How Do We Prove?

[jessicahmmm]

I am from Oregon and am marrying a man with a son from a previous marriage. They have joint custody her with 55% and we have 45% .. I want to know if there is a way to prove that she is not spending any time with the child.. I know for a fat that the child spends all the time the mother has him with her mother...SO the grandparents are raising ther child when their is a perfectially willing father to raise his son .. The mother just requested that the CS be left with her only .. We have been giving it to the grandmother (check written in mothers name of course) to give to mother, but I guess that grandmother makes mom sign the check over to grandmother becuse the grandmother is raising the child .. Will the courts look at the time spent with the child ?? ANd how do we prove that the child does not spend time with the mother on her days with him???

 

[qtpie]

Is your future DH planning on taking the BM back to Court to try and obtain sole custody? Can your DH prove she is an unfit mother?

From what I've read, unless you can prove that the child is being harmed physically or mentally by the mother or the grandparents, it is the mother's right to leave the child with whomever she pleases while it is her parenting time. The same goes for your future DH. During HIS parenting time, it would be completely acceptable for him to leave the child with you (even though you have NO rights or obligations to this child-nor will you ever) and as long as you are not abusing the child, there is nothing anyone can do about it. It is your future DH's parenting time.

Also, regarding the CS, is it required of you to pay through CSE? If it is, and you're paying someone directly, that money can and will be considered a "gift" and your DH will begin to owe arrears and possibly those arrears could have interest tacked on. If nothing else, I sincerely hope that you are keeping check or money order copies/receipts just in case.

Does anyone disagree?

 

[ellencee]

why, oh why, do these women plan on marrying a man with a child from a previous marriage, or worse yet, marry the man, and then go after the child? Is this some kind of new 'woman game'? Do you get points or something for every child you take from the mother?
Leave the child alone. Go away.

 

[jessicahmmm]

ellencee,
You have some MAJOR issues . I do not appreciate being attacked by you .. It is none of your business why I am with a man with a child that was not my question.. I will assume that you do not have the intellengence to read what I wrote so i will not hold what you posted against you.
You must move on and get over it ..

 

[jessicahmmm]

qtpie,
Thank you for your reply. I appreciate your honesty. You are correct that the mother and father have every right to leave the child with whomever they choose. It is just the grandparents are inflicting Parent annihilation syndrome (PAS) on this child and it is very sad. and the grandmother will not put the child down for a nap on the nights we have visitation so by the time we pick him up at 6 pm he is soooo grumpy ... I know that the grandma is doing this to ruin the time the father has with his son ..She wants to be the mom and her daughter has basically given her the role.. So I guess we will just deal with it ..
Thank you again.

 

[tigger22472]

why, oh why, do these women plan on marrying a man with a child from a previous marriage, or worse yet, marry the man, and then go after the child? Is this some kind of new 'woman game'? Do you get points or something for every child you take from the mother?
Leave the child alone. Go away.

The more and more I read here the more and more I see of these people. I'm somehow feeling guilty and yet I'm a good one.

jessicahmmm, can I ask you if you have any children of your own??? As a soon to be step mom you need to know where your place is and it's not on here talking about "our time." There will never be an "our time"... there's a "her time" and a "his time." Your position is to support your spouse in his decisions and even mediate and be his voice of reason when needed. If child gets sick at school and neither parent is available you're name is the "other emergency" number.

Things like:
and we have 45% ,
We have been giving it to the grandmother (check written in mothers name of course) to give to mother,
ANd how do we prove that the child does not spend time with the mother on her days with him???,
and the grandmother will not put the child down for a nap on the nights we have visitation so by the time we pick him up at 6 pm he is soooo grumpy ,
So I guess we will just deal with it ..

are all things that you've assumed is your right and responsiblities, none of which are true. The sooner you learn that the better off the whole situation can only become.

 

[soniasaini]

While it is true that you are not recognized in any legal sense as a parent, it is nice that you care about the child's welfare and see yourself as a co-parent within your household. You do have plenty of say so in your own home, even with the step child. Don't be bullied to think that you are completely insignificant, but do understand that you are and will likely remain somewhat insignificant in this child's life. There is however, a lot of merit in the advice of not getting overly involved with the custody issue. I feel for people who get bashed to taking on some responsibility in such a situation. I supported my husband through college and paid my step daughter's child support for several years. Damn right I'm going to phrase things as "we." My husband could have sought a reduction of support while he was barely employed during school, but "we" felt that the child's standard of living should not be jeopardized for four years because of my husband's poor educational/career planning. "We" were not even married for the first two years of his education. Sometimes there is a lot of sacrifice that makes step parents feel significantly involved. As long as the step parent realizes that these are feelings, not rights.

