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Actually, since you were never married to her, there is a good chance that she has automatic physical custody.

It may be different in your state, but that is the law in MN where we live.

If you have a restraining order on her, USE IT.  Quit letting her get away with the crap she's pulling.  All you are doing is letting her see that you will put up with it.  Plus, it will ruin your accountability with the courts.

If you're going to fight custody, you are going to need to beg and borrow the funds.  Fighting custody is not easy, and not cheap.

You get what you pay for.  I wouldn't trust your child's future with a pro bono attorney.



CPS probably won't pay attention to you.  If there is abuse or neglect, you must have someone else report it... Doctor, Pastor, child care worker, etc.  All they'll see if reported by you is a disgruntled Father in the middle of a custody dispute.

Read everything on this site.

Be sure to document everything!

This is an article I found on one of my local radio station websites.  

Needless to say, I sent an email to them...)(



Child Support Collection Report
Posted Tuesday, June 8, 2004


Wxxxx County, MN fared pretty well in the latest child support collection self-assessment review. County Human Services Director Cxxx Bxxxx said the latest review was completed in January.

The head of the Child Support Collection Program, Gxxx Cxxxx, says the county complied with state standards in six of nine categories and has olutlined corrective actions for the other three.

Bxxxxx says the assessment was important because Wxxxx County handles a lot of cases and a lot of money in one year from deadbeat dads which is turned over to families who need it. The board unanimously approved the report and the corrective actions.


_______________________________________________

Here is a copy of the email I sent to them...



Child Support Collection Report
Posted Tuesday, June 8, 2004

"Bxxxx says the assessment was important because Wxxxx County handles a lot of cases and a lot of money in one year from deadbeat dads which is turned over to families who need it."
 
 
 
The sentence above is so sexist I find it appalling.  It also is misleading.
 
I personally use the county to collect child support from my ex-Husband.  Just because a Father pays childsupport through the county, does not make him a deadbeat Dad.  My son's Father has never been seriously overdue on his support.  
 
On another note, my current Husband has physical custody of his small son.  The child's Mother is currently five months behind in child support.  Does this make her a "deadbeat DAD"?
 
There are Fathers and Mothers who do not support their children financially.  Just as there are Fathers and Mothers who do.


hisliltulip

Ok, you're running off of emotion.  Which I understand, but attorney's don't really have time for it.

With attorney's you need to be concise and to the point.

Gee, ya think?

I know.  This one really irks me.  The Father doesn't even know if his kids are ALIVE.

Makes me sick.

By Catherine Donaldson-Evans



FOX NEWS



The well-to-do Egyptian grandmother convicted and jailed last year for helping kidnap her grandson from the United States to Cairo will be released from prison and deported to Egypt on Thursday.
 
Afaf Nassar Khalifa, 61, was serving a sentence that had been reduced from 10 years to three for the 2001 abduction of Adam Shannon, now 7 years old. But during her parole hearing last month, the judge reduced the three years to 18 months, saying the crime she'd committed was nonviolent and victimless because it was kidnapping by a relative.

The child's American father, Maryland resident Michael Shannon, had full custody of Adam when Khalifa and her daughter, Shannon's ex-wife Nermeen Shannon, took the boy and his younger brother Jason, now 3, in August 2001.

"I'm not happy with it," Mr. Shannon, 43, said of the decision to release and deport his former mother-in-law. "It's frustrating. I just keep moving forward."

Khalifa is set to go directly from her prison cell in the Maryland Correctional Institute for Women to the airport on Thursday, where she will board a plane to Cairo. Reached by phone, her attorney, William C. Brennan, declined to comment on the latest developments.

At the time of the kidnapping, Mr. Shannon, a computer programmer who lives in Millersville, Md., had custody of Adam, and Mrs. Shannon, 35, had legal custody of Jason. The children, then 5 and 1, were with their mother for a week-long unsupervised stay while their grandmother visited from Egypt, but during the visit, the women flew with the boys from New York to Cairo.

