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Author Topic: Advice on answering an email  (Read 534 times)
Nope
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« on: June 15, 2016, 12:36:03 PM »

BPDm's email:

"I have been searching for tickets for the children for their summer visit. I will let you know what I come up with. They will be departing from [cheapest local airport] and arriving in [her local airport]. So far the cheapest I found is 423."

Her visitation will be for two weeks in August and this is the first she's said anything about flying them to us. Plans were made for this visit back in May. Our issues with this are two fold; 1) she hasn't said who's going to pay for this. We absolutely won't as we didn't budget to do so and had planned on meeting at the halfway meeting spot. There isn't anything about flying them in the order. And 2) She would need to pick flight times that are convenient for is to travel the hour and a half to drop them off and get them back from that airport. Since working with her has proven next to impossible in the past and she only gets more and more triggered the more emails go back and forth, I don't know how to make this work.

Thoughts on a response?
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Panda39
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« Reply #1 on: June 15, 2016, 02:47:36 PM »

Nope,

Ahhhh, the summer has begun    I'm not sure she has given you anything to respond to.  She is making tentative plans that may or may not actually happen (or at least that is how my SO's uBPDxw operated)

It would be up to her to pay for their travel... .could she afford to?  Does she follow through on things?  For now I think I would just wait and watch.

From my experience if she does get the kids tickets be sure they are roundtrip!

Maybe thank her for letting you know she is working on the arrangements, ask her to keep in mind that you/dh will need to provide transportation to the airport and please keep in mind the best time for you is... .and then ask her to keep you posted?

Panda39
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ambivalentmom
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« Reply #2 on: June 15, 2016, 03:34:35 PM »

It sounds like she's either looking for a fight or looking for a way to cancel the visit.  I rewrote sample suggestions about 3 times, then gave up.  It sounds like she is ignoring the previous arrangement and she thinks it's implied that you will pay for half.  The sooner you can find a way to easily work through this drama, the better, hopefully it will settle long before August.  I would almost suggest sticking to the original aggreement, since working with her is next to impossible.  You would get just as much hate for this as telling her you will not be paying for the flight.

If it does work out that they can fly to see you and she pays, maybe reimburse a small amount that you would save on gas/driving time.  Whatever price the Taxman puts on miles should be good enough.  Good Luck!
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Nope
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« Reply #3 on: June 15, 2016, 03:53:29 PM »

I'd say on her own her follow through is about 25% of the time. But the boyfriend has changed things. Normally she'd be too low functioning to even threaten to plan on doing something like this, she'd try to find a way to make it DH's responsibility.

My real concern with not responding is that she has this tendency to read something once, decide it says what she wants it to say, and then attempt to hold us to what she wants it to say it said. And back in February when she first said she should get the kids for the summer we gave her options. After much struggle she picked option 1. But I think she may try to hold us to the part of option 2 that appeals to her at this moment

"I am willing to work with you to come up with a shorter duration of time as I agree that it is important for the kids to have time with you. I can give you two weeks. Either two weeks in August or, if you are willing to fly the kids, one week in late June or early July and one week in August. If you choose the second option you would be responsible for paying for the children's round trip for the June/July visit and I would pick up their round trip for the August visit. Let me know what weeks could work for you and I will look at what weeks work best on my end."
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Catsmother
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« Reply #4 on: June 15, 2016, 04:39:56 PM »

That makes sense now. Seems like she is not going to take the week in June July but will take one week in August. You need to jump on this fast. Let her know if that if she intends on having just the on week in August, and is forgoing the June July option, then she will be responsible for all costs as it is the 'first' week. And make sure you give her a time AND date that she has to reply by.
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ForeverDad
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« Reply #5 on: June 15, 2016, 09:26:31 PM »

That makes sense now. Seems like she is not going to take the week in June July but will take one week in August. You need to jump on this fast. Let her know if that if she intends on having just the on week in August, and is forgoing the June July option, then she will be responsible for all costs as it is the 'first' week. And make sure you give her a time AND date that she has to reply by.

Catsmother made a good point, BM may think the second (August) week is a freebie and that she can just skip the first (her $$$) week.  She's picking and choosing the pieces to agree to.
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Nope
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« Reply #6 on: June 16, 2016, 10:03:03 AM »

That makes sense now. Seems like she is not going to take the week in June July but will take one week in August. You need to jump on this fast. Let her know if that if she intends on having just the on week in August, and is forgoing the June July option, then she will be responsible for all costs as it is the 'first' week. And make sure you give her a time AND date that she has to reply by.

