Please read & help or advise.

[concerned dad]

Hello, my name is Shayne, I am an Australian living in Ft Lauderdale Fl (for the past 12 years) & I have just recently (7 months ago) gone through a divorce to my wife of 9 years at her request. We have 2 beautiful girls aged 2 & 5. I agreed to let my wife keep the house & car & bank accounts & agreed to pay child support to the amount she requested. I agreed to give her the house because she said she wanted to disrupt the childrens lives as least as possible by letting them stay in the house we renovated for them & they love the pool & it is close to the school we picked out for them & wanted them to continue going to even though I could not see how she could afford the mortgage payments. The other day my ex informed me that she now wanted to sell the house & move a little further north to a more affordable area & she tried to justify it by saying that they would be actually closer to me in the new house I recently bought (I spend as much time as I can with my children as possible & would love to spend even more). I expressed my disapproval to removing them from their current school as it is an A rated magnet Montessori school with excellent SAT & FCAT scores. i researched the scholastic levels of the schools she was thinking of & found that they had higher incidents of crime & lower scholastic scores & were not even B rated schools let alone A rated. I gave her as many studies as possible on the schools & suggested that if she insisted on moving the children from their existing school & was unable to find an equivalent that we look into putting them into a Catholic school such as the one directly across the road from my new house & that I would pay half of the additional costs. She has now informed me that she has decided to move further north about one hours drive (not accounting for rush hour) & relocate the children to a school up there. I have told her that would make it impossible for me to have my children on anything other than non-school days as I could not travel anything up to 2 hours north & then 2 hours back south & then an additional possibly 1 hour during rush hour to my work (I recently took a job close to my childrens school (half an hour away during normal hours) so as to be able to pick them up & drop them off at school when I have them). She seems to be uncaring to my concerns & I am feeling like my world is collapsing around me knowing that I will then be reduced to 8 days a month at the most to spend with my girls. My 5 year old already complains to me that it is unfair that she doesn't get to spend enough time with me & spends more time with mummy( she is truly a very bright child & it has been suggested by teachers that we have her tested for acceptance into a gifted child program). I would never bad mouth or influence my childrens thoughts & I hate the idea of having to go to court & drag them through this. I still love my ex but hate her for doing this to me as I feel she is doing it intentionally so that I cannot spend time with my girls. Any input on this would be greatly appreciated. I am trying to avoid high lawyer costs as money at the moment is tight as I spent every penny i could muster on trying to get my life back on track, just when I think I am getting somewhere she pulls the rug out from under my feet like this. PLEASE HELP THIS AUSSIE!!!!!!

[Brent]

Two suggestions:

1) Break your post up into paragraphs so it's easier to read. Most people have a hard time working their way through a large block of text like that- it's difficult to read.


2) If you could give us an idea of what you'd like to have happen, we'll give you the best advice we can. Without some idea of specifically what you want, it's hard to know what to suggest.