16yo lying about severity of a fight, not coming home. Mom enabling.

[stealth2]

I suggested he check out the guys down the road - they have good input on this sort of thing.

 

[PayrollHRGuy]

That was totally unnecessary and rude.

Your advice to let a 16 year old do what he wants in this situation was worse.

 

[Ohiogal]

That was totally unnecessary and rude.

He was also 100% correct.

 

[LdiJ]

Your advice to let a 16 year old do what he wants in this situation was worse.

That is not the advice that I gave, and you know it...or at least you should know it. This father messed up big time. The best way to fix that is joint counseling. If you don't realize or understand that its YOUR bad.

 

[t74]

That is not the advice that I gave, and you know it...or at least you should know it. This father messed up big time. The best way to fix that is joint counseling. If you don't realize or understand that its YOUR bad.

Would you have preferred that dad do nothing and let the kid think that doing drugs is OK. The kid is too young to buy cigarettes and drink alcoholic beverages - activities that are legal in all states - much less engage in activities illegal in many. I think kid is manipulating both parents so he can stay at mom's where he has the ability to do whatever he wants without consequences. If kid is smart, he will some day realize that dad had his best interests in mind. Dad was trying to be a parent rather than a friend. Sometimes it is not possible to eb both on a particular activity.

 

[gryndor]

I was served today with papers that mom is going for full custody. In her statement, she has reported complete fantasy, and 16yo wrote a statement embellishing his lie even further.

Mediation is 4/10, court is 5/23. What’s standard operating procedure for parenting time in the interim? There’s no emergency order to keep 16yo at mom’s house. So she’s still denying my time, right?

 

[gryndor]

I guess I need to find my original lawyer’s number and give him a call...

 

[t74]

I suggest you discuss with the attorney having the child drug tested prior to the court date so that the results will be available. Since he has not been with you, any indication would obviously be associated with time at his mother's.

IMO, your father is right. You may win the battle but lose the war.

It would be interesting to find out if there is to be a change in residential custody and you are denied or granted only supervised visitation if mother can be made responsible for all medical and legal costs related to drug and alcohol use by the child. Also see if the child can be regularly be random tested for all illegal substances. The most important thing is that the child be drug free no matter where he lives.

 

[LdiJ]

Would you have preferred that dad do nothing and let the kid think that doing drugs is OK. The kid is too young to buy cigarettes and drink alcoholic beverages - activities that are legal in all states - much less engage in activities illegal in many. I think kid is manipulating both parents so he can stay at mom's where he has the ability to do whatever he wants without consequences. If kid is smart, he will some day realize that dad had his best interests in mind. Dad was trying to be a parent rather than a friend. Sometimes it is not possible to eb both on a particular activity.

Of course there is some manipulation going on. He is a teenager who got caught doing something wrong. That is par for the course when a child's parents are not together. However, his dad tried to hit him and that is where dad messed up. Disciplining a teenager is one thing, hitting or trying to hit one is entirely another.

 

[stealth2]

Mediation is 4/10,

Just to add some levity - be glad it's not scheduled for 4:20.

There’s no emergency order to keep 16yo at mom’s house. So she’s still denying my time, right?

Depends - are you trying to enforce your time? No, just calling/texting/emailing "Sonny needs to be here on my time" doesn't count. You have to actually try to get him. And yes, that may well exacerbate your relationship with your son.

At this point, yeah, you should be talking to your lawyer.

 

[gryndor]

So I’ve met with my attorney a couple times. She heard everything we had to say and wanted a large retainer because this was going to be a “high conflict” case. Or she could just charge us her hourly rate for four hours and help me file a response, not actually representing me.

Considering what she was saying was not along the lines of “don’t worry, we can totally beat this and get your son back,” I went with the second option.

Meanwhile, my wife reached out to my son and asked if he was ok, if this was the path he wanted, with all the adults choosing their paths, what it was HE wanted, and he replied with this:

I'm doing what I want to do. I've never said I don't want to see my dad again, I plan on seeing him again, I'm only going through with the switch in custody so I can have more control over my life and because I'm hurt over everything. Thank you for checking in though.

Is there any chance the judge will see this as a teenage temper tantrum and consider keeping the 50/50 order in place? Or is a child’s decision really paramount?

 

[LdiJ]

So I’ve met with my attorney a couple times. She heard everything we had to say and wanted a large retainer because this was going to be a “high conflict” case. Or she could just charge us her hourly rate for four hours and help me file a response, not actually representing me.

Considering what she was saying was not along the lines of “don’t worry, we can totally beat this and get your son back,” I went with the second option.

Meanwhile, my wife reached out to my son and asked if he was ok, if this was the path he wanted, with all the adults choosing their paths, what it was HE wanted, and he replied with this:


Is there any chance the judge will see this as a teenage temper tantrum and consider keeping the 50/50 order in place? Or is a child’s decision really paramount?

Your attorney would be in a better position to advise you about the bolded. Your attorney is familiar with the climate of your local courts. Some courts/judges will give more weight to a child's wishes than others, particularly when they are 16 or older. Some judges will give less weight to a teens wishes.

