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Legal vs. Physical Overstepping

brittnydee's picture
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BM has full legal custody (medica/educational/religious) but physical custody is 50/50. She ONLY has this because our state won't force joint custody and well she's the mom so she gets a leg up in court.

She keeps trying to overstep her authority though and tries to do things like tell us we can't send him to afterschool on our time, or tries to schedule camps for him on our weeks. She keeps filing motions in court to try to stop us from not complying with her, the last of which was dismissed outright by the judge who stated she can't trump physical custody decisions on our time. Now she is trying to twist it into a medical issue to try and make it fall under her authority. She lawyered up for the first time and is trying to get SK's doctor to call in on the hearing to claim fatigue from his "serious medical condition" (unofficial mild hypermobility) is causing behavioral issues at camp and that since he has this "serious medical condition" she should control what activities he can do on our time.

Should we be worried that this tactic will suceed and she will essentially control our calendars? Is it worth lawyering up when we really can't afford to?

WwCorgi7's picture

Sorry you are going through this. Personally I don't think you should waste the money on a lawyer. My husband actually has legal joint custody every decision is 50/50 and BM pulled this crap all the time especially when she was mad at my husband. She would get ticked off because my husband wouldn't switch weekends whenever she wanted so she went and signed up SD for all kinds of church and extracurricular activities that all happened to be during our time. SD would get upset because she didn't want to be going all weekend, she never got a break. My husband brought it up in court and basically he could ignore the activities and not take SD but the mediator said he would  be harming SD by not letting her explore  and engage in new opportunities. The mediator told my husband "it's not in SD's best interest for you to hold her back and the judge will come down hard on you for this".  So basically he had to do it and it didn't matter that he barely got to see his child on his own time because she was always tied up doing all these ridiculous activities her mom signed her up for out of spite.  My husband doesn't even bother with a lawyer because we are in a mom state. They always choose their side and look the other way to the BM's behavior. It's a very flawed system.

Dogmom1321's picture

It's all empty threats that won't amount to anything. MAJOR decision invloving those things are understandable, what school to send her to, long term medications, religious upbringing, etc. 

Does she really think she has the authority to be the gatekeeper when you give your SK a band-aid? Day-to-day decisions are made by whoever the child is physically with at the time. Any judge would agree with this. Also, interferring with your time is a big no-no. 

Rags's picture

Go get a badder killer shark of a lawyer and destroy her manipulative ass in court.  She gets no say on what goes on during DH's time with his kid and that she is even trying makes her a target that DH needs to everything possible to eleminate.

IMHO of course.