Can I get Supervised Visitation?

[seansmom]

My husband and I are currently going through a very bitter divorce and custody battle for our 4 year old son, we are in the middle of a custody evaluation as well. At court on temp. orders the judge gave me primary custody and my husband has generous visitaiton. The last 2 months so or our son has been coming home saying things like "daddy's mad at you he's going to punch you and kick you and make you cry" and he's says he's telling him to be "mean" to me and his grandparents. This concerns me a great deal, he's only 4 years old and I believe the damage his father's doing will cause him alot of long term harm. We go back to court for a settlement conference in 10 days, my question is can his visitation be changed to supervised visitation? He also has committed domestic violence against me, the custody evaluater had me take a polygraph test to see if the domestic violence actually happened, which I passed and my lawyer does have a copy of the report. Any advise??

[gidgetgirl]

If he's coming home and saying this stuff, get him to a child psychologist.  Frankly, if it is a very contentious divorce, your child likely could use a "safe" outlet anyway.  The psychologist can confirm if this is indeed happening and help your child deal with the fallout.  

He/she will likely want to involved STB XH, but keep in mind, this is for DS's benefit.  The psychologist can make a determination, after meeting you, XH and most of all, getting to know DS, if supervised visits are warented.  If they are, the court and/or GAL should place a great deal of weight on that as it is not a XH said/you said matter any more.

You need to go beyond "I want supervised" and look at "how do I help DS deal with this situation", which may include supervised placement.

[seansmom]

Thank you for your reply. Back in June I did make an Appt. for my son and I with a family therapist. Shorlty before our appt was scheduled I found out my husband cancelled us from his insurance policy. I work part-time and dont qualify for medical insurance. I know he needs professional help but with evaluator fees and attorneys fees I cant afford it. Also my son and I have been gone for almost 6 months and he has not paid a dime in child support. We go to court for that in December. So I'm between a rock and a hard place.

[CustodyIQ]

If there are orders for child support, and if he's been properly served, and if he hasn't paid it for six months, I would suggest going for contempt.

It's possible that he'll go to jail if he still refuses to pay, and then you don't need to worry about the supervised visits for a while.

He can avoid jail by paying you, which will give you the money to get your child to a child psychologist to help him (and also help affirm what's going on).

Then, once you have the testimony from the child psychologist, you can have greater influence on what is the best parenting plan for this child (i.e., including supervised visits, if need be).

[gipsy]