 

[stealth2]

Putting on my parent hat... You are at a crossroad.

Yes, legally you can take action to enforce the current order/fight Mom's custody change. That will affect your relationship with your son, probably negatively, possibly for good. In <2 years, he can (and will?) vote with his feet.

Or, you could focus on rebuilding your relationship with him and lay the groundwork for the relationship you would like to have when he is an adult.

Were I in your shoes, I would likely be considering the entirety of the issue. Including the actions (of his) that led to where you are now, is it more of an isolated situation, or one that has been escalating over time? How are his grades? School attendance? Does he have goals for his future? Generally speaking, what are his friends like? Any extracurriculars?

 

[not2cleverRed]

Putting on my parent hat... You are at a crossroad.

Yes, legally you can take action to enforce the current order/fight Mom's custody change. That will affect your relationship with your son, probably negatively, possibly for good. In <2 years, he can (and will?) vote with his feet.

Or, you could focus on rebuilding your relationship with him and lay the groundwork for the relationship you would like to have when he is an adult.

Were I in your shoes, I would likely be considering the entirety of the issue. Including the actions (of his) that led to where you are now, is it more of an isolated situation, or one that has been escalating over time? How are his grades? School attendance? Does he have goals for his future? Generally speaking, what are his friends like? Any extracurriculars?

And think of not what he wants but what are his best interests.

Act based on his best interests - not what he wants, or what you want necessarily, but what you believe will serve him best in the long run, whatever the short term hiccups. If you let him have his way because it'll be easier, he might grow up and realize that his life could have been better if you had a spine. If you demand things just for the sake of keeping your half of the 50/50 territorially, he will resent you for treating him like a piece of property.

It sounds like you are more concerned with him derailing his life. This one incident that triggered everything is a symptom. You both need counselling/therapy of some sort, separately and jointly. Your motivation has to be not just parenting time, but on getting your son back on track to being a good human.

You need to respond effectively to what Mom has filed. Do not focus on lies and embellishments. I imagine that any disinterested third party will wonder about the prudence of involving the son by having him writing out a statement - especially since there is no supporting documentation (police reports, CPS investigation).

I am glad that your attorney will be writing the response. She will help edit out the superfluous, and stick to the legal issues.

 

[commentator]

Bravo, red, this is exactly what I am seeing here.

I must put in here too. I've been young, and now I'm old, and I was a teacher and counselor in schools during the 70's when pot was legal nowhere and "to party" had just become a verb. The thing I observed through the years after this time was something surprising to me, because at the timeI believed that trying to hound your child into doing the right things, having them arrested if caught with pot, forcing them to live with you when they wanted to live with a more liberal parent or stay with "cool" friend's parents, was going to "drive the child away from you." I believed and counseled people, actually, that the minute that child turned 18 and could choose to get away from this bullying and controlling parent, they would leave, and your relationship with the child would be forever tarnished.

Then the years passed. I watched the children of the more open, liberal parents, those who "understood" and allowed and tried to talk it out through the years. Some of them came out, went on to college, became okay. But a good many also ended up stuck in the drug world, wasting away their lives, becoming addicted to worse things than they'd been doing, etc. A lot of those parents ended up raising grandchildren, or playing "grandchild hostage" through the years with a half assed adult who couldn't be responsible, despite having had great promise in elementary and high school.

And I watched some of those parents who simply wouldn't let it go, who followed up and followed up, and put their kids in private school to get them away from bad friends, and were true hard asses about everything and disciplined the heck out of them every way possible until the very minute they were legally unable to do so. And you know what? MOST of these were the kids who moved forward, did well, and are now happy and successful adults.

OP, the problem is that you handed your child, in today's world, a gold plated excuse to get what he wants, to go for the drama, by the actual physical slapping incident. He flat out admits this to your new wife in his emails. Your protests of being a shadow of your former self since you broke your back, etc. are a clue to an idea that you have, not very well hidden, that if you were the man you used to be, your child would never have back-talked you, you'd have demanded and he'd have given you physical control. But none of this means you do not need to now move forward with what is best for your son, really best for him.

I suggest you do lots with this counselor or another, for your own sense of control and well being, and to help you with future parenting of your now four year old. That sort of thing doesn't fly in parenting, control of yourself and others in your house must come from another place and be established long before a loose lipped 16 year old gets in your face and tells you to "F.... yourself!" or something. And that's got to come from you. Whether you lose this child or not, you've still got a whole life going here with a marriage and another child to move on with. you don't want to be redoing this mess in about a dozen years with another son.

Yes, we all agree, truth is, you messed up there. Yeah, you'd never have backtalked your own father. yeah, you lost your temper and took a swing at him. Yeah, they're going into conniptions talking about what exactly happened, how many times you pounded him, threw him down, choked him, etc. And then of course, there's the truth, and all of you all (as we southerners say) could stand around and camp on this for years. Don't let that happen.

Nothing that happened changes who you are and what you feel is the right thing for you AND your son to do. Your son has known you for many years. You are not going to fool him into believing you're one way when you're not.