It is downright foolish to be giving anyone a check other than the proper agency. Don't do it again. Don't let your boyfriend do it again. To my knowledge there is nothing you can do about the child spending all the time with the grandparents. Try your best to get along with them. Ask them if they wouldn't mind putting the child down for a nap on the particular day of visitation. You certainly can't make them. It doesn't seem like you have any grounds to try to get sole custody. Think carefully if you even want it, regardless of what your boyfriend wants. Someday you will have children of your own and it's not easy to combine everything and stay sane.

 

[haiku]

OK, I will throw in my 2 cents as a step mom, who is also a mom, and was a former s/o of someone who was a custodial parent.

Here is the deal, while the child is in residence at either parents home, it is that parents business where the child spends time when the parent is not home and who the child spends time with. Unless you are completely sure that the child is in DANGER, there is really not a lot you can do about it.

Now I can easily relate to stepparents who make the mistake here of saying "we" and "I" where it pertains to my stepchildren. In MY home that is what i say, because in MY home it is MY business.skids and visitation does affect my life, so it is silly to constantly use the proper wording. BUT I know that in reality the court does not see it that way, and as a mom, I am not about to step on my husbands ex, even if i dont like what she does. i play the game with her, but i expect to be consulted by my husband for my input on anything that will ultimately involve me emotionally or financially.What she does in HER home is HER business. i certainly dont want her in ours.

I also dont understand why someone would want to immediately remove a kid from thier mothers home on the assumption they can do it better. I will be honest here I love my skids dearly, and they have a mom they love, but i have no desire to be anyones mother but my own child, she needs me first.

first thing i would ask someone like jessicahmmm would be 'what does your boyfriend want?" because frankly, if you are more concerned or want that child living with you more than he does, you have a bigger problem. It is a hard time being a "mommy" to children who are not yours, especially when mom is still in the picture, having custody will not magically erase her from your life. she will still be there. And it will probably be more stressfull on you than the situation you are in now. I lived with a CP before i had a child of my own, it was hard, alot of sacrifice, i gave up a promotion at work, so I could be home more with children who were not mine, I spent money on music lessons only to watch his mom take all the glory at the recital. the mom went back to college, my S/O got promoted and I got dumped when pregnant with his child. I came out of that relationship with a beautiful baby, no job, and the sad hope the skids i will never see again benefitted in some way from what I did for them.

enjoy the time you have your future stepson, get to know him, be his friend. When he is not with you enjoy the time with your S/O become strong as a couple. Enjoy that alone time. We have our own child (he adopted mine) i dont get kid free time any more! It is much harder to be in a second marriage especially one with kids. Take it SLLOOWW.

 

[grumpypoet]

hoquestion why do people down those of us who are with the parent of a child from another marriage? why feel we can't care?


i have been with my guy for 7yrs, for the first year he did not see
the child cause of mother, any way it was in our second year see saw him. i did not have a child at the time. i loved the father and knew we wanted to marry one day. i hoped his son would be accepting of us and we could be as much of a family as possibe.
it probably could have happened if mother would have wanted father in picture. i am not saying i wanted to be his mom just as
much as a family as we could have. we have a son of our own 5yrs old we are getting married this month.

we are both from dicvorced families.

i am glad my step-parents did not care about the fact
that my birth parents had children because they are a big part of
my life and helped made me who i am today.
hope you don't mind me saying this on your post i just needed to say what i felt. good luck
also with out them i would not they my 4 sisters
2 brothers and 1 step brother or my 3 nephews and two more babies on the way.

thank you to the people who loved enough to stay and also loved the step children like their own.

