Need advice RE:Custody Problems

[jgaff78]

I'm really not sure where to begin since the issue just became heated again tonight. I am in a bit of emotional turmoil at the moment, going from being mad to confused and frustrated to just plain sad . . . and then it starts all over again.

I guess I will just start by explaining the current custody situation. My fiance and his ex divorced over 5 years ago. Their daughter was 2 1/2 at the time. His ex got custody because of the child's age and she had moved out of state so it was hard to do joint custody. The ex has never been very stable. She moves from one apartment to another quite often (usually at least 2 moves a year) and does not have a consistent work history. She simply isn't providing a stable environment for her child.

Up until 2 years ago, this wasn't too much of an issue. It was upsetting, of course, that she moved the child around so often, but since she wasn't in school yet, it didn't have too much of an effect on her. Now that she is in school, it is definitely more of an issue. She started their daughter in kindergarten at a fairly good school 2 years ago. She did move during that year, but at least she kept her in the same school district. At the start of first grade, she moved her to a different school since it was closer to where they were living at the time. Two months into the school year, she decided to move again and pulled her out of that school. She then moved back to the same school where she attended kindergarten. At the start of this year, she began second grade at that same school. We just received a message from her tonight telling us that she will be moving in September because the lease is up on the home they are in now. She will be moving their daughter to yet another school.

We have been debating filing for custody modification for several years now. So far we have decided that it is not worth the emotional toll it would take on their daughter since there is no guarantee that we would get the custody change. But we don't know what to do now. It's simply getting ridiculous for her to keep moving this child around and not being able to provide for her the way she should. She just needs a more stable home environment. We know we can provide that for her but we are nervous about whether we would win a custody case and whether we could afford to go through that. We're also wondering if we can afford to wait on this any longer since we feel she is causing emotional distress on their daughter.

So the questions I have are: What can we do, other than filing for custody modification, to prevent her from continuing to move this child every few months? If we do decide to push for a change in custody, what is the likelihood that we would win? We are in the process of filing bankruptcy to get a fresh financial start since we both made bad financial decisions before we met each other, will that look bad in a custody case?

We would very much appreciate any advice anyone can give us. We just don't know what to do. We want to make the best decision for this little girl, but we just don't know what that is right now.

[snowrose]

I'm going to suggest what we went through, but at the time we only lived 15 minutes from the child's home with BM, even though we lived in a different city.  We had the help of a Children's Lawyer being assigned to SD, and the CL recommended that if BM moved again that the child be placed in our local schools to create stability.

If things had remained the same, that's what would have happened.  SD would have begun going to our schools while BM was still primary residence, but in the end things fell apart for BM and we ended up getting custody of SD.  So now SD has gone to the same school for 1.5 years.  Before that, she'd been in 6 schools between kindergarten and the 2nd grade.

[MomofTwo]

A parent moving is not typically a reason a custody change would be granted, particularly since you have not said why she moved. Parents are allowed to move with their children.  Has  he even discussed it with her? 

[jgaff78]

There are other issues we have been dealing with for years as well. The entire environment there is unstable. This woman meets men online and begins relationships with them then starts having her and her daughter stay overnight at their homes then the relationships suddenly end because she says they become "violent". She has moved several times because of these men. Sometimes she will move in with them and then suddenly have to leave because the relationship doesn't work out. Several times when she moved, she lost quite a few possessions because she could not (or would not) go back to pick up her belongings. These are not usually planned moves. She generally moves on the spur of the moment when she's behind on rent and can't catch up or when a relationship suddenly ends or something. If she was planning ahead and moving responsibly, this would not be as much of an issue. But her actions are very irresponsible and it does have a negative effect on this little girl.

The other issue is that when she moves, she does not have to move her daughter to another school. She could keep her at the same school for at least the remainder of the school year so she would not have to change schools mid-semester all the time. She chooses to move her because it is more convenient for the mom instead of paying attention to what is best for the child. We also suspect that she keeps moving her because she does not like when we establish a relationship with the school or the teacher. Each time we start talking regularly with a teacher and they begin letting us know about issues they see in this child, suddenly it's time for them to move again.

