as the first. If we go one more...yes, she would be 14-15 by the time the case is heard, and she could litterally take us once more before she is 18.

I wish the court had a limit to how many times you could be forced to go into court by ex.

We do have teh Divorce Poision book, and the counselor has given us tips, but her mom is clever in her ways, as she is also education and knows how to persude verbally. (manipulate).

I know we should fight but I do wonder if continuing the fight would do her more harm, especially if she is so far gone that she really wants nothign to do with us....