Revision of Custody

My husband is currently sharing 50-50 custody with his ex-wife. We are considering taking her back to court to try and gain primary custody of the son, with her paying support. This is in the state of [b]California[/b].

We are planning on basing it on the fact that over the last 1 1/2 yrs, we have had full-time custody of the son for about 14 of those months. We have only had support from her of $40, during this entire time. During the holidays and his birthday, she did not bother to call, send a gift or even a card. During this time, she was living out of state. Now, that she is back in California, she only sees him every other weekend, and does not call during the week to see how he is. She is currently living in a 2 bedroom apt with her parents and brother, her other son (from another marriage) and herself. She does not have a car of her own, but is able to borrow one of her parents usually. She has a job that she claims that she makes good money, eyt when we ask her to help out, she keeps claiming that she has responibilites to pay her parents back money she needed to borrow in order to hire an atty in Michigan. When she moved back to California, my dh told her that they needed to get their son enrolled in school asap, since school had already started...she told him that their son's education was not her priority and that he could wait to start...needless, to say we found a school and got him enrolled. The original court custody battle was rough, but things seemed to be going good, as long as she lived out of state...however, now with her back, we got along pretty good, and still try too. I have helped her out by babysitting her other son and getting her advice on her ongoing custody case back east. We are trying to keep things amicable between so since we do not want the sonto any problems between us and her. His life has been an emotional rollercoaster since birth, and it has been hard on him.

Another thing that has been going on, is that she is currently going through a custody battle back east, regarding her other son...she moved his residence to California, without the fathers permission or any court orders that ok'd it. I have asked about this on these boards before, here is the link to it....
[url="http://bbs.freeadvice.com/ubb/Forum7/HTML/004553.html"]http://bbs.freeadvice.com/ubb/Forum7/HTML/004553.html[/url]

If you look at my 2nd or 3rd post, it gives you some better insight than the first post! Would this have any bearing on a custody case going on in California, since it is taken place in another state??

My other questions are: I am wondering what you think the chances are of us getting it, custody and support??? Also, would you recommend an us getting an atty???? Or could this be something we could do on our own???


[This message has been edited by crc9998 (edited October 24, 2000).]

I hope that it is not considered rude that I bumped this up, however it had already been pushed back to the 2nd page and I did not want it to get missed! Thanks!

It sounds as if you have a good relationship with your husbands ex. Have you considered talking to her about your husband having full custody? It is always better to try and work these things out before they end up in court. If you tell her what your husband wants and she tells you what she wants then you three can meet in the middle to where everyone is happy and the money you could have been send on an attorney can now be spent on the child. If you can all agree on custody and support then go to the clerks office in the court house and they will guide you in the right direction on how to file an order. If you can not come up with a happy middle then maybe you should get an attorney at that time but it sounds as if you have a good leg to stand on.

Good luck

Thanks for the advice...we have had a good relationship (during the original custody fight, it came down to the 2 of them figureing out the custody and paying the atty's lots of $$, that they could have used elsewhere)! But, it was only because they agreed to 50-50. If we want full-custody, she would never agree to it, because she would suddenly want to become the concerned mother and want him. She tells us that she can't afford to support him, so we have to.

I appreciated HelpwhenIcan's advice, but was wanting to see if there is anything more that someone can add...as far as would her case pending in another state, having an bearance on ours?? Do you think we could have it stated that she could be at risk of Flight??? (I ask this because she also, threatened this one time, with my dh but never did it.) Thanks again...I hope that you guys don't mind me asking for more advice!