Catsmother made a good point, BM may think the second (August) week is a freebie and that she can just skip the first (her $$$) week.  She's picking and choosing the pieces to agree to.

It was actually already settled back in May that she's only getting two weeks in August. There was some back and forth on that then, so I don't think this has anything to do with June or July as she is already well aware that the kids summer schedules were set in stone. She chose her two weeks in August and we were planning on driving the kids to the meeting spot. She just thought she could be that vague and then scream at DH after the fact that he owed her for half the cost of the trip. That's more the kind of thing she does.

He ended up writing that he does agree that the kids should be flown whenever possible but that he did not budget money for flights this summer. If she'd like to still fly them, at her own expense, he can bring the kids to the airport closest to our house, since the one she picked would have us in hours worth of bad traffic. He hasn't received any response.

So either she decided to just drop the whole thing or she has received a copy of the papers for court in the mail. Getting told there is a pending court date always causes complete silence.
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Thunderstruck
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« Reply #7 on: June 16, 2016, 01:42:12 PM »

He ended up writing that he does agree that the kids should be flown whenever possible but that he did not budget money for flights this summer. If she'd like to still fly them, at her own expense, he can bring the kids to the airport closest to our house, since the one she picked would have us in hours worth of bad traffic. He hasn't received any response.

Can you guys offer to cover the difference in price between the cheaper, far away airport and the airport closer to you? Since you wouldn't be driving it'd save you on gas money and time.
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« Reply #8 on: June 16, 2016, 03:33:33 PM »

He ended up writing that he does agree that the kids should be flown whenever possible but that he did not budget money for flights this summer. If she'd like to still fly them, at her own expense, he can bring the kids to the airport closest to our house, since the one she picked would have us in hours worth of bad traffic. He hasn't received any response.

Can you guys offer to cover the difference in price between the cheaper, far away airport and the airport closer to you? Since you wouldn't be driving it'd save you on gas money and time.

Maybe we'd be more inclined if she was paying her CS or her part of the uninsured meds. But the idea of handing her one penny when she owes us so much money is just not worth contemplating. If we told her we'd take that amount off the money she owes that would just trigger her. Also if we let her fly the kids out of that airport once then that'll become the airport we've agreed to use and had she gotten the tickets back when all of this was figured out she wouldn't need to spend so much to fly them. The more expensive airport wouldn't save us money at this point as my car is very good on gas but in the future with more notice we'll probably end up working something out to fly them so we can stop losing a whole day to do these exchanges. Bit the next time they go is for Christmas break when the cost of flights is likely to be astronomical matter when we get tickets so we'll plan on driving then as well. As long as the drive is, we run into no traffic the whole way, even around holidays.
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ambivalentmom
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« Reply #9 on: June 20, 2016, 08:11:56 AM »

Excerpt
Maybe we'd be more inclined if she was paying her CS or her part of the uninsured meds. But the idea of handing her one penny when she owes us so much money is just not worth contemplating. If we told her we'd take that amount off the money she owes that would just trigger her.

Very true, I remember my ex flipping out because I offered to reduce his debt from what he borrowed from our daughters savings.  He borrowed all of her savings (about 4k) when she was 5 ish and would get mad at me whenever I wanted to pay him back by reducing his debt.  She's 13 now and he still owes the original amount.
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Nope
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« Reply #10 on: June 21, 2016, 07:00:31 AM »

Since DH brought up in a prior email exchange that she is behind on CS, she took the hint given in the use of the word "budget" and dropped the subject of flying them. 

Then we let her know that since the kid's activities are done until the fall and she isn't working that late we would be returning to the court ordered days and times for her three mandatory phone calls per week. (She now knows we are taking her back to court to have the wording changed to "reasonable telephone contact".) This started her on a string of enraged emails stating that she "does not agree" to changing the call times back to the court order. DH ignored her for the most part but one nice bit of evidence did surface I'm her rage:

"Also don't forget that you had the children change phone calls and on one of those days was Mother's Day that they asked me if they could call earlier so that you guys could go see a movie and I said no because it seemed that they were just changing the phone call to suit your needs... ."