 

[tigger22472]

grumpypoet, I've seen many posts from you before and seems we have alot in common. The point of it here however and some of it stems I suppose from another post that is pretty fresh on here... and although I apologize to this poster if I sound harsh I also stand by my statements. If I've learned one thing about being a step-mother I've learned where my place is. I realize that there are BP out there that couldn't give a rats ass about their children and that their main motive is to destroy their ex's life. However we're not all like that. I have what I consider a GREAT experiece with my partner's ex just the other day and again yesterday in fact. On Friday I picked their daughter up from school for his visitation time is now. We'd been having a few behavior problems here and I had found out that she and her husband were having the same. She had been pokey before in school. Even though as I was doing it I even thought myself overstepping my bounds I asked the teacher if she was having problems. She stated that she was and they too were getting worse here lately. SD and I got in my car and drove straight to her mothers house, her dad was at work. I informed mom what the teacher said and although it was mostly mom, she and I sat SD down and discussed this. My belief was this was her daughter and not that I was pushing things off to mom because I didn't want to deal with it, we worked at it together. In fact yesterday the ex was talking to me on the phone telling me about a job in the paper that said a requirement was good with kids and she said she thought I'd be great at it. It made me feel good to know that my partners ex knew or felt I was good with children which in turn made me good to her daughter. I love their daughter as if she was my own and when asked how many children I have I don't hesitate in stating 3 (my two and her). I would lay my life down for her. Mom and I work together to let her know that she can love us both without guilt. Mom is "mommy" and if you ask her who I am she says... "That's MY Susan." My point is this... we can have GREAT relationships with our step-children without trying to be the parent. I make VERY minor decisions but leave the big ones to mom and dad. The ex's husband and I work well together.... he's the same as I am and there have been times where just the two of us have made decisions and we know our partners trust us to do right and but out when needed.

 

[grumpypoet]

you sound like what my parents and step parents did for me.

working together is important for everyone.
parents and children.

my parents and my siblings can get together and you would think we were one big family. not seperate with one child joining the rest.

see i guess thats what i hoped for.
under stand i really did not talk much it was my husband the x and her husband. i was, mines support. i did my talks with him later by ourselves or after dropping off his son.

the x never wanted to give us a chance she hated me from start
i know that can be normal. i dont know why she hates father
so much she left him. in front of me she told me she left because she was spoiled and when she couldnot get her way she did not what it any more. and told him that she told a friend to told him
the baby was not his . reason she was mad it him.

thanks for writting.

 

[tigger22472]

Maybe the reason we all get along is the only one that hasn't had a vindictive ex is my partner. He only has the one child with her and the other three of us have been through and are all still going through the whole thing of fighting for visitation, custody and support. Also the other three of us still after all these years have vindictive ex's that harm the children emotionally. We've all seen that side of things. We don't all go out socially for technically we all have very little as far as intrests(other then our children) in common but I truely think we have something rare. I back my partner on ANYTHING he decides to do. However if he comes up with an idea that I just find crazy I let him know. I point out the bad effects it could bring and I'm yet to not talk him out of something stupid..hee hee. Their daughter is SOOOO at ease around all of us. Where his ex's son is scared to even show emotion to his step-dad around his real father for he's constantly telling this child the step-dad is a bad person and lets his son know that he doesn't like him. The father has NEVER even really talked to the step-dad. If he did he would see a someone that I would say is a leader in the rights of fathers. Her son is a good friend to my boys and when SD is at her mom's and we ask to go somewhere special (i.e the zoo, movies.. whatever) we always include him also. It's beautiful and yes yes I know a fantasy that rarely happens but if it happened more often there would be so much less fighting and children learn that no matter if there is a divorce or not people can get along. It teases them lessons that can't be taught in any other way and I believe makes the children better people all around. Not only do they have 2 parents they can go to with ANYTHING they now have four with their own personalities and they know that no-ones feelings are going to get hurt if they go to one or the other.

 

[grumpypoet]

i like the way yous are handling things and agree things would be better if everyone was getting along if atleast for the children.

as a child of it i am glad my parents did it that way,
they got together for b-days of myself or siblings of mine,
when i finished school and my wedding 1st, now for my 2nd in two weeks to the husband i have talked about.
and of course for my sons birthdays.

when your sd gets older she will be glad yous handled things thay way too. it will also help her if she ever gets with someone with children.

i like to think that if things had been different with him and his son
seeing each other our feelings would still be the same.
i love him for him.

 

[I AM ALWAYS LIABLE]

" Parent annihilation syndrome (PAS) "

My response:

I like that interpretation of the acronym.

Someone must be dropping a bomb !

IAAL

P.S. Just for the record, it's "Parental Alienation Syndrome".

 

[qtpie]

IAAL, you are too much!