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Sounds like your in a situation like I was.  What county are you in?  You need to do everything you can to find an attorney.  I would suggest finding one who will take a smaller retainer and work on monthly or weekly payments.  That is what I had to do.  Your local FOC should have self-help forms to file for parenting time.  I'm surprised that she hasn't mentioned child support.  If she starts a child support case then you can petition the court for visitation or custody with self-help forms.  As far as her PPO goes you should file a motion to have it terminated.  These forms are also self-help.  You shouldn't need an attorney for this.  As long as you have never assaulted her or threatened her then you shouldn't have a problem having it dismissed.  You should document every attempt to see your children and how she handles it.  Do everything that you can to convince the court that she is using the PPO to keep you from your children. You should start calling the police stations that are in the area of the new boyfriends convictions and fill out Freedom of Information requests to see if he has any police reports filed against him that he wasn't convicted for.  My ex's new husband had 6 times as many reports as he did convictions.  This information is very useful.  Are you on your children's BC?  Did you sign a parentage affadavit?  These things all make a difference about how you should approach a situation.  

James

How ridiculous is that.  What if you decide you want more children?  Are you going to be upset when the FOC raises the CS you receive because your income is adjusted for your second family?  CERTAINLY NOT!!  My husband is a bio-father of 2 and one on the way, step-father to 1 whose dad is MIA (for lack of better way to put it) and treats all of his children the same.  How would you feel if your dad treated your older sister better than you and spent more money on her?  They are all his biological children! What's the difference.  Sounds to me like you should stay out his business.
 

I finally, after two years, have obtained custody of my daughter.  

During my non-custodial stint I paid 95 dollars a week in child support even when I was not working for 5 months because I had cancer.   My sick pay covered my child support, medical expenses and left me with 129 a week to support my new family as my wife was not working because she was pregnant and on bed rest.  While my ex made 500 a week and got 95 from me......I lived off 129 a week.  It was all pretty sad.  

After petitioning the court to review my CS because I had my daughter 3 1/2 days a week I was denied because I didn't know I had to ask for that when I got the change in parenting time.  I had to hire an attorney and finally ended up with CS of 47 a week.  

Now that I have custody of my daughter and her mother only has supervised visitation, I asked her to give me some of my daughter's clothes from her house to supplement her wardrobe.  BM would rather my daughter's clothes sit in the closet and she outgrow them before she will give them to me.  It will be months before she is allowed unsupervised visitation or overnights.  I didn't want to go the CS route but I have decided to GO FOR IT!!  I HOPE ALL GOES WELL.

1.  NO the FOC can not come after your ex because you overpaid....Technically you are not overpaying.  You are paying the amount set forth in the most recent court order.  

2.  You do not have to tell the FOC anything.  Your order says that you MAY seek modifications.  It does not say that you SHALL or that you have to.  If you choose to be so generous then that is your business and FOC won't get involved unless you involve them.

James

Yes the information is public.  Call the station where the reports were filed.  Stop down and fill out a Freedom of INformaiton Act request or FOIA and they should be able to give you copies for a fee.

I don't know of any support groups but I can offer you my email address.  I have been the step-mom for 3 years now.  I have been through all the original struggles and still to this day continue to have feelings of jealousy and hurt when the SD is put first. This does happen still.  I have come up with a few tricks to help me work through these things and to get my hubby to see my point of view.  We started out as every other weekend parents and are now full time custodial parents so I may be able to help in that area to.  Feel free to e-mail me at any time with any questions or just to vent....That helps sometimes to.  My e-mail address is [email protected].  I will let you know if I come up with any support groups that could help also.

My opinion...your days = your activities.  Personally I would not take my child out of something church related that he/she enjoys because BM had other plans.  She should have checked with the coach before signing him up to make sure that at least 1 practice fell on her time.  It sounds like she set it up this way because she can't take him back and forth herself.  I don't believe a judge would force you to give up two of your 3 days of visitation a week in order to accomodate an activity when mom didn't even check with you first.  Tell her no, Tell her she should request a refund and enroll him in something that either doesn't interfere with your time or is closer to your home so that he can do both.

Am I understanding correctly that this was the judge's ruling after an appeal and not the FOC's ruling?  If the FOC ruled this you can request a de novo hearing in from of the judge.  If the judge ruled this than appeal.  I never did understand why the court would order you to have an evaluation and then ignore it....

I agree.  We went through some of the same issues when we saw how well our attorney was getting along with opposing counsel.  We couldn't figure out why they didn't hate each other like we did.  Our first attorney, who we ended up getting rid of, told us that we had to realize that they all ran in the same circle, attended the same functions and researched in the same law library.  Some of them even went to law school together and they shared a mutual respect for each other that was necessary for their profession.  He explained that this relationship did not in anyway affect the job that he would do for us nor did it compromise our confidentiality in any way.  

I noticed that someone else gave the tape recorder advice.......It really works.  Find one that you can hook up to your phone line and take along with you.  I purchased a tape recorder at Wal-Mart for 30 bucks and a device to hook it up to my phone line for another 30.  My x has gone so far as to admit on the phone that she filed false police reports against me.  It's really been quite useful.  Just remember that you should check your states laws regarding phone taping because I live in Michigan I can record any call to my phone but can only use the ones I am a part of in court.  IE I can tape record my x's conversations with my daughter (which I don't usually do but sometimes she talks to her mom and then her mom wants to talk to me again so the recorder is still running) but I cannot use those tapes for anything because I was not a part of the conversation.