Visitation Schedule Upsets

Lmelvin said:

My daughter who lives with her mother in another state was set-up in the divorce agreement to visit every month and her mother was to pay for the airfare in accordance to the agreement.

Her mother in the past several years, since the agreement was signed, has failed to meet the visitation agreement of once a month because of various excuses from, "your daughter doesn't feel like coming" to "we have plans for this month". This resulted in only about six total visits a year.

As of next month a motion of change will start of which was brought forth by my daughter's mother and I have agreed to this which basically is calling for more child support and scheduled visits that are not monthly.

Can I recover the lost vists from the original agreement?

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Lmelvin said:

My daughter who lives with her mother in another state was set-up in the divorce agreement to visit every month and her mother was to pay for the airfare in accordance to the agreement.

Her mother in the past several years, since the agreement was signed, has failed to meet the visitation agreement of once a month because of various excuses from, "your daughter doesn't feel like coming" to "we have plans for this month". This resulted in only about six total visits a year.

As of next month a motion of change will start of which was brought forth by my daughter's mother and I have agreed to this which basically is calling for more child support and scheduled visits that are not monthly.

Can I recover the lost vists from the original agreement?

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LdiJ said:

Despite the fact that you deleted the question about what state you are in, which is about the biggest no-no that you can do on this forum, I am going to answer you.

Do you have hard evidence that mom denied you some of your visits? Evidence where you flatly insisted on mom honoring the visitation orders and she flatly refused to do so?

Particularly since now you are agreeing to change the schedule, if you don't have hard, cold evidence that mom denied you, over your insistance, you really can't get makeup time.[The only evidence would be some e-mail correspondance and the fact that she was always flown on Southwest Airlines and a history could be pulled under her name. ]

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Lmelvin said:

As of next month a motion of change will start of which was brought forth by my daughter's mother and I have agreed to this which basically is calling for more child support and scheduled visits that are not monthly.

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proud_parent said:

Please explain this:


Has a court order already been entered that establishes a new visitation schedule? If so, what is the exact wording of that order?

Or do you mean to state that your ex has petitioned to modify the CO, but the current order does not yet reflect the proposed schedule? If this is the case, how did you agree to the proposal (i.e., verbally or in writing)? If you did agree in writing, has she petitioned the Court for an agreed entry?

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Lmelvin said:

The agreement to modify is final and agreed to because she was asking for a small increase and not for the max. The schedule of visits, I would consider fair but in order keep her from going for the max child support I didn't fight it.

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CJane said:

So you traded time with your kid for a couple dollars a month?

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Lmelvin said:

That's the new agreement, I'm looking for help with the prior agreement where the visitation schedule was not met.

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penelope10 said:

§ 157.168. ADDITIONAL PERIODS OF POSSESSION OR
ACCESS. (a) A court may order additional periods of possession of
or access to a child to compensate for the denial of court-ordered
possession or access. The additional periods of possession or
access:
(1) must be of the same type and duration of the
possession or access that was denied;
(2) may include weekend, holiday, and summer
possession or access; and
(3) must occur on or before the second anniversary of
the date the court finds that court-ordered possession or access
has been denied.
(b) The person denied possession or access is entitled to
decide the time of the additional possession or access, subject to
the provisions of Subsection (a)(1).


Why wasn't this handled with the ex at the time you were talking about doing a modification of the existing order? Since there has been a modification that is scheduled to take effect next month, I would highly suggest speaking to an attorney in regards to the effect this might have on make up time prior to the modification. I agree with another poster that stated where's the hard evidence that you were denied? Written evidence asking for visitation and showing that Mom either ignored your request or denied it. Also was the request made in a timely manner according to the order? Or does the order specify a given date every month that the kiddo was to come out. If the order is a standard TX order, Mom moved over 100 miles away, and you were using the alternate weekend possession schedule, and the court did not order otherwise, the NCP would be allowed not more than one weekend per month of your choice. However, NCP must give CP 14 days written or telephonic notice preceding a designated weekend.

Is this a tit for tat thing? (You don't bring this up, agree to a lower rate of CS increase in exchange for Mom not having to pay for kiddo to come out monthly, while keeping this in your back pocket). Then yipee, you get the satisfaction of hitting Mom over the head with this after the ink is still wet on the new agreement? (In other words entering into the new agreement possibly in BAD FAITH).

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Lmelvin said:

Well, let me give you my thought process; I do have written evidence inquiring why the visits are not being made in accordance with the agreement which states she was to send the child monthly at her expense. I have written responses via e-mail that shows the various excuses why she could not send her and this resulted in about (6) lost visit per year. I did not want to get into a court battle when she filed for a "motion to modify" because you know us guys always get the raw end of the deal, so I used my own "person to person" testimony to keep the damage down.

Now looking back ,I feel that she took advantage of me on the visitations in order to save her money until she could get in position to change the agreement.


Everything was fine until we found out the world was not flat.

"man on a wooden boat"

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