Non-Custodial Parent Responsibilities

We have full custody of my stepdaughter. Natural mom lives out of state.As stated in the divorce agreement, natural mother is responsible for all transportation costs for visitation of daughter. Airline now charges an "Unaccompanied Minor Fee" for children over the ages of 11 flying alone. Our daughter is 12. Would this fee that the airline now charges, fall under transportation costs and expense should be paid by non custodial parent? The divorce agreement does not define or itemize "transportation costs." I would think she would be responsible to pay this extra charge while child is a minor under the age of 18? We've paid this fee 3 times ($90 total) just to make sure airline is solely responsible for getting our daughter to her receiving party. If fee isn't paid the airlines is not responsible to take care of the child if receiving party is not at the airport upon arrival.

Natural mother refuses to reimburse us for costs, tells us to "suck it up" we have all 3 paid receipts from airlines. Please help?!?

If she is the non-custodial parent then she has to pay for transportation costs (delivering the baby to herself) It's not your obligation to make her visitations available. This is in any child support case...even gas money if you have to drive the child to the natural mother for visitations. If it's not a visitation...then you'd have to review your agreement with a lawyer which I am not.

[LegalBeagle]

Inform her that she is responible for all costs and that if she does not purchase tickets that has this extra care added on then you will not send the child. When you write, make sure you quote the agreement.

However, this is the kicker. Amounts like this do not justify court action or paying 500-1000 dollars in attorney fees. Obviously if she does not pay the amount, you will effectively be denying visitation if she also refuses to pay this amount. She could then 'sue' for failed visitation and also to recoup the cost of the plane ticket. Would she win ? , unlikely.. but unless we are talking about 20 visits a year, it is not worth the hassel..

If you are miffed at just $90 then I can only assume that you will not be able to afford an attorney to sort this out..

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by LegalBeagle:
[b]Inform her that she is responible for all costs and that if she does not purchase tickets that has this extra care added on then you will not send the child. When you write, make sure you quote the agreement.

However, this is the kicker. Amounts like this do not justify court action or paying 500-1000 dollars in attorney fees. Obviously if she does not pay the amount, you will effectively be denying visitation if she also refuses to pay this amount. She could then 'sue' for failed visitation and also to recoup the cost of the plane ticket. Would she win ? , unlikely.. but unless we are talking about 20 visits a year, it is not worth the hassel..

If you are miffed at just $90 then I can only assume that you will not be able to afford an attorney to sort this out..

[/b]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Thank you for your advice.Money isn't something we're worried about, we want her to do what the divorce agreement states. We have advised her many times that this expense is hers to pay. The divorce agreement granted her deviation from child support. "This deviation from her child support is due to the substantial obligation incurred by defendant for costs of transportation of the child for purposes of parent-child contact."

We realize that we would spend more money in attorney fees than what we paid out of our pocket. We do not want to keep paying for something she is obligated for. My husband has advised her in an e-mail that any future visits our daughter has and she is flying alone, this fee is to be paid for or our daughter will not be on the plane and she will have wasted her money.

Our daughter is also to be home "1 full week prior to our daughter beginning school" Our daughter starts school 8/30/00 we told her mother she needs to be home 8/22/00,giving our daughter 1 full week (7 days) prior to her starting school. Her mother disagrees and said 1 full week before school is 8/23/00 (she has our daughter flying in to ME @6:30 pm) and that's when she'll be home, that'll only give our daughter 6 full days of being home before school starts.

I know if necessary we can file a motion of contempt if she's not returned as stated in the divorce agreement, she's well aware of it in the agreement as we e-mailed it to her last night.

Can we contact the Police in her town and have them enforce this to her by faxing them a copy of the agreement? We live in ME & she lives in NJ.

Again, thank you very much for your advice.

[LegalBeagle]

All the examples you give are to small to launch court action. The only thing you can really do is refuse the send the child without this 'add on care' things from the airline and then wait to see what her response is. I do not think she will get very far in court but there is always the chance a judge would say this is extra and not part of the costs.

As for the extra day, again, it is not worth it to fight on its own. I know that sucks, and I have just been involved with someone in a simular situation.

Sorry this is not the advice you want.. just document everything for now..

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by LegalBeagle:
[b]All the examples you give are to small to launch court action. The only thing you can really do is refuse the send the child without this 'add on care' things from the airline and then wait to see what her response is. I do not think she will get very far in court but there is always the chance a judge would say this is extra and not part of the costs.

As for the extra day, again, it is not worth it to fight on its own. I know that sucks, and I have just been involved with someone in a simular situation.

Sorry this is not the advice you want.. just document everything for now.. [/b]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Thanks LegalBeagle, believe me, we've documented everything of how irresponsible & how uncooperative she's been for the last 3 years with dates& times of phone conversations made by who, details of disagreements who said what, etc, we've even tape recorded some calls, I don't think we can use it since we didn't let her know we were taping her to begin with, we have copies of all the e-mails we sent, as well as, what we've received from her.

The next time our daughter has to fly out and she doesn't cooperate, we will refuse to place her on the plane. If she chooses to take us to court, then she will have to do all the filings in our state, as well as, come here for hearings, since custody & divorce took place in our state. I know there's some kind of motion they can file to have a hearing in her state, but, it's very slim to none that it ever goes that way, unless under "extreme" emergency situations and that has to be proven. Boy, can't wait for my "People's Law School" class to begin!

Thanks again!

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mother31:
[b] The next time our daughter has to fly out and she doesn't cooperate, we will refuse to place her on the plane. If she chooses to take us to court, then she will have to do all the filings in our state, as well as, come here for hearings, since custody & divorce took place in our state. I know there's some kind of motion they can file to have a hearing in her state, but, it's very slim to none that it ever goes that way, unless under "extreme" emergency situations and that has to be proven. [/b]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

She can not file anything in her state as that state does not have jurisdiction and would not be able to get jurisdiction even if they tried. There is no way that a court in her state could decide anything that would be worth anything.

The best that she could arrange is to have council represent her or sometimes, rarely, the out of state person can phone in to the court via conference.

She has the same overall problem.. that the extra 30 dollars is not enough to justify spending $500 on legal action that she would probably lose. First, she would have to find an attorney who could be bothered to progress this case knowing that the wording of the agreement is clear.. if not, she has to do it all herself and then she would have to turn up to the hearing.. then you smack her for attorney charges to boot...