Mrs. Shannon has remained in Egypt since taking the boys, but Khalifa was arrested when she made a return trip to the states after the kidnapping. Court papers show the mother lost custody of both boys during the divorce proceedings because of child abuse charges and allegations of problems with alcohol.

Adam and Jason are still presumably in Egypt, though Mr. Shannon hasn't seen his sons since 2001 and said his ex-wife won't give him any information about them.

"She won't tell me where he is, when he gets out of school," said Mr. Shannon of his older son. "There have been no photos, no phone conversations. ... My attorney in Egypt and the State Department both cannot confirm to me that Adam and Jason are alive."

An English-speaking woman answering the phone at the Khalifa house in Cairo this week said Mrs. Shannon was not at home. Last year, she told The Baltimore Sun that Adam was enrolled in an American school in Cairo and Jason had a private nanny. She said the children were "adapting well," the newspaper reported.

American authorities have a warrant out for Mrs. Shannon's arrest because she is harboring the children overseas in violation of a number of court orders.

Khalifa will also not be able to return to the U.S. without being arrested once she's deported this week.

Mr. Shannon last spoke to Adam just after Khalifa's conviction in January 2003.

"He called saying, 'I hate you. You put Fu-Fu [the Arabic word for Grandmother] in prison,'" he said. "I could hear somebody whispering to him about what to say."

In his fight to get his boys back, Mr. Shannon has hired well-known attorney Jeffery Leving of Chicago, who made headlines when he returned 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez of Cuba to his biological father in 2000.

Leving and another lawyer at his firm, Andrey Filipowicz, are acting as co-counsel with high-profile Cairo attorney Dr. Nabil Hilmy to get the Egyptian courts to honor the U.S. custody agreements.

Leving is frustrated at Khalifa's imminent release from prison and at the fact that the U.S. State Department doesn't seem to be able to get Mr. Shannon's sons back.

"A crime continues to be committed in Egypt until those children are returned," said Leving. "This is deplorable. It's a shame that we won't protect our own citizens and their children."

No Middle Eastern country, including Egypt, has signed the Hague Convention's international abduction treaty — designed to prevent the wrongful kidnapping of a child.

That makes it tricky for the U.S. federal government to get Adam, Jason and the 10,000 other American children who have been victims of international kidnappings back home. There is also no extradition treaty between the United States and Egypt.

Many have blasted the State Department for not doing enough for its citizens — including its littlest ones like Adam and Jason. Not only have the boys not been returned to the parent who has full custody of them, but the State Department hasn't performed the required visits to check on the children because the Khalifa family has refused their requests, according to Leving and Mr. Shannon.

"The victims of crimes have less protection than the perpetrators," Leving said. "He doesn't know whether his children are alive or dead and neither do I. This is unconscionable."

The U.S. embassy also cannot guarantee the safety of either Mr. Shannon or Leving if they were to go to Egypt to check on the situation themselves, according to Leving.

"I was advised not to attend [the custody hearing] because I'm a U.S. citizen and if I do attend, I was told I would likely come back in a body bag," Leving said. "Something doesn't add up here."

Mr. Shannon and others close to the case have said they are convinced that the powerful, well-connected Khalifa family's friends — who include Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak — have been the reason for Mrs. Khalifa's sentence reductions and ticket back home.

The custody hearing in Cairo is set for June 3. Mr. Shannon has also filed a civil suit against the Khalifa family.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120411,00.html

Just Love Those Kids!  The switch to "Full-Time" Daddy will pan out on it's own!

Just a guess, but wouldn't that fall under alimony?

Ok, #1  Yup, the commute sucks, but you're not the only one doing it.  I commute 150 RT every day.  Plus on weekends that ex wants to see our son, I drive 75 miles home, pick up son, then drive 130 miles to the "half-way" point.  WHY?  Because I refuse to go on assistance, and I work my butt off so that ex-hub doesn't have to pay more CS.  Right now I could hit him for an additional $300/month, but I choose not to.

#2 I wouldn't hold daughter back if you can at all get around it.  Kids can be cruel, and right now is where her self-esteem is growing.  Get her a tutor, or enroll her in a center.  It's only April.  

