The time for hiring lawyers was when Susan took off with Greg’s children across the United States. Personally, I think that moving outside a certain parameter should not be allowed without the non-custodial parent’s consent, except in extremely extenuating circumstances. Greg has a right to have a relationship with his children. He’s their FATHER. That right was jeopardized when she physically removed them from his hometown. And I’d have fought that move tooth and nail.
However, engaging in open warfare with the other parent NOW that she’s settled in a new state is futile. You might as well take your head and bang it against the wall.
Seriously, aren’t you tired of it all? Wouldn’t you love to stop the endless stomaches and stress associated with Greg’s fight over his first family. How many hours and tears have you devoted to this cause?
Enough is enough. You lost. And, of course, the kids lost. But there is a silver lining and that is time. They’ll have an entire life to live once they are outside of their mother’s immediate area of control and she won’t be able to interfere with their relationship forever. So my advice is for Greg to focus on rebuilding the relationship with his kids. If that means calling Susan and asking her to allow him to visit them one weekend every quarter, then that’s what it means.
Your situation almost exactly mirrors my SIL and BIL’s custody battles, right down to the name of the ex-wife. He spent thousands trying to get custody from a nutcase ex-wife, who at one point tried to commit suicide. It didn’t matter. The Social Worker sided with the mother and that was that.
Fast forward five years or so and the older kids are in college. The oldest is still pretty aloof, but that’s pretty much her personality anyway. The two youngest now enjoy a pretty normal relationship with their father. The ex-wife did her best to poison the kids against him, but kids know innately who they can trust. One day he can hopefully try to reconnect with them and leave all the bitterness behind.
You and Greg need to get over the idea that some of his money is helping others in the house. It is neither sensible nor practical to expect Susan to go to the grocery store and buy food for three people only and forbid the other children in her household to consume of it. Same with the disabled boyfriend. Is that money intended to benefit just Greg’s kids? Sure. Is it going to happen in reality? No.
There is a lot about this situation that sucks, no argument there. But the built-up frustration, while understandable, is causing you to lose focus and get wound up about other issues that you can’t do anything about. Like the court system, or Susan’s backstory, or how often she chooses to move, or who lives under her roof, or who might benefit from the fact that Greg is responsible and dutiful in paying his child support. There is enough in just the custody issue to stab a parent right through the heart. Without fretting about this other drama.
Others have summarized it well: Greg wishes he could have his kids, both for his sake and for theirs. Neither their mother nor the legal system is making that possible. He may need to re-evaluate how realistic his goal of custody is. An awful, painful truth. Being mad about this other business won’t change it, unfortunately.
you think that’s in the best interest of the child? you think that it’s totally uproot kids from their homes, communities, friends, and schools so that the other parent has a chance to raise the kid?
oh, wait. now i see. you’re only concerned with what is in the best interests of the parents. yeah, courts dont give two shits.
no, and they usually can’t. not adhering to the visitation ordered by the court is grounds for contempt.
unless the custody order (or custody law) mandates it, the primary custodial parent has just that. primary custody. they make the decisions about schooling with very little input from the non-custodial parent. you know, the one who doesn’t have any legal custody of the child. lying about little bobby getting a B in a class is immaterial, frankly. it’s almost (note the “almost”) as immaterial if she lied to some guy on the street about her kids’ performance in school.
it’s a far better thing than the alternatives: either not having child support provisions at all, or painstakingly wasting every ones time by requiring the recipient parent (again, child support is payable to the parent. not the child) to submit register receipts from Rite Aid and Kroger with the items that were used only for the supported kids highlighted and circled. it’s petty and a waste of judicial resources.
also, as has been explained, there is a very large “a rising tide raises all boats” component of child support. you know what, children don’t sleep in the master bedroom, but making momma pay the rent for that room out of her own pocket is a bit dense.
I’m surprised that you now seem very concerned that children should have a stable home environment. You seemed to take it quite in stride that the mother is currently moving several times a year, changing the children’s schools, and moving to an opposite coast and back. I don’t remember saying how injurious to the children’s welfare that was.
