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Hi

Background:  DH's X filed to regain primary placement of two girls, 13 and 15, after DH has had 50-50 placement for seven years.  She maintains there has been a substantial change of circumstance but to date we have not been told exactly what that is.  Our attorney is just shaking his head on this one.  Anyway ... mediation failed because X said she won't agree to anything less than primary placement so everything has been sent to parental evaluation.  This is Waukesha County, Wisconsin.

DH and his X both setup their interviews with the evaluator when they were there last week.  X's appointment was this past Monday, DH's was yesterday.  When he was there, the evaluator mentioned that DH's X was a no-show and that she needed to get in touch with the X to reschedule.  Not only did the X not show but she has made no effort to date to reschedule and she has not submitted her parenting plan to the evaluator, the court, to us or to our attorney.  DH has already submitted his to the evalutor and court, the others go delivery confirmation today.

Can I ask what your opinion is on the X's no-show status and not submitting a parenting plan.  It is our understanding that if you don't submit a plan to the court, you forfeit your right to argue your position if you don't agree to the other parent's submitted plan.  Will her actions hurt her case?

Any opinion would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Rd

I think SD would laugh at that word.  I think she's only unhappy when I or DH make her do something like pick up the pigsty she calls her room, get her dirty clothes out for me to wash or put the clean ones away, ask how her day was or take her turn with the kitty litter.  Pretty standard household stuff that we have all the kids do, including, gasp, my bio-kids!

Thanks, I appreciate your comment.  Guess we're just so tired of fighting and defending ourselves we have become a tad paranoid.

Rd

Hi Soc

My DH's X is taking DH back to court because she says the youngest daughter (13) has said she doesn't like our house.  She refused to mediate so that was a waste of money as that is mandatory in this county.

We are now waiting to hear from the courts regarding evaluations being setup.

DH has had 50-50 placement for almost eight years, has had 50-50 custody since '94 when they were divorced.  There are no grounds for why SD doesn't want to live with us or why she doesn't like our house.

The other SD, 15, wants things to remain as they are now and is adamant about that.  Her mother will not listen to her.

This is all we know about why the girl doesn't want to live with us yet when she's with us, she's usually her bright, sunny, happy-go-lucky self although since this has all begun, she has been pretty quiet and withdrawn at first and then warms up.  The older daughter has been very vocal about how their mother takes the younger girl into a room, behind closed doors for "talks" yet she refuses to tell the older girl about what's going on.  We're concerned about this.

The X insisted we get counseling for SD which we have done but she will not participate because she believes we are the sole problem.  Yet the girl has threatened to run away at the X's house and has horrendous temper tantrums that scare the other daughter and none of this behavior has been seen at our home.

Our attorney seems to be pretty confident that we will at the very least keep the 50-50, which DH and I believe to be in the best interests of these kids.

For Waukesha County, Wisconsin, what are the odds that the judge would change the placement based on what I've told you.  Honestly, this is all we know about what's going on.  The X refuses to tell us anything other than the one daughter isn't happy.

We also wonder if there is any chance that if we were to go for full placement, we would get it because we can prove that the X has lied on several of the items in the motion to change placement and that we are the only ones actively working on counseling for the younger daughter and working with the older daughter's school because of her plummeting grades.

Any thoughts? Any suggestions?

Thanks, I appreciate it.

Rd

... you don't communicate these kinds of issues directly to us, then these communications are not recognized.  If you need to change the visitation or whatever, then you call us direct and make the plans with us, not through the kids or our spouses.  That's how is it is stated in the CO.  My X is pretty good about this but my DH's hasn't always been but she's finally gotten the idea.  If she doesn't talk to DH about these things directly, its a not a deal.  I say stick to your guns, the kids should not be involved in these kinds of things.

Rd

They have 50-50 custody and 50-50 placement.  Back in late 2001, X moved to a new school district and didn't say anything until after she registered the girls in their new schools and had them there for tours.  She had everything very neatly arranged and told DH that the girls would start at their new schools after the 1st of 2002.  Not only were the girls very upset about changing schools in the middle of the year, but DH was upset by it and even more upset that she was telling him about a major decision that had been made regarding the girls with his total exclusion.  So, we filed the contempt motion; it was automatically referred for mediation as is in keeping with the court order.  So, basically what happened was that DH won that the girls could stay in their current school district through the end of that school year and then they could either stay under the Open Enrollment law here or go to school in X's district.  X would only agree to the girls going to school in her new district.  Needless to say, X was put in her place although she certainly tried to play dumb that she didn't know she couldn't make that kind of decision on her own.  Yeah, right, cry me a river.  At the same time, DH had four more things on his list that he felt needed to be worked on in that mediation session and he came out with all four.

He felt the mediator was looking at him like the big, bad Dad but she couldn't have because she helped him get all five things he was asking for.  X didn't win anything.

Rd

My DH's ex, referred to as Cujo, has filed to regain primary placement of their two girls, 13 and 15, even though he has had 50-50 shared placement for seven years.  The reason? Because, just because.  We have yet to hear any kind of good reason as to why and the couple of reasons Cujo gave, such as the YSD's temper tantrums and threat to runaway (was only to the backyard) were all at her house, then why? We are now smack in the middle of the evaluation process and have the YSD going to counseling.  When comparing the two houses with the counselor, even the counselor said our house was preferable so why?

All you can do is fight the best you can and speak the truth.  That's all you can do.  Well, that and pray that you have a fair and impartial evaluator or GAL.

Rd