A few months of intense tutorial help could work wonders!

Good luck, and Drive Safe!

BETH

The way I read it, was that they will no longer ORDER any more, but that what they have on their shelves will stay there until sold.

Of course, I am cynical, and may be reading it wrong...

;-)

Thought you all might be interested in this article...
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
 Posted on Thu, Jan. 29, 2004  
 
Group Smarts Over 'Boys Are Stupid' Gear
DAVID CRARY
Associated Press

 
 
 
 

 
NEW YORK - The T-shirts and pajamas are meant to be funny, with cartoon captions like "Boys Are Stupid - Throw Rocks At Them." But some protesters, encouraged by a fathers-rights talk show host, are unamused and have pressured three retail chains into dropping the merchandise.

The products in question - an array of girls' clothes and accessories - are manufactured or licensed by David & Goliath, a T-shirt company based in Clearwater, Fla.

Its chief designer, Todd Goldman, has created a series of cartoonish graphics used on the merchandise with what he intended to be humorously anti-boy themes. "Boys Are Smelly - Throw Garbage Cans At Them," says one. "The Stupid Factory - Where Boys Are Made," says another.

"I have a very quirky, sarcastic sense of humor," Goldman said in a telephone interview. "Most people just love the cartoons. If a few people don't like them, they don't have to buy them."

The graphics have been in use more than two years, but only recently came to the attention of Glenn Sacks, a commentator who hosts "His Side," a weekly radio show aired in Los Angeles and Seattle that is sympathetic to the fathers' rights movement and often at odds with feminists.

At Sacks' urging, listeners and supporters have contacted targeted retailers by e-mail and other means, urging them to stop selling the David & Goliath products. At least three retail chains, Seattle-based Bon-Macy's, California-based Tilly's, and Claire's Stores, Inc., an international chain, say they will no longer carry the contested items.

Bon-Macy's spokeswoman Kimberly Reason said about a dozen products ranging from boxer shorts to baseball caps were pulled from the chain's stores in five Western states because they displayed one of three captions: "Boys Are Stupid," "Boys Are Smelly," and "Boys Have Cooties."

Tilly's, which operates 32 stores in Southern California, responded immediately to the complaints by withdrawing all "Boys Are Stupid" items and canceling pending orders, senior vice president Sam Mendelsohn said.

"I agree with what the people said," Mendelsohn said. "It was a problem and we were not aware of it."

Claire's Stores, which operates more than 2,800 stores in North America, Europe and Japan, determined after an internal review that its branches were carrying only a few items - including cosmetic bags and lip balm - with the "Boys Are Stupid" graphics.

"We've canceled all pending orders that bear any of the slogans that people found offensive," company spokeswoman Marisa Jacobs said.

Sacks, in a telephone interview, said reaction to the protest campaign had been largely positive, although some people have suggested he was overreacting.

"I'm sorry if I sound like a humorless zealot, but I just don't see the humor in it," Sacks said. "My 11-year-old son, whatever the joke is, he just doesn't understand it, either."

He contended that many marketers, while wary of offending women and minorities, "have developed a moral blind spot toward disparaging males."

Sacks argues that the "Boys Are Stupid" products promote anti-male violence; some of his supporters have challenged groups that combat domestic violence against women to endorse their campaign.

His complaints make sense to Joe Kelly, president of a Duluth, Minn.-based organization called Dads and Daughters that often opposes marketing pitches it views as detrimental to girls.

"There's a stupid notion that being pro-girl is being anti-boy - it just isn't so," Kelly said. "I can see where parents and kids of both genders would be offended."

Goldman thinks the idea that he's promoting violence is ridiculous. "If you look at the violence in rap songs, in video games - that's what they should be concentrating on, not a cartoon T-shirt," he said.

Like many targets of consumer protests, Goldman said the controversy about his products has boosted sales, especially over the Internet.

"It's the best advertisement I can ask for," he said. "We're one of the hottest junior lines out there."

ON THE NET

David&Goliath: http://www.davidandgoliathtees.com/new/home.asp?modea

Glenn Sacks: http://www.hisside.com/