it is possible to win

[foughtandwon]

hello to all
I have been reading everything in this site and many others for a while now and finally had something to post.

after 5 years since my son was born and 1 1/2 years in court i have custody of my son. so for all the fathers out there who seem to have the world against you keep your heads up it is possible to get custody.

a little backround on the case if anyone is intrested.
BM would allow some visitation when ever i flew home(i'm military)
once she found out i was married then she cut off all visitation.
I called a lawyer and got the "the best you can hope for is visitation" speach.
fast worward to april 2003 i was 2 days away for going to Iraq when i get a call that the state of AZ has custody of my son.
turns out the day care called CPS because of some concerns and they took the kids (my son and his half sister)
talked my commander into letting me stay behind for a bit to take care of this.
after i few calls it felt like i hit a brick wall. CPS said the first priority is to get mom and son back together. after pestering them for a bit and letting them know i want custody they gave me a few task to complete. parenting classes etc. did as much as i could and had to play the witing game cause BM had to be given time for her to complete her CPS task.
so i got on the first plane to kuwait, a few short hops and i was back with my unit and in Iraq.
at the end of deployment case was still going on and mother and started to slip up a bit. luckily i was there and still proved to be the better parent.
well to make a long story short BM messd up on numerous occasions and finnaly the judge awarded me sole custody and her resonable visitation.

so hopefully this will give some fathers out there a little hope
from my research AZ is one of the hardest states for a father to get custody

[catherine]

sounds like she dug her own grave.  Good luck.

[foughtandwon]

oh she did more than that.
man half the stuff she said while on the stand was crazy. it got to the point that all the lawyers involved would get together after our time was up and laugh about the things she said.
just an example of some of the things she said:

"i think this sucks cps wants me to be an old maid and stay home with the kids instead of going out to party"

"that guy isnt in my life anymore. I'm engaged to a guy in prison"

"It's to much trouble for me to change my phone number, everybody i know already has the old one"

and it goes on from there but thats not the point. the main thing is that i now have custody of my son as was able to walk him to his first day of school

[catherine]

and I missed it, but how will your being in the service affect custody?  If you get deployed, will he go back to his mother or is there another guardian who will take over?

[foughtandwon]

thats kinda still up in the air. the judge gave me custody then said for us to work out a parenting plan. if we cant agree then either one of us can bring it back to court.
well she was seeing a therapist and she asked me to come in and talk about visitation etc, it didnt really work out cause i felt the thrapist was thinking of the mothers best intrest not the childs. not to mention what she typed up totaly twisted all of my words, and the fact that the notary was her husband. (things just didnt feel or sound right there)one of the areas we couldnt agree on was deployment.
my wife has already said she wouldnt feel comfortable keeping him for that long of a period by her self. so we agreed he would return to arizona maybe with my dad or sister. she of course says he has to return to her.

but here is my problem. since this was a CPS case i learned alot about how they work. so im affraid that if i return him to her during a deployment and she again endangers him then it is just as much my fault as it is hers. then i get to go back to court for all this again. my other concern is that the az law says who ever the child has lived with for the last 6 months is the custodial parent. so thats kinda like handing him back after a 18 month battle.

luckily it doesnt look like i am leaving any time soon. his mother has also seemed to forget about him already. the first 2 weeks she called on sunday as we agreed. the next week we werent home so we had to call her. but for the last 3 weeks no call what so ever. I have lost her number so i cant call her but if i was in her shoes i would be calling every day of the week until i got a hold of somebody.