Christmas

[backwardsbike]

I am NCP.  CP will not work with me on anything.  Hoilday visit where we have to divide up days on our own are always a real cluster-you know what.  Christmas is coming again.  CP will never advance to me a suggestion for how to divide the kids time.  When I offer a suggestion he immediatly disagrees and offers some version which splits up the days as much as possible.  Last year it took three months to divide up four days.  All the other days were either court ordered or were our weekends.

My question:  Would I be with in my rights to just get the kids on Christmas ( my holiday this year) and then email him with the time I will return them?

[joni]

Unless otherwise ordered, holidays supercede regularly scheduled parenting time...for either party.

I would send him a certified letter to respond within 5 days.  If he does not, let him know you'll be seeking a court order for the holiday.

And if you go to court, let me recommend that you take that opportunity to address ALL holidays, including mother's day/father's day, birthdays, memorial day, labor day, everything.

Prove to the judge that the parties don't cooperate.  Show the judge your (hopefully) written evidence from the banter last year.  

Try to avoid anything in a court order that says 'to be decided upon between the parties'...as you can see, that never happens.  Possession is 9/10's the law and when you're a NCP, that means you're holding an empty deck of cards.

[backwardsbike]

Oh yes. Written documentation I hade in spades.  Last Spring Break we excahnged 20 eamils because I wanted one extra night to take the kids out of town for my dad's eye surgery.  I didn't get it and there wasn't enough time to go to court so my dad had to hire a nurse.  I got my Spring Break visitation but cried the whole time.  I AM a nurse.

How do you address holidays that are different each year.  Like Spring Break and even the Christmas and Thanksgiving holidays.  One would think you have to have some flexibity but in our situation we just can't handle it.

Our Judge refuses to believe that ex is unrasonable.  He thinks in every situation both parties are equally at fault.  "  You were dumb enough to get divorced so deal with it" is the Judge's attitude.

[MixedBag]

What does the order say??

How to address holidays?

Three divorces and all three treat holidays different.

Divorce #1 only recognizes Christmas and New Years (airline tickets required for travel) (alternated each year one or the other).

Divorce #2 recognizes one week to include Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter (alternated between the three airline tickets required or a 12 hour drive one way).

Divorce #3 (DH's) recognizes Christmas and Spring Break (whole thing and requires airline tickets).

Sometimes the start date is defined and sometimes not.  Sometimes the cost for travel is split, sometimes the NCP pays all.

For a "closer distance" holidays can already be defined by the local court house in their standard plan.  So you'll have to check that out for yourself.

And if I catching it right, you're 40 minutes apart and probably doing the "close" distance plan.  Again, the order might spell it out too, or the actualy states's codes.  If not, then you have to get it spelled out in court.

[joni]

your judge is a naive ass.  your judge doesn't care.

so you need to avoid going to your judge.  here's some sample parenting plans in this site's resource library, it'll be a good start for you.  Good luck!

//www.deltabravo.net/custody/pplan8.htm

//www.deltabravo.net/custody/pplan3.htm

This one is good:

//www.deltabravo.net/custody/holiday.htm