Yes, I so happen to believe that, in order to allow children to get to know their father, it would not be such a terrible thing to have them move across country. I think it would be nice for the father, and also in the best interests of the child.
So you’re OK with the non-custodial parent, the one paying for child support, being lied to about what is happening in school? What’s the point of paying child support then, if not to give the kids a good life? If it’s none of my business what happens to these children, and I don’t have the right to participate in decisions about their future, I don’t see how it’s ethical for me to have to pay to support them.
I disagree. There is a perfectly good alternative here. Have the children live with their father, the one who is paying all the money for their education and living (the mother has zero income), and who doesn’t have any other children.
the law is written to try to address everyone. that’s what you have a judge for - to weigh out all the factors and make a determination. to sit there and claim that it is fairer that a Random Child X ought to spend 1/2 of his childhood with dad and 1/2 with mom is not going to cut it. if it were fairer in this case that dad here should get custody, that’s what would of happened - but it most assuredly wouldn’t have been fairer just in the sense that “the dad gets to raise the kid too!” sense.
well, when you get elected to sit on a bench, you can apply your tripped-out definition of “good for the kid” to your heart’s desire. i’d be prepared for prompt overturn on appeal, though, especially if you were dense enough to spell out that it’s better for the kid that he be removed from the community (and the jurisdiction, incidentally) just so he can get to know his father.
you want the real honest-to-god answer? because I, as a member of society who doesn’t share a genetic profile to that kid, sure as fuck am not going to pay for the kid when there is a parent who willingly made the decision to procreate. they’re going to be paying. not me.
it’s you’re business, sure, but it’s your business within the confines of your custody order. divorce is a messy thing, and society tries to do their best. the reason that non-custodial parents don’t get fuck-all to say about their kids is because having them have a say will just create more problems, more arguments, and more shit that I, as a court-supporting taxpayer, have to deal with.
look at this case. do you really think that letting dad have a say in the childrens’ “life direction” is a good idea? these two would fight, and fight, and fight some more. and then when they were tired of fighting, they’d fight some more. meanwhile, my taxes are going up to pay for a judge to sit and listen to bullshit like this.
if you didn’t want to deal with the shit, you should not have procreated or gotten divorced, or taken that job in Korea.
again, you are (for obvious reasons) taking a look at the generic statute, then taking a look at the specific application of it, and then attempting to crap all over the generic statute and proclaim all sorts of problems with it.
what if pop is living right. next. door? what do you do?
by the way, has it occurred to anyone bemoaning that evil, biased judge here, that if there were nary a scintilla of reason in leaving the children with the mother, that OP’s paramour would have an airtight appeal that could be executed with a minimum of cost?
Even if it OK with the family court system, I suspect it might not be so OK with the local Department of Social Services, as this case screams welfare fraud to me. Just because Susan provided accurate information to the court doesn’t mean that she did the same when filling out her application for public assistance, and DSS wouldn’t be aware of that court filing unless they were looking at Susan’s case specifically.
I’m willing to bet money she either a) failed to declare the child support she is getting from Greg, and/or B) failed to declare boyfriend as a resident of the house. I would bet very heavily on B, especially if Susan started receiving assistance before boyfriend moved in. Public assistance recipients are supposed to promptly update social services of changes in the household composition, but people often “forget” to do this. There should either be a state hotline for fraud or the local DSS should have a fraud/investigative unit to contact. Greg doesn’t even have to make he-said/she-said allegations, as you can just fax over the court docs Susan filled out.
I don’t know how it’s done in California, but since the welfare reforms of the 90s, but in this neck of the woods, recipients have to jump through some hoops to stay on the rolls (e.g. meet regularly with employment counselor, show proof of looking for work, etc .) Maybe a mother raising six kids by herself might get some slack, but a household with two healthy adults would risk sanctions if they didn’t comply.
