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Thanks for the info, it is much appreciated.  However, as I am sure you all have been through, pretty discouraging.   I would rather handle my situation amicabaly; however, my STBX has different ideas.

She continues to keep my 1 year old daughter from me and only allow me to see her the absolute minimum of EOW and one night a week.  I am trying for my atty to push for more.  I just seems it is such an uphill battle at times.  I am trying to be the bigger person in my case, and it is pretty obvious to any outsider that I am being that; however, I am not sure if that will actually haunt me in the long run.

Hi

I am in FL.  How long does a contested divorce take?  My atty says about a year.  It just seems everything moves so slow, and I feel I am losing my child through this whole process.  I need some advice on what I can do to make things move along quicker.  Who gets to set dates as regards to mediation, etc.?  Please help.

Thank you

Thanks for the reply.  What state was your case in? 

At this point the whole process is very new.  I was not served until 11/24/09, so there are no formal court documents dictating anything yet.  I filed a motion with the judge for temporary time sharing, through my attorney, and they said he will not hear any motion from either side until we go to mediation first.  In Florida, I guess they are hoping you will work it out on your own and then the court can just review and rubber stamp whatever you come up with.  I would rather have it work out that way myself; however, I just do not think my STBX is going to want that to happen, she wants to punish me and ruin me forever.

I am planning to go to Gamblers Anonymous and/or to get a one on one counselor through my health insurance coverage.  The current visitation is just the schedule that my STBX is "allowing" me to have, I constantly ask for more time from her and I constantly say I have not agreed to the current restrictive schedule.  We are both documenting everything as all our communication is only via e-mail.  My lawyer seems to think because of the gambling and the craigs list ad, it is going to be a tough shot at getting 50/50 custody.  I know this lawyer through friends of my father, and they were all very pleased with him in their cases and he has a good reputation with many of the judges I am told.  He seems to think our current judge is very low drama and that is a good thing for my case; however, he thinks the judge will not rule 50/50 custody because of my daughter's age and my Wife has been a stay at home Mom ever since she was born, and the knocks against me with the gambling and ads.  I just feel that is absurd as I think we are both able to parent our daughter just fine, and neither of us is unfit.  My wife will have to go back to work as we were only married for 4 years and then we will be shuttling my daugther to a day care, so isn't it better for her father or mother to parent her, then strangers at day care?  I feel frustrated, I don't want to go for anything less than 50/50 custody but I cannot help but feel like I am getting royally screwed right now.  If I lose in this battle, I want to go down fighting as I believe my daughter deserves equal time with both parents.

Do you file a pendete lite through your attorney?  Or is it something I can just go file on my own?

I really appreciate your help, so thank you.

Hi All

I just need some guidance and advice from people who are going through similar situations or have gone through them.

I am the Father of a 14 month old girl.  I am in Florida.  My wife left me and filed for divorce in November 2009 while I was on a business trip.  She cleaned out our bank accounts, took our one year old, took a ton of our marital property, charged up cash advances on one of my credit cards she was an authorized user on and moved out of our marital home and took our daugther and moved in at her Mom's home.  I admit she did this as a reaction to some bad issues I had with gambling (that she knew about) and I had posted a classified ad on Craigs List trying to meet with someone, and she found that out.  I did not meet with anyone and I dropped that idea after only a couple of days and realized it was not something I wanted to do.  I had a separate e-mail set up for all this and somehow my wife found out and got into it and found these e-mails.  While I was on the business trip, she sent me an e-mail saying she was leaving me and that she knew about the ad, etc.  I came home a few days later and found out about all the things that were cleaned out.  She only let me see my daughter for 90 minutes on Thanksgiving and not at all on Christmas, only Christmas Eve.  Until this past weekend, I had not seen my daughter for a weekend in almost 2 months.  My wife continues to only communicate through e-mail and replies to all my requests for visitation or return of marital assets with "my attorney will have to answer that."  I have retained an attorney and because of that I was able to get at least the minimum ordered visitation of one night a week and every other weekend right now.  I still want more visitation and would really like 50/50 custody.  I wanted to work on my marriage and try to save it, my wife does not.  It seems likes she is using my daughter as a piece of property against me, that she "owns."  I was wondering if anyone can help me with some advice and what other courses of action I should take, or what my shots would be at 50/50 custody.  As I stated, there were some large gambling losses on my part (mostly before daughter was born) that my wife knew about that had added a strain to our marriage.  I work a normal 8 - 5 schedule and the Wife had been a stay at home Mom for the last year, after she got laid off.  We had hoped for that to continue, but obviously I do not want to support her if she is not willing to work on our marriage.  Any advice would be appreciated as sometimes it feels like I am out there on my own.

Thank you