She will not follow court order for counseling

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

I have a final divorce decree that stipulates that exBPDw must see a doc. and provide me with proof of visit. What is the best way to enforce it? A rule to show cause seems to take a long time!

Any suggestions?

[SoVerySad123]

I have a final divorce decree that stipulates that exBPDw must see a doc. and provide me with proof of visit. What is the best way to enforce it? A rule to show cause seems to take a long time!

Any suggestions?

[motherof1yearold]

Are there children involved?

Since you divorced him, I would not worry about it.

Give him enough rope to hang himself, you are not his wife anymore and making sure he completes his counseling is NOT and will never be your obligation.

No need to worry about it, IMO.

[SoVerySad123]

Yes, we have a d4 together. That is my concern here.

[motherof1yearold]

Oh I see, it is your ex wife not husband, sorry about that!

Do you have a desire to have primary full custody? If so, I would NOT SAY ANYTHING to her about her missing the counseling. If she DOES NOT get the court ordered help on her own, that is her fault. She should understand by now that her parenting rights could be compromised if she does not complete the court ordered counseling.

IF you believe she is healthy enough to parent 50/50 with you, with or without counseling, I would still not get involved. It is her responsibility 100% to be sure she satisfies the court.

[SoVerySad123]

The way it is written in the final decree is that she will provide confirmation to me from the docs. office that she has gone and provided the final decree to the doctor. So, I believe I would be the only one to know if she is not following through.

I really do not know if I believe she is healthy enough to take care of our daughter or not. The one psychologist that she has seen said that my ex needed further evaluation before having custody. Both lawyers were informed of this!

[motherof1yearold]

I'm not aware of your current custody agreement,

but at this point, I advise you to fight for full primary custody in lieu of the fact she has undiagnosed mental illness and is not following court order to receive treatment.

You have no duty to 'remind' her, or 'inform' her , or 'push ' her to go to the counseling. If she does that attend , it will help your case in gaining primary custody.

[ForeverDad]

In most cases legal custody and parenting time are stated separately.

What is your legal status? Joint custody?  Shared Parenting?

What is the parenting time schedule? 50/50 pending her doctor visits?

I agree with what was stated before, you can't live her life for her or force her to get counseling or therapy.  A person forced to attend is unlikely to absorb much.  Even a person who attended without pressure may or may not see a need to change.  Yes, you can try, but the results are really up to her and her alone.  So the better questions are, Does she want to change, does she see her issues or does she deny them, does she want to improve her behaviors?  Those answers will help you focus on your path going forward.

So what to do?  Once you see whether she will follow the order or not, then proceed accordingly.  Likely the court will not see her as (1) abusive, (2) neglectful or (3) dangerous to your child.  So likely she won't loose contact with your child or be restricted to supervised time.

But that doesn't mean her behaviors won't have a negative impact on your child to some extent.  Your job is get the officials involved - the court, custody evaluator, child's Guardian ad Litem, parenting coordinator, whomever - to be convinced over time that it is in your child's best interests for you to have as much legal custody and as much parenting time as possible.

As for custody, they may be resistant to you have sole custody, at least at first, so if you get joint custody then try to get decision-making or tie-breaker status since you are the parent more likely to share the child, cooperate and be consistently reasonable.

Try to be declared the Residential Parent for school Purposes - used mainly to determine which school child attends.  Why is this important?  Your daughter will be attending school within a year or so.  What if your ex moves away, if she is RP then you'd likely have to follow her to wherever she goes.  If she is RP then your ex may feel more entitled to try to lock you out of school involvement.

As for a parenting schedule, most courts seem to have a standard schedule where one parent has majority time and the other is considered the non-residential (visited) parent.  Try to show that your stability, cooperation and ability to share the child means you ought to have majority time.  At worst, settle for 50/50.  :)on't 'settle' for less than 50/50.  If a court orders you to have less time, so be it, nothing you can do at that point, but don't agree to a poor schedule on her terms.  In many cases, though not all of course, you will get better outcome from the court than from your disordered ex.

Odds are that over time her poor behaviors will keep resurfacing and some of them may give you opportunity to return to family court seeking more custodial responsibility and more parenting time.

[SoVerySad123]

Yes, I agree with what you have said! The divorce has been finalized and the custody is set at 50/50. All major decision making must be done together with a third party tiebreaker if needed. There is a moving clause as well.

There is a stipulation that she agreed to follow, which was to get counseling. She must do as prescribed by the doctor. She is not following the agreement that I was comfortable with allowing the current custody arrangement.

[ForeverDad]

I'm not sure how 'enforceable' that counseling clause is.  Were there any consequences detailed in the agreement/order?  That would have been the smart thing to do.  If no consequences are spelled out then it's back to court for a judge to decide how severe the consequences, if any, ought to be.  Frankly, it is often hard to get an order for counseling enforced unless the parent also has some significant parenting misbehaviors, typically abuse, neglect, endangerment.  Depending on the severity of her behaviors - and whether they are her adult behaviors such as conflict with you (low priority in the court's eyes) or her parenting behaviors - requiring counseling, the judge may just tell you to live with it.

I'm not saying you can't get changes based upon her lack of compliance, it all depends on various things, such as how pivotal that clause was seen to the overall agreement.

Having "been there and done that" most here have the distinct impression that courts don't expect to change people or parents significantly.  More or less, they don't expect change and just handle them as they are, not as they want them to be, and deal with them accordingly.  You may need to accept that concept in the years to come.

If you've only been divorced for a month or two, you may need to allow more time for her to comply.  How much, I'm not sure.  I'd think at least 3 months but that's just a minimum guess.

Who is Residential Parent?  If she is RP and there is continuing conflict, that's one thing the court might not mind changing if you go back to court reporting conflict concerning school, teachers, education, etc.

[motherof1yearold]

If SoverySad123 would like to gain more custody, then her mistake is actually working in his favor.

Here are 2 reasons I don't advise him to push her or say anything to her trying to enforce/remind her to attend counseling:

1. She is an adult, and it is not SoverySad123's responsibility.

2. It will work in his favor in court.

[SoVerySad123]

It is 50/50 legal and physical custody. Nothing was decided by the courts. This was a mediated agreement.

I do agree that ex is an adult and has to make her own decisions except for the fact that she cares for our d4. I have MMP I results and a psychologist that was going to testify that visitation only was appropriate at this time.

Which is why the doctors care is a necessity , I think. But there are no more hearings unless I file for one!

[motherof1yearold]

I also got 50/50 through mediation, and technically it is signed off by the judge so it is a legal agreement.

Do you plan on gaining full custody in the future?

[SoVerySad123]

I would say that it depends on her behavior!

[ForeverDad]

As has been quoted here before, past behavior patterns are predictors for the future.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

(A quote attributed to Albert Einstein but that is debated by some... . )