One Step At A Time

[DABO]

My husband has an exwife and two small children (2 yr son and 5 yr daughter) with her.  We married 5 months after their divorce, we were high school sweethearts and happen to run into each other while he was seperated, now we are HAPPILY married with a beautiful 7 month old daughter.  We are having such a hard time with his exwife.  He has had both children every 1st 3rd and 5th weekend for the past year.  We pay 700.00 month child support while we live in the ghetto and sometimes eat mac and cheese for a week.  Things went great for a year while he did every thing she wanted. We ask her to start picking the kids up as ordered in the decree, she is now taking us to court to keep the 2 yr old from us and to raise our child support.  My husband LOVES his children, he is the best dad in the world.  He cried when he found out she was taking us to court to keep his son from us.  I am trying to support him the best I can, I just don't know how.  He is so sad.  I was hoping I could get some advise from guys on what I can do for him.

[ocean]

What does the court order say about visitation now? If is spellls out exactly when then write her a letter that you plane on exercising your parenting time on XXX with both children. Send it certified....if he is denied bring her to court on contempt. What state are you in? Most states have a calculator that you can figure out what your support "should" be around. In my state for 2 children, it is 25%....Hopefully she will start to comply with the certified letter or when a judge tells her this is your parenting time. Why is she allowing the older child and not the younger one?

[DABO]

We are in Texas. It states in the divorce decree that his visitation with children under three will be "As stated in the Decree" Our attorney says that means we get him according to the Standard Possession Order.  The ex has made up her own rules and says we have to pick him up Sat. mornings at 9:00am return him Sat. afternoon at 5:00pm, pick him back him on Sun morning at 9:00am and return both children Sun at 6:00pm.  She is crazy.  Unfortnatly, paying what we do in childsupport and the expenses of our new baby we have no more money to pay our attorney so she is not really working very much on our case.  There is no legal help for fathers out there, I have found many groups that will help the mothers.  

Our child support should be 25% but we owned our own business last year and ended up in the negective.  He is now driving hot shot for a business my parents opened just for us, he drives, I run it from home.  Her attorney is saying he needs to find another job that makes more money so he can pay his 700.00 child support instead of lowering it.  We are suppose to go to mediation to try to come to an agreement.  Which means we will have to bend over once again for this woman and make her happy because we don't have the money for an attorney.  

She can not do anything about the older child staying with us, she is 5, Keegan is only 2.  I love the children like my own, they both call me Momma Nanna, there is no reason we can't keep him.  The little girl told me tonight during our Thurs visitation that her momma told her she would come stay with us for 2 days this weekend then she was nevering coming back. The girl was in tears because she said she was going to miss us.  It's killing us!!