So... .she admitted she didn't agree to a call time change for no better reason than spite and a desire to be oppositional. (The actual reason DH had the kids text her earlier on Mother's Day regarding if she wanted an ealier call was because otherwise they wouldn't be talking to her until 8pm and that seemed like an unfair thing to do on mom's special day. But yes, we had also been talking about going to the movies that night.) So at least she'll just come right out and admit the important thing to her is messing with DH.
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ForeverDad
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« Reply #11 on: June 21, 2016, 09:59:06 AM »

"Also don't forget that you had the children change phone calls and on one of those days was Mother's Day that they asked me if they could call earlier so that you guys could go see a movie and I said no because it seemed that they were just changing the phone call to suit your needs... ."

Tongue in cheek... .At least let the kids come with you to the movies, then it's not about the adults, it's about the entire family.

Sigh.  This happens to us so often because we try to do the right thing and be as blameless and fair as possible.  Nothing is ever enough, no matter what we do or don't do something always triggers the disordered ex.
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ambivalentmom
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« Reply #12 on: June 21, 2016, 01:26:46 PM »

Then we let her know that since the kid's activities are done until the fall and she isn't working that late we would be returning to the court ordered days and times for her three mandatory phone calls per week. (She now knows we are taking her back to court to have the wording changed to "reasonable telephone contact".)

Be careful when using the word "reasonable", it's in my visitation agreement and makes it difficult because his version of reasonable is way off.  I would prefer a loose guide on 1-2 calls a week for 20min or so between 8am and 9pm (provided school and activities don't interfere, blah blah).  He thinks reasonable is for D13 to call every 2-3 weeks (out of a 4 week summer visit) for 5 min.  There should be an least a loose outline of what reasonable entails and what are the repercussions for not following the agreement.  

"Also don't forget that you had the children change phone calls and on one of those days was Mother's Day that they asked me if they could call earlier so that you guys could go see a movie and I said no because it seemed that they were just changing the phone call to suit your needs... ."

And if at all possible, leave the final say on phone calls to DH descretion.

 
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Nope
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« Reply #13 on: June 21, 2016, 02:06:15 PM »

Then we let her know that since the kid's activities are done until the fall and she isn't working that late we would be returning to the court ordered days and times for her three mandatory phone calls per week. (She now knows we are taking her back to court to have the wording changed to "reasonable telephone contact".)

Be careful when using the word "reasonable", it's in my visitation agreement and makes it difficult because his version of reasonable is way off.  I would prefer a loose guide on 1-2 calls a week for 20min or so between 8am and 9pm (provided school and activities don't interfere, blah blah).  He thinks reasonable is for D13 to call every 2-3 weeks (out of a 4 week summer visit) for 5 min.  There should be an least a loose outline of what reasonable entails and what are the repercussions for not following the agreement.  

"Also don't forget that you had the children change phone calls and on one of those days was Mother's Day that they asked me if they could call earlier so that you guys could go see a movie and I said no because it seemed that they were just changing the phone call to suit your needs... ."

And if at all possible, leave the final say on phone calls to DH descretion.

The repercussions of not following the order is always Contempt of Court. But we are not at all concerned with her version of "reasonable". Just a judges version in case she tries to bring is to court.    The lawyer threw in there that uBPDm will be responsible for initiating her own phone contact. And as far as I'm concerned, if she drives the kids crazy by calling every hour on the hour they are old enough to start working on their own boundaries with her. But I'm pretty sure she'd stop doing that after DH didn't react. All we need to do is randomly have one or the other of them call her whenever they are just hanging out at home and we are in the clear. That would be beautiful!

"Also don't forget that you had the children change phone calls and on one of those days was Mother's Day that they asked me if they could call earlier so that you guys could go see a movie and I said no because it seemed that they were just changing the phone call to suit your needs... ."

Tongue in cheek... .At least let the kids come with you to the movies, then it's not about the adults, it's about the entire family.

Sigh.  This happens to us so often because we try to do the right thing and be as blameless and fair as possible.  Nothing is ever enough, no matter what we do or don't do something always triggers the disordered ex.

Exactly! When she got notice that he is trying to change something with regards to the call time situation she started this whole long rant about the times something has gotten messed up on our end. Complete with a rant about how DH dragged her into court when his phone call didn't come in on time when she had the kids. (Many times they didn't come in at all and she was only responsible for about 45 calls per year. DH is responsible in this order for 150 and the only time she's missed calls is when she hasn't been available and hasn't rescheduled. But the good news is that our main point is that the call situation isn't working and needs to be revisited. All of her complaints are just a kind of agreement.
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