Fortunately, in states where the state is collecting the child support, the CS office works very closely with the welfare office to make sure that TANF recipients have their grant reduced by child support payments. She is probably still getting a grant because $2500 is not enough to support 6 people.
real smart, hoss. tell greg to fuck his ex over even more which is going to wind up screwing the kids?
(you’re not going to get to go back to court now, and say “but look! i made an anonymous phone call to welfare and now she truly can’t afford to keep a roof over their heads. give them to me, while I whisk them 3000 miles away”. it’s not going to fly)
Bullshit.This doesn’t in any way reflect the situation described by the OP. Susan, her new husband (currently in prison), her new boyfriend Mark, all without any income, with 6 additional kids between Susan’s two guys. Child support from Greg is supporting 9 deadbeats to the detriment of his own children. He has every right to expect that to be addressed.
edit: look, if it’s really tearing him up that much about it, he’s free to send a care package with some extra hamburger helper. there’s nothing preventing him from paying more than the statutory mandate, and doing so in a way to ensure that that money is being spent only on his kids.
Back when my husband was in the Air Force, EVERYONE had to take a “remote tour” every now and then. They didn’t get the option of either taking the remote (crap assignment) tours or taking a longer tour in the US. Maybe it works differently in other branches of the military, but in the Air Force, at least, people didn’t get an option of which sort of tour to take. They got TOLD which they were gonna take. And if they didn’t like it, they separated from the service.
This is the only real solution. My ex lived 4 hours from his son. In addition to driving that 4 hours at least every other weekend to pick him up for visitation, he regularly drove that 4 hours to see a baseball game and then turned around and came home. When we thought the boy needed shoes, we bought them for him. We bought all his sports equipment. Yeah, that’s part of what child support is for. Reality is that sometimes you pay money, then buy stuff, then drive for hours do see your kid for 10 minutes. You call the school every week and talk to the teacher. You develop email relationships with everyone that your kid interacts with…schools, doctors, etc.
I mean this with as much sincerity as can be expressed by an internet forum: your ex (and you) are a shining example of responsibility and general awesome behavior. 1000 kudos. especially for recognizing that sometimes you have to transcend the court order, and realize it for what it is - a floor of behavior.
I don’t really think the OP necessarily deserves all the invective. The OP isn’t one of the parents, she’s just in a relationship with one of them. She has no moral imperative to be unbiased in this situation or be looking out for Susan’s side of the argument. She’s not a parent to the kids, either, so she has virtually no responsibility to them. Her perspective is that someone she loves and who is probably a very good person is in a shitty situation.
From what I’ve read I think a lot of people would want custody if they found out their kids were in the same house as someone who had been charged in a criminal court for molesting a child. While I’m sure the OP could just be blatantly lying, taking it at face value the guy was eventually convicted and sent to prison, so it isn’t like that was just innuendo.
Now, I do think the court probably made the correct decision in keeping the children with their mother. As we’ve learned during the thread, the father probably spent very, very little time with his children when he was married to his mother. Working two jobs, going to school, overseas deployments…I doubt the children have nearly as close a relationship with their father as he might think, all that time the mother was home and he wasn’t is very important to a child. I don’t say that to condemn Greg, sometimes good parents have to work a lot and if you’re in the military your options on moving are limited. However, that’s “too bad” for Greg, a court is only going to look out for the emotional well being of the children. The children would probably have been very emotionally devastated if, in the initial custody order, they had been giving up to live primarily with a man who had mostly been absent during their lives and lose daily contact with the woman who had nurtured them all throughout theirs.
Lots of people have crazy parents, that doesn’t mean they are so bad they shouldn’t have custody of their children. A somewhat unstable parent (not an uncommon thing) is still going to be viewed as having a stronger relationship with the children than a parent who has been absentee for most of the children’s life. Given the appropriateness of the initial court order, a subsequent court order that would essentially overturn it would have to be based on something very dramatic. If the mother kept a relationship with the pedophile after he was sent away to prison, or even tried to reintroduce him to the house after he is released, that’d be something I think she should lose custody for–but just marrying a guy who ends up being a bad person isn’t grounds to lose your children.