Larissa - posted on 04/23/2012 ( 6 moms have responded )
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Ok, so any one following my story knows we didn't win our custody battle (even after copious amounts of evidence that the kids were not cared for properly and there was drug abuse in the house not to mention BM smoking in front of my asthmatic SDs) BUT we have to move on, we can't dwell on the past. I'm not saying moving on like forgetting about it, HA! BM wishes! But we are moving on and trying to venture into new ways to get the kids. My husband and I are thinking about going for mediation. Now that BM is getting divorced (of course waited to file until day after judge said she won) and has a restraining order on her soon to be ex, she is soon going to see how it is to take care of the kids without the additional income (and free babysitter). She is living with her growing-more-physically-handicapped-by-the-day ex step dad (yes, I said ex step dad.... who by the way is maybe months away from losing his house.) and working at mcdonalds. DH and I have talked and even though we would love to take SDs away from BM forever, that's not the right thing to do. They still love their mother, and we want them to be happy. However, BM openly admitted in court she does not make them go to school, in fact, she stated the reason they missed so many days was because they didn't want to go. (They give her a hard time getting out of bed... when they lived with us I told them twice to get out of bed and by the third time I would pick them up out of bed and stand them up... this only happened maybe a week before they gave us no more trouble). BM knows they are not a problem for us, even though they give her such a hard time. ANYWAY, we came up with a calender which basically consists of us having them for the school week, and her having them the 1st 3 weekends of every month, and almost all of summer break, all of spring break, and visits during the week anytime she wants to come up to see them. We are going to keep it as joint custody, because she freaks out if you even mention changing custody, and let her continue to collect child support. Child support and the title of having custody are the only 2 things she cares about.... so ya know what, if it means making sure SDs are taken care of, then we will do it. We want to talk to her about this before hand, and see if she will agree to it before going into mediation. If she does, where do we go from there? We want it signed by a judge so no one can change their minds a month down the road. We want to keep this as cheap as possible. If she does NOT agree to anything, should we still go to mediation anyway??? Please feel free to give advise, and share your story. I'm completely clueless when it comes to this. :) Thanks!
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