The mom did this in My case " She told my son I was going to hurt him and to not go with me And that I did not love him ,,There was no great consequence from this happening , It won't make him look good , I responded with anger and my son repeated what I said to my friend and he heard it , However niether atty brought this up at trial ,
   Next is how to deal with this for now , I went to a counselor My self , And maybe thats what you really need, is to deal with this as well as you can , Four years old is a very tender age for this type of crap , But I too went to polygraph testing , Don't get excited Polygraph testing it CAN'T Me admitted as evidence in any state , It's not relyable , If it was I would have got custody because : She failed, I passed and her allegations were way out there !
 Any way the counselor told me to reasure my son , And that yes Mommy say's this and she can think it < But I love you and You can see that those things are not happening ,
   Heres the hardest part , WE ALL SAY  It's the other person , And we are the good one , But one thing you have to consider , Is as a man going through this, it's very frustrating , And I'm willing to bet he's pissed because he doesn't see his son as much as he would like to ! And willing to bet you aren't cooperating , It would amaze me that you Are the perfect martyr , When we are in this conflict we are not nice to each other , Becuase if we could be there would be no need for the court order you stated,  The Judge gave you , If there was any decency here why a need for a court order , And it seems to me the court sort of accepts some of this type of crap ,
  And I don't believe that your son is going to suffer long term effects , As My son has not , If you want the best for your son Make a reasonable offer and generoous offer to settle and get it over with , If you are doing the court process And useing a parenting evaluater you are going through the routine hostilities , And I know from expierience that any money or time that you may be fighting over will be used up By the atty , Never forget the ONLY PEOPLE THAT BENIFIT FROM YOUR DIVORCE ARE THE ATTY'S , and if you think they want you to settle or: give them the eguity in your house And you get nothing , Don't think your atty is your friend , I fired two and got a cool one that told me NOT TO FIGHT , And try to settle , And  that I didn't need him if I go to Pierce county center for dispute resolution , And settle this , I took his advice and the mother refused to even attend the resolution process ,
   Remmember if you are fighting this you are hurting the child also.
   I did not see you write that there is admissable evidencs about the 'domestic abuse ' and that you polygraph tested , Wich indicates that you did not give the parenting evaluater any admissable evidence , And Again the polygraph test is not admissable , SOOOO While you think you are making a big point, I bet the best you will get out of the POLY GOOF test is your atty will ask if it could be admitted as evidence and His atty will object and that is, will be, and was, the end of it at My trial .
 If you really want to be real .Go to your atty and try not to be a jerk " And say " Hey like if I choose to not give you a ton of money to settle, and try to settle , What would you think would be a good settlement agreement ? Then say If I go to trial is that about what I mayget , And Trust me Your atty is going to suggest about what you will get , But if Atty is the typical money grubbing type he may tell a big story about what the outcome may be and the benifit of giving Said Atty ,LOTS of $$$$ Get it , Iv'e been through this twice , And had one cool atty , And gave up a lot of money to get about what I could have settled for , But the mother would not , Her offer was basically a post card and a child support bill . My atty advised me to not settle ,And the judge did better than her offer was and I'd like to say it was worth the trial , But I could only say , I had a choice of trial . Where My atty knew I would get a better deal than she offered ,As In  Between both situations , One being out of wedlock with only child support and visitation at stake , Costed her over $20,000 And me about the same , And guess what we got a parenting plan and child support by the state guidlines ,
    Second I got divorced ,Partially because of the stree of mother No 1, The atty's got between the two of us about 35,000$ And the case settled before trial , And the problem is NO ATTY CAN GARUNTEEE AN OUTCOME AT TRIAL , just ask
  SOOO Again I say ,Why don't you just think about what is best and settle , Or give the atty a bunch of money and you will get what I got a parenting plan and child support , thats going to be the end of it and you will be like me , My problem was the other side would absolutely not settle , And guess what the judge said at the end of my trial for visitaion of my son ,
  Her atty asked for atty fee's . JUDGE SAID " If this comes back to court we will see who gets atty fee's "OK so judges don't just charge the dads , The judge saw that the mother pulled stunts ,  Usually by the time trial is over the judge has a fair picture of whats going on , And you will be surprised that It won't be all about dad telling the kid this ,  if it continues there will be a problem , Maybe try to limit the hostilities , And about you domestic violence : This has been abused By too many liars ; I watch My atty at another trial destroy a mother . Over her false allegations , And she lost custody , and what He did wasn't so tricky , Ya see in trial you have to answer , And A good cross examining atty will Show where theres a hole in the story , I believe your post said Abuse One time < And As I found the court knows there is a certain amount of that crap that goes on , However another realy gooofy thing the court does is if the ABUSER takes a domestic violence course or evaluation and completes with good marks they think they are now fixed , I was falsely accused , And Of course none of the tests showed  Or said I was any type of abuser , The reults did say they think I may have said some of the things she said I said , But again this wasn't even brought up at trial  ,
   SOOOO Ya see My post is very long but My expierience is this whole process is ridiculous and the atty's are getting the benifit , And you suffer through the process trying to thik of things to undermine each other , Why don't you send a letter over staing that the child said this , And that you see that the courts process is as problimatic as problem solving , And Ask what he wants to settle , Then fire back with what you will settle with and are willing to settle if the child quits comeing over saying this type of stuff ,
   I told the mother to grow up , And she even said her family told her the same thing , She Absolutely would not cooperate and I saw My situation , She had to be ordered by the court Via A court ordered parenting plan , And I did as my atty said , , I held her feet to the flames , And We have both mellowed out and , She still seems to be telling my son a bunch of crap , But not near as much , And It doesn't really seem to effect his relationship to me , He Loves me and his mother dearly , And I Don't talk bad about the mother , And he does not like it when she does it , It seems she is learning much like I did and that is , Mom And dad don't like each other any more but my son is the one that suffers , So I do the best I can to Make life good for him when he is here , And he is happy here , And It seems he is happy at his mother's house , This will end . And it can end quicker if you work toward a solution , other than Constant court action , Unless it is absolutely necessary : Again send him a letter  Remove the anger , And tell him the problem and that you know there will be a parenting plan and a child support order . And see hopw much he wants to spend getting there or settle , To Me this whole process Is like the ritual dance of vendictive parents , It took a while but I quit throwing the anger around and the bad talk and things have mellowed , Believe me there has numerous reasons to start a big fight , But I don't I take the advise of a good atty that knows better than to fight , It boils down to a legal solution , My ATTY WARNS : Usually people are not satidfied with the outcome of trial , Niether side , Even if they win  custody there will be more battles , Ive seen it , STOP FIGHTING !

