I love my step son. My husband adores him to pieces. Every moment we have with him we cherish, whether he realizes it or not. But our battle for our court given time with him has taken us to a breaking point.
My step son will be 14 years old in a week. That means we have four more years to enjoy what little time we have with him before he goes off into the world on his own. Four years that will pass in the blink of an eye, no doubt. That makes what little time we have left even more important.
Of late we have had constant struggles with his mother. Not that we haven’t before, but there is no respect coming from her end of things, and we are expected to give it back in spades. Well frankly, I’m fed up. And let me vent a little and tell you why….
Two years ago we tried to make arrangements for Thanksgiving day, we wanted our normal time with him which was usually picking him up around 4pm and keeping him overnight. On this particular year she decided that we were not going to get any of that time with him because she had “rented movies and video games” and they were going to “make Christmas cookies”. What right does she have to make that decision without consulting us about it? The custody papers clearly state that we all have to be in “mutual agreement” about how the time is divided.
When we were told no, we asked about getting him on Christmas Eve evening and Christmas morning, then she could pick him up or we could drop him off after we opened our gifts. So that would be about 11am, maybe 10am. This time we didn’t get a no. Her exact words to my husband were “You will never have him on Christmas morning.” His response was a calm, “Then we are no longer in mutual agreement.”
Every summer they make plans on our time, without consulting us or asking permission. They just do it, then say “Oh by the way we are doing this so he won’t be around.” Now why have we let this go on? Because we wanted to keep the peace between families for his sake. But things have gotten so much worse….
According to our custody agreement, we legally have him every other weekend from 3pm on Friday until 5pm on Sunday. Every Thursday from 3pm until 8pm. Holidays per “mutual agreement” (which we are never in, we run on her schedule completely). I just thought this was important to state so that whomever might be reading this doesn’t think I’m just ranting. We are losing what time with him we have left and our only option to get that time back is to take her back to court or get the Sheriff’s Department involved.
Three weeks ago we were to pick him up on that Thursday at around 4:30pm because of a doctors and orthodontists appointment that prevented us from picking him up at 3. When we tried to get in contact with them to make sure he was home from his appointment, his mother had gone out and left him home to babysit his little sister… on our time…. without asking us first. The whole thing turned into a big fiasco and in the end we didn’t get him at all. Not even for a minute.
That Friday I picked him up for our normal weekend on the way home from work and was told by him that he had cousins coming in to town on our next weekend with him and that he needed – needed – to be back to his mom’s house by 3pm on Saturday. Oh? Okay, well I had made plans for us to go to the Dells that weekend, but since it was family from out of town I could try and be flexible. So I told him that it was only okay if we traded weekends we had him with the weekend before so we could go to the Dells then instead. So we traded weekends, no problem.
Except then we ended up having a family graduation party the weekend before, so our trip to the Dells was canceled completely and the free tickets that I got, valid for the month of June only, I gave away to someone who could actually use them.
A week and a half ago, on our Thursday, we picked him up and hung out as usual. When I dropped him back off at his mother’s house and he was getting out of the car he said to me, “Oh, by the way, we are going to the Dells next week on Tuesday and won’t be back until Thursday, I don’t know when.” His father wasn’t in the car ot help me figure this situation out, and I felt like a bomb had just been dropped on me. So what was I to do?
Once again, they had made plans on our court-granted time without so much as asking us permission first. And once again I was left on the spot, in the “wicked step-mother” seat. If I flat out said no, that we would be picking him up at the regular scheduled time and he had better be there, then we look like the bad guys and everything gets big and ugly. If I say yes, I am letting them know that it’s okay to disrespect us and devalue our time with him by making plans without asking us first. I was on the spot and the only reasonable response I could come up with was the following. “Then you need to call and talk to your dad and work something out with his work schedule so we get to spend time with you some time during the next week.”
Which never happened.
Well, not exactly. I got a phone call today from him, asking if we could come pick him up to hang out until 1pm. My husband was at work from 7:30am until 2 or 3pm and on top of that he had the car so I couldn’t even pick him up so I could spend time with him. I explained this to him, and asked if we could pick him up later today, maybe tomorrow afternoon or Monday afternoon instead. To which he said, “We are going to the lake later and won’t be back until some time Monday night.”
So we didn’t get any time with him at all over the course of this week, like I had said we needed in order to not have him on Thursday. Instead we got nothing. Nada. Zip.
Now, this situation leaves me wanting to be malicious to his mother, which I of course will do my best not to do. But I want to treat her like she has been treating us for the last 13 years. I want to call back and say, “We will be picking you up at 3:00 Monday because we made plans” without asking her permission. After all, we are entitled to the time we lost, right? And this year Christmas Day falls on a Saturday… on our weekend. So I want to tell her that we made plans already and she can’t have him until later in the day, and we expect him back home by 8pm. There are a number of things I want to do to try and strike back and take that time that was supposed to be ours, but I won’t.
Why not? Because we do intend to take this back to court. We do intend to have the weekends, Thursdays, and holidays outlines very specifically. And after that, we do intend to enforce them. I don’t want to create waves before that. I don’t want to give her anything to use against my husband during the custody hearing.
But I don’t want to lose what time we have between now and then either, so how should we deal with this?
Is there anyone out there that has good advice about how to deal with this situation? Anyone that has handled this legally and well without turning to spitefulness? Any advice would be appreciated. I’m getting desperate here.
I just wanted to get this out there and on the record. It’s Saturday and my step son has called and asked us to pick him up to stay the night with us. So that’s progress, right? At least it’s something and not nothing.