Last year, my stepdaughter's first grade teacher (at the second school) told me that she was crying at school fairly often. When the teacher would ask what was wrong, she would either not be willing to tell her or would simply say her head hurt. The teacher said she felt something was wrong at home but she couldn't get her to open up about it. We discussed possibly having her speak with the school counselor but decided to hold off since she was coming for visitation within a few weeks. After we talked to her, she told us that some things her mom had been saying were upsetting her. Apparently her mom talks badly about her dad and she had overhead too many conversations that she shouldn't be hearing. We told her it was ok to tell her mom that she does not like to hear those things or that it hurts her when mom talks badly about  dad and the situation seemed to improve for a while. We were just starting to develop a relationship with the second grade teacher at that school so that we could keep informed throughout the year when we can't be with her. And now she's suddenly decided to move across town again. It can't be a coincidence that she moves into a different school district every time she moves.

We've also been worried for a while because of the way she speaks to and in front of their daughter. We used to get phone calls all the time where she would be screaming and demanding that he had to talk to their daughter now because she was "out of control". We have never had any major discipline issues with her when she is with us. The biggest issue has been getting her to pick up her toys. But down there, she has hit her mother, yelled at her mother, ran away from her mother in stores, ran outside naked because her mother told her not to . . . the list goes on and on. And each time she would do something like that, her mother would call here and scream at us saying it was our fault and we heard her on many occasions tell her daughter that if she didn't behave she was going to send her to live with us permanently. One message she left even said that she would send her here and be done with her. We don't know whether their daughter heard that particular phone message or not, but even hearing that her mom wants to send her away because she's "bad" is enough emotional torment. She just doesn't seem to be emotionally stable or able to handle this child.

Over the course of the summer we heard statments from their daughter several times that show definite problems in her relationship with her mother. She kept saying, "mommy lies. she always lies." She feels that she can't trust her mother. She thinks her mom is constantly lieing to her and she can't predict what will happen next in her life. She seems to feel insecure with her. I think that is the one issue that bothers us the most.

I could go on and on about the issues with this woman, but the bottom line is that something needs to be done to help this little girl and we just don't know where to go from here.

[armycoppertop]

I agree with a poster who said get a court order stating that SD will attend school in YOUR school district based off of YOUR address, regardless of where BM lives, so that SD can maintain stability in her school enrollments. Dpending on your work schedule, if you are willing, you could also ask the courts to order that YOU will "babysit" SD in the afternoons after school so as to save BM (and also, your DH) the cost of child care, or even that BM will pay YOU a fee for babysitting (I have heard of that happening, BM pays SM to babysit just like she would pay a daycare, judges HAVE ordered it!). This would give you and possibly DH some additional time with SD while BM is at work.

Another thing I have heard of some NCP doing, sometimes works... ask the court to COURT ORDER BM that she is NOT allowed to move anywhere that causes SD to have to transfer schools again, otherwise the courts should look at considering changing custody to the NCP if they can provide a more stable home enviorment. It will all depend on the judge. Some will go for it because they understand that constant moving and school changing is not good for a child, some will shoot it down because they only care that the CP can move wherever they want, who cares if the kid is being jerked around and failing school because of it.

[jgaff78]

The main issue we have is distance. BM moved 1000 miles away when she decided she wanted a divorce almost 6 years ago. She took their daughter in the middle of the day while he was at work and left. The only way he knew where she went was because she left a Dear John sort of letter. There was a chance that he could have forced her to come back when he filed for divorce, but he wasn't aware of it at the time. So the custody arrangement was set up so that BM had custody of their daughter and he had visitation. I'm sure it needs to be modified since the child is quite a bit older now and age isn't so much of an issue. But it's hard when she is so far away. We would love to be able to have visitation every other weekend or to be able to pick her up from school when BM is working, but that's just not possible.

We haven't really wanted to uproot this little girl and move her all the way up here unless it was absolutely necessary. But the longer this goes on, the more we are starting to see that it is necessary. Sometimes it seems like BM just has no concern for what's in her daughter's best interest. It's like she only cares what she wants and she's going to drag her daughter along for the ride. Of course I know that she has the right to move on with her life and we would be happy if she was finally able to settle down and get remarried or at least get her life on track. The problem right now is that she has had over 5 years to get her life on track and she is still struggling. She makes bad decisions and she is not a good role model for her daughter. She either doesn't have the strength or the ambition to take control of her own life.

I think of the biggest questions we have is whether or not our concerns are enough to warrant a complete change in custody. Obviously we feel very strongly that  BM is not providing a good, stable environment but we also know that the courts tend to look at things differently. We probably do need to consult with an attorney but we have been afraid of the cost. I guess I just need to start calling law offices to see if somebody will do a free consultation.

We can make a pretty strong case against BM, but I think we have to concentrate on making a strong case for us. I should probably start making a log of all the reasons she should be with us.