[gipsy]

Do not make your fight worse by trying to file contempt and putting him In Jail , Even the court see's through this as a deciet filled ploy , Not only that ,then where are you going to get child support while he is in Jail , IF THAT HAPPENS , And  It is very unlikely on the first contempt , MY psycho tried this on Me , The commissioner said " This always happens with these cases " My atty said I would not get jail time , Please do not listen to people that tell you to do vendictive things ,
  A good atty will tell you . As My good atty does , Don't make a court case out of every thing , I am willing to bet that if you weren't fighting in court the dad won't say that garbage , In My case CRAP was said both way's , And it didn't effect much , And My son is six now and it's all over , And My atty said Yeah of course : When the court battle is over every one starts to act better agian , Remmember you are in the heat of battle , If you really want to stir lifelong hatred listen to custody IQ , Yeah right ,A divorce made into JAIL Time and removeall of visitaion rights " Bet Custody IQ Is a woman feminazi , This all will pass and as the similarly psyco mother in My case has done ,She see's how my son loves me and both her and I have changed . Or listen to custody IQ And extend the battle to the MAX LEVEL . YEH BRIGHT IDEA !!
  Remmember the court and any one will se through vendictive behavior , Maybe ask your atty to send a NICE letter over stateing that this has happened and you are willing to work through the issues , My good atty Never sends the nasty letter . He just stays with the facts ,
  Stay with the facts and solve the problem Don't try to fix the car with a Torch and a gas can

[CustodyIQ]

If anyone were to bother to click on the website I run, it'd be clear that the rantings of this person are just that-- mere rantings not based in truth.

Weird that someone would react so personally to my opinion.

[Brent]

I've found the CustodyIQ site to be good, with plenty of useful of information there.


> Bet Custody IQ Is a woman feminazi

This is utterly ridiculous. You may not agree with his suggestions or strategy, but resorting to the "feminazi!" label makes you sound like that goofball from FIRM, Eric Ericson.  It's pretty obvious that you've not taken a good look at the CustodyIQ site.

[MYSONSDAD]

It is the on going conflict that tears the child apart.

Three years and counting in my own custody battle, is way too long. Judge is keeping this from moving forward.

If there is any chance the two of you can get a parenting evaluator to help work out the difficulties, try it. You will need an evaluator anyway, so why not make some progress. Another thing Gypsy is right  with, is the polygraph, they are not considered in Family courts, waste of time and money.
 
"Children learn what they live"

[seansmom]

Thank you for your detailed reply. I really don't mean to sound curt but you do not know my husband. Before we went to court for temp orders we were discussing joint legal custody through out attorneys. two weeks before court i get his "position statment" saying he's going for sole custody. so ok we start the evaluation in Sept. and 99% of what he's telling the evaluator about me is lies. And yes the polygraph may not be admissable in court but the evaluators report IS. As long as he believes me thats all thats matters. I have NOT lied to the evaluator about any of the abuse cases - and there have been many- . This could have been over a long time ago, my soon to be ex is really the one who backed me into a corner and left me no other choice but to fight for our child. I've been a very good stay at home mom all his life, we are very close, i love him dearly. I wont just give him sole custody. He's the one who left me no choice.