Seeking assistance for custody hearing on 7/18

[Krissy235]

Just first wanted to say that the wealth of information on this site has been so very helpful for my husband and I over the past year, and I'm now coming out of lurkdom to seek some of the wisdom that I know is plentiful here!

A short summary--I have a 4-year-old SS; Husband and ex-GF share legal custody and she has primary physical. We live about a mile apart and have SS 2-3 nights per week (T/Th & e/o Sunday) and pay $600/mo in CS. I also have a 18-mo-old daughter. A custody/CS order was entered in January after both parents agreed to the current arrangement. Less than a month later, BM filed for support modification claiming injury in a car accident and hours cut at work. A week later, when she found out that my husband went to work for an hour while SS was napping at home in my care on our visitation day (after calling his place of employment looking for him and threatening to sue his managers for not disclosing my husband's whereabouts to her), she filed a contempt motion citing about 11 things ranging from our "neglect" of SS to lies about my husband not allowing contact during visitation (SS speaks to her at night, but she likes to call 2-3 times per day to speak to him and my husband discouraged that as it was disruptive to the day).  Our lawyer told us that her lawyer had filed the incorrect paperwork as the point of the contempt motion was to have our visitation revoked and set to the minimum non-custodial arrangement as the state dictates.

During this time, BM started to violate the order...not allowing us to use the vacation time that the CO allows us (three times she denied each request) yet she'd send us e-mails three days before our visitation advising that she was using one vacation day to spend time with SS and therefore no allowing normal visitation. Things like that. She also refuses to speak to my husband at ALL about anything regarding SS. Because SS is in daycare at the church that BM and her husband attend (where her husband is employed), no one at the daycare will speak to my husband. There have been several instances where my husband was held up at for for MAX 45 min. and had me go and get SS at the normal pick up time, and BM refused to let him come with me despite the fact that the CO does not specify that it must be my husband who does the picking up/dropping off. My husband has missed about 6 visitations in the last few months because she won't allow anyone but him to get DSS despite what her and our lawyer told her (that she has to). BB does not allow SS to use DH's last name--she tells him that his last name is hers and she's done this is the presence of my husband and her mother. She relented some to that and now tells DSS that he has two names and can use whatever one he wants. The child doesn't know what his name is at 4-years-old. She almost wouldn't allow us to take our court ordered MMD weekend visitation because I would not disclose the private number of the place we were going to (my parents' beach house. I don't want her calling and harassing them, but I "had" to give out the number to her if we wanted to take SS along). For these and other reasons, my husband filed for a custody modification in June. We're hoping for joint physical but filed for primary, as we were advised by our lawyer. He tells us that BM's attempt at restricting contact b/w her son and his father and her inability to cooperate or communicate with my husband will be damning and that we should shoot for as much as we can given the situation.

I believe that our biggest problem is witnesses. We subpoenad the daycare teacher, who denied ALL of the allegations on the contempt motion, to be at the contempt hearing last month, and she ignored the subpoena. Thankfully, the judge threw out the motion agreeing that BM's lawyer filed incorrectly and that the issues on the motion could be dealt with at ourcustody hearing this Tuesday, July 18. However, when we arrived at the courthouse prior to the master's decision, we saw that BM and her husband had about four people (all church members that my husband had seen at the church before) with them. We have no idea what they were going to say and we're concerned that, because we don't attend a church or have family close by, we will be buried by the lies of a bunch of people that are close to BM. And the fact that our best witness--SS's teacher and main caregiver during the day--refuses to speak for us because of ties to BM makes it all the more worse. Also, BM is visibly pregnant now (funny that she can't work due to injury but she's pregnant and wants MORE time with SS, who she admits she can't even lift) and I feel like they just have the perfect little family and support group. I fear that despite the fact that my husband and I only want to share SS (we'll continue to pay the same support, doesn't matter) and always try to cooperate and be amicable, we only have our word while BM has her cronies and her lies to discredit us.

I hope there are still some people reading this! Sorry that it's so long. I guess I feel like we're at a brick wall and I don't know what to do next. I have an 11-page document of every incident that has transpired w/ BM, every denial of visitation, every lie, every violation of the court order. How can we best utilize that? What are our best arguments? What DOESN'T a judge want to hear/care about?

Thanks so much in advance!
Krissy