Did i technically deny his visitation?

[sammysmommy]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? CA

Was I out of line here?

I have Joint Legal Custody with my ex-husband. I am the custodial/residential parent. He does all of the transportation. He lives 10 miles away but works probably 40 miles away. Our son is 9 years old. My ex-husband gets EOW with a Wednesday dinner visit of 5-8pm. For some reason, for the past 3 months, he has been emailing me saying he will be coming at 6pm instead of 5pm, with no explanation as to why. I agreed to it on a case-by-case basis but have always said yes. He is still consistently late. Sometimes 15 minutes, sometimes 45 minutes. He does not have a cell phone so he does not inform me that he is running late, i just wait. I have never discussed this with him in the past as it never really affected my plans. I take advantage of the time I have with my son as we wait for his father, it's time well spent playing in the front yard waiting.

Our court order used to have a 30 minute window, after that 30 minutes, he would lose his visitation, but luckily, that had never happened. When we went back to court last year, the 30 minute window was taken out, BUT the judge did stress that he needs to be ON TIME. She even said "8:00 is 8:00. Not 8:01." but she was using the drop off time as the example, not the pick up time AND there is no actual punishment for being late.

Anyway, last week he asked if he could change his dinner visitation to 6pm as usual and I said yes because at the time, I didn't have plans. I found out on Monday morning that there was a work event on Wednesday that I really should attend. I immediately sent him an email explaining that I have an important obligation Wednesday at 6:30pm, that I cannot be late for. (it was 48 hrs notice). If he came at 6pm, I would have no problem being on time to my event. If he came late, I would be late. It would take about 30 minutes for me to travel to the event.

I told him on Monday via email that if he is not here by 6:05, I would have no choice but to take our son with me because I could not be late. I sent him another email regarding something else to which he responded on Monday but he did not respond to the email about not being late so I just assumed that meant he would be here on time.

He wrote back yesterday at 4 pm (2 hrs before he was supposed to be here) saying that he JUST got my email about not being late (funny, he responded to the other email i sent just after that one, so I KNOW he got it Monday). He said he would have to ask his boss to leave work early just to make it on time but he did not want to do that, and if I cannot wait up to 30 minutes (what he called a grace period), he wouldn't bother risking even trying to make it in time and that I was refusing him his court ordered visitation. So, he gave up his visitation and I went to my event with our son. (Later, i thought about how I could have offered him to pick our son up at the event instead of my house, but it was too late and he didn't offer that either. Oops).

So, my question is, was I wrong? Did I in fact refuse his visitation? I feel I have been very accommodating in the past, and I was just asking for this ONE TIME for him to be ON TIME. Not that he would ever do me any favors

Is there a 30 minute grace period if the court papers don't mention it? And what about the fact that I already gave him until 6pm to be here? Isn't that already an hour grace period? Do I need to wait even longer? And if he has to "ask his boss to leave early just to be to my house on time", doesn't that mean he anticipates being late? Do i need to put up with that?

I just want to know if I was wrong in asking him to be on time and not offering to wait. And, also if this will come bite me in the butt in court some day as "denying visitation".

Sorry for the long explanation. If I was out of line, I will definitely take responsibility for it and offer him some make up time.

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? CAWhat is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?

 

[proud_parent]

In order to prove that you refused to comply with the order for visitation, Dad would have needed to show up at the exchange point, and he would need to prove that he was there at the correct time (or reasonably close to it) and that you were not.

ETA: even if Dad had such proof (it appears he does not), that would show only that you DID NOT comply with the order; that would not of itself be sufficient to show that your failure constituted willful contempt of the court order. Contempt would be difficult to prove unless you have demonstrated a pattern of such behavior or you admit that you did knowingly and intentionally deprive him of his parenting time.

Presuming this is an isolated occurence, this issue is a non-starter for Dad. Particularly if you have evidence of the email exchange that occured in advance of the scheduled visit.

If there is a next time, be mindful to suggest and to remain open to reasonable alternatives, such as exchanging the child at another time or location.

 

[LdiJ]

If this is the only time that you have been the cause of dad missing a visit (although really its his own fault since he cannot be even remotely on time as per the 5:00 pickup in the court order) then I agree that its also a non-starter for dad.

However, I probably would have handled it differently. Since it appears that the exchange takes place at your home, I would have hired a babysitter, to babysit for an hour, and just expected dad to be late and let the babysitter hand off the child to him.

When someone is chronically late, you simply need to expect them to be late and work around that as much as possible....OR, you ask the judge to order that if they are more than XX number of minutes late (per the court order) that they forfeit the visitation.

 

[Isis1]

If this is the only time that you have been the cause of dad missing a visit (although really its his own fault since he cannot be even remotely on time as per the 5:00 pickup in the court order) then I agree that its also a non-starter for dad.

However, I probably would have handled it differently. Since it appears that the exchange takes place at your home, I would have hired a babysitter, to babysit for an hour, and just expected dad to be late and let the babysitter hand off the child to him.

When someone is chronically late, you simply need to expect them to be late and work around that as much as possible....OR, you ask the judge to order that if they are more than XX number of minutes late (per the court order) that they forfeit the visitation.

technically, according to the poster, that actually is in her order. problem is, the order says 5pm. Dad says he won't be there till 6. legally speaking he already forfeited his visitation. legally speaking, mom granted him an additional 30 minutes past the court order.

yes, next time, OP, arrange a different location. hindsight is 20/20. legally, you are not in contempt. as long as you maintain the same flexibilty, you're fine. you can't be found in contempt for actually defaulting back to the court order.

 

[sammysmommy]

Thank you everybody. This was extremely helpful to me. And, yes, next time I will do things a little differently.