Mother changing visitation schedule

[evil_stepmom]

My DH's current court order states he is to get his daughter for the "entire Summer vacation, spring break and winter break".   No where in the order does it state a specific number of days or weeks for any of these visits.   The word "entire" was used.   We interpret that as the moment she gets out of school, until the day before school starts again.    Normally we do return her in a resonable amount of time for her to get readjusted 1-2 days for the winter break, 1 day for the spring break and 3-4 days for the summer break.  

This year the ex has decided, on her own, that she is taking my SD on a 5 day vacation when she gets out of school for the summer.  We found this out through my SD, not because the EX felt it was important to inform us of her plans.   This will shorten our time with her by about a full week.   As it is we only have her for aproximately 13 weeks during the entire year.

My question is, would you guys persue this legally, or just let the ex get away with it.   The problem is that if we force her hand, we will look like the bad guys in my SD eyes, because we will be denying her a vacation.    I really hate this women.   She is always doing stuff to put her daughter in the middle of things, no matter how it affects her.   I hate to see my SD get hurt again.

Thanks in advance for your input!

[Brent]

>This year the ex has decided, on her own, that she is taking
>my SD on a 5 day vacation when she gets out of school for the
>summer.  

She can't do this. She has to abide by the parenting plan.


>My question is, would you guys persue this legally, or just
>let the ex get away with it.

Pursue it. If you let her get away with this without taking some sort of stand, you've set a precedent and it will only make her believe she can do whatever she wants.


>I hate to see my SD get hurt again.

SOmetimes you have to take steps you don't want to, but it's a little hurt now or a lot later. :(

[Sherry1]

go to Paris for a week, you will probably be the bad guy and SD will probably resent you for it.  If it were me, I would let her go on the one week vacation, but I would make sure she understands that you are doing this as a favor, and you don't have to do it.

By the way, how old is the child?

[evil_stepmom]

Thanks for both your inputs.   We are sending her a registered letter today, stating our intent to exercise our visitation schedule as is.   We told her we had consulted with an atty.   We hope this will scare her into complying.    We also prefer not to go to court again.   She is in another state now and we would have to start all over again with another atty.   We have no contacts there, so we would be picking an atty with little or no refererences.

My SD is 8  years old.   She is constantly being manipulated by her mother.   The sad thing is she knows it.   I can see the conflict in her face sometimes.   She gets angry with her mother for saying and doing some of the things she does and says about my DH and myself.   I know she knows better.   She loves being with us, etc.    Howver, she will always have a loyalty to her mother that we cannot compete with because of what this woman does.

Sorry to be long winded, but just as a small example, My DH was going to be in the area where my SD live for business and asked his EX if he could have his daughter for the weekend.   The EX agreed.   My DH told his daughter he was taking her to an certain theme park to spend the day.    The EX has the child so convinced that she would hate it and there were no rides there she could really enjoy, that my SD through a fit when my DH got there to pick her up.   He took her anyway and my SD was a wreck for the first two hours they were there.    Once she warmed up to the idea and realized her mother was wrong she had a great time.     But this woman is constantly doing things to subvert anything fun or nice we do for my SD.   It's just sickening.  

So actually she hurts the child not matter what we do....

Thanks for everyone's time.

[Sherry1]

about sticking to the visitation schedule.  I guess I was visioning a teenager.  Visitation gets much more sticky with teens and abiding by visitation schedules sometimes goes out the the window.