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It sounds like the visitation agreement isn't the issue causing your dd's behavior - it's the fact that your ex is talking negatively about you. I would discuss this with the therapist and see if maybe the therapist could have a talk with your ex about how this is hurting your dd emotionally. Maybe he will listen more with it coming from a third party. If not though, there's not a lot you can do about it unless you have a clause in the CO saying the parents are not to talk bad about the other parent in front of the child.

So again, my advice would be to go to court to get a better CO.

Has he actually been diagnosed as bipolar? If not then I would request for a psych evaluation to be done on him. If it comes back that he is bipolar, I would ask the judge to put a stipulation in there that he has to be following the doctor's orders for medication in order to be able to take his visitation.

Have you tried talking with the stepmother? Maybe it would be easier if you dealt with her (if she is willing to do that). I know it's not ideal, but if the father is so unreasonable, it may be a good alternative.

So how is the week on/week off not good for HER? All I see in your responses is why it's not good for YOU. Unfortunately, most court officials do not care what is or isn't good for you.

I know exactly how you feel since my husband has 50/50 custody with an uncooperative ex. She always thinks he is trying to control her when he is only trying to co-parent with her. Even though the GAL (guardian ad litem/custody evaluator) in our case saw firsthand that his ex is unwilling to follow a CO, or co-parent, she still felt it was in DSD's best interest to continue with the week on/week off schedule.

So instead of changing the schedule, the GAL instead recommended adding specifics to our CO to help make things easier on my DH since his ex has been so difficult. Since certain items in our CO are very clear-cut now, it will make it easy for us to file contempt against my DH's ex in the future should she continue to be difficult. For example, his ex refused to communicate with him regarding doctor's appointments and other health issues. Our CO now specifically says that both parents are to inform the other parent before taking the child to the doctor. We also having a clause in there saying all phone calls must be returned by the end of the day since his ex wouldn't let him speak to his daughter during 'her time'.

It would probably be in your best interest to get an updated, more detailed CO written up.

I think you should stop focusing on the 'primary' aspect so much. My husband was caught up on that too. We just had mediation (after a year and a half of therapy, custody evaluation and forensic evaluation) and our lawyer told him that with 50/50 custody, neither parent can be 'primary' since primary only states who has the child more of the time - which neither parent does. So what my husband got instead was joint legal and physical custody with final say over education decisions, medical decisions, and extracurricular activities (mother was given final say over religious decisions due to her inability to coparent in the other three areas). Since he has final say over education, DSD gets to go to school in our school district.

I like what ocean wrote up - obviously it probably needs to go through the attorneys. I would definitely make sure that your attorney gets this in front of the judge before school starts.

Well, she seemed fine when she picked DSD up on Sunday so hopefully it was just a one-time thing... but if she does ever show up like that when she is driving then we will call the cops ASAP.

It sounds like you are being very reasonable. I would talk about it with him and get a feel for how he feels about it.

One night a week and EOWE is still very do-able with a 45 minute drive.

My DH & his ex had FROR in their CO and it did NOT apply to stepparents - so even if the fiance moves in (and even if he marries her), you should still have first preference to pick up the child.

DH & his ex just mediated an agreement on Monday regarding the modification he filed. DSD gets to stay here in GA (mother has a temporary residence  here and has agreed to stay permanently) and they will keep the week on/week off schedule. DH now has final say over medical, education, and extracurricular decisions and no longer has to pay child support after June (in order to give her time to find a job). Parents are also now required to return phone calls by the end of the day since my husband has had issues with being able to talk to DSD while at her mother's.

As I've mentioned before, when my DSD was 3 she alleged that her maternal great-grandfather abused her.  All of the professionals agree that they do believe she was abused, but only one (her original therapist) believes 100% that it was the great-grandfather (after DSD was 4, she had a forensic evaluator she did say it, but that she was lying when she said it - we believe she was coached but of course can't prove it). Our lawyer felt like DH didn't have enough legal proof to get the judge to order any stipulations regarding the great-grandfather since he had also passed a polygraph. So, in order to get stipulations against the great-grandfather in the CO, my DH agreed to keep 50/50 instead of fighting for primary custody in front of the judge (which we probably could have gotten since his ex has multiple CO violations and the GAL agrees DH is the better parent and that his ex is unwilling to coparent). So now the CO says DSD cannot spend the night anywhere the great-grandfather is at or have any unsupervised contact with him.

So, DH got about 95% of what he wanted and his ex only got about 5% of what she wanted, so we feel it is a win. However, not even a day later, and other issues have already arisen. DH's ex dropped DSD off to us yesterday and she was high on pain meds (fortunately, she wasn't driving). DH knew she's had issues with pain meds in the past (nothing documented though), but thought she had gotten over it. Her mother has also had issues with pain med addictions (also undocumented). We were at our neighbor's house when she dropped DSD off. Our neighbor is a nurse who works with addicts all day long. As soon as his ex left, she pulled DH to the side and said to him, "You DO realize she was high as a kite, right?" We have NEVER said anything to her about his ex's past issues with pain meds.

Since his ex always has 'issues' (migraines, etc.), she always has a prescription for the meds, which will make it a lot harder to prove she is abusing pills again. So is there even anything we can do about this?

Call a lawyer - a lot of them will give you a free consultation. You don't have a lot of time so you need to do it ASAP.

We're right there with you! We have court in less than week and the odds are highly in favor of my DH getting primary custody (currently have 50/50; ALL professionals involved in the case think DSD would be better off with us). So I'm hoping the CS check we write this Sunday will be the last one.

Haha, my husband's ex also thinks the court order is "just a suggestion". I thought she was the only one...

I hope that this last court date works out for you and the judge sets her straight. Our last hearing is on the 28th of this month so I'm hoping for the same.

Will you be able to get a court hearing BEFORE she actually violates the order or will you have to wait until she actually does it and then file contempt?