Expert: Catherine Ridenour - 12/4/2008

Question
Hi,

My husband has a 4 year old daughter just recently diagnosed with PDD-NOS.  He and his ex-wife have been separated for almost 3 years now.  When they first separated they lived only minutes apart and he was suppose to have his daughter every weekend.  That lasted only for 1 month and 2 of his visits were denied.  After a month of separation his ex-wife moved out of state without notifying my husband.  Due to the distance his visitation was reduced to every other weekend (Wed-Sat).  Shortly before the divorce was final he moved out of state also (an additional 1 hour distance-3 hours total one way), his visitation had remained everyother weekend, and this is what their agreement was in March of last year when their divorce was final.  Just this April his ex-wife filed for a modification to visitation.  She is now trying to get his visitation reduced to once a month.  She says that she is doing this because their daughter will be attending pre-k 5 days a week so the Wed-Fri schedule will not work any longer and she says that the 3 hours in the car is too much for only 2.5 days worth of visitation.  Her suggestion for his visitation is to follow the school breaks.  So there would be no consistancy.  Her plan would have my husband having his daughter for 3 days one month, going 5 weeks in between visits and then the next visit be for 7 days and then another 6 weeks in between, etc.  There is absolutely no structure or anything for my step-daughter to get use to.  She was diagnosed in October, which has now only fueled his ex-wife.  We are requesting for modification of visitation, but that it continue to be every other weekend just from Friday after therapy/school until Sunday evening.  We have a court date and I guess I am just looking for someone to tell me what the outcome would most likely be.  Some more background to add is that we just recently had to go through the courts to enforce my husbands vacation visitation, after that was approved (just in August) she has since denied 2 visitations and had tried to deny him his Thanksgiving visitation which had us at the police station for 2 hours and had the family courts called in to rule and then she had to bring his daughter to us.  These are just a few examples of what we are dealing with.  What do you think the chances of her getting her modification is, I can give more info if needed.

Thanks!

Answer
Hi Christy,

Your question involves legal issues that I am not qualified to address. I cannot predict what the court will do.

I will say that the mother's behavior is unfair and you should inform the court of all these breaches of the agreement. However, unless you want full time custody of the child, you may have to live with her erratic behavior.

Get a good lawyer and fight it out in the courts. Giving up on visitation tells the child she is not worth it. That's a sad situation all around.

Good luck.
Catherine