Co parenting nightmare

[bus boy]

I need help. My ex wife is very difficult to deal with in any issue but co parenting with her is impossible. He's 9 years old and he never had a chance to have a proper relationship with me. We get a court order, it works for a while than she wants to make changes to it that always leave me loosing time with my son and of course him loosing time with me. She manipulates me knowing that my primary concern is my son so she takes advantage of that knowing I will alter the court order. I've had a new court order in place since December 2015. It gives me a lot more time with my son, but she is at it again, wanting me to change the order but this time I'm not budging. She has no limits as to how low she will go. Today she text and said he doesn't want to be with me so much, his school is slipping, and than told me since it doesn't effect me, I don't care. I've heard that line for 12 years and many other soul crushing lines. Last year my son was sick from school, I told her I made arrangements with my supervisor to get time off work to help look after our son. She gets her mother instead and when I took her to court in December she said I wouldn't come help look after my son when he was sick. I'm a hard worker, well known in the community as a good man, work extra jobs to provide better for my son ( she wants my income information on that money) I'm not a come and go as I please Johnny come lately. I'm being tarred with a brush of incompentance. She must have control, on our first court hearing she submitted a visitation proposal, the judge said in all her years on the family court bench she never saw a more rediclous proposal before her. It would of given her all the power over my access. All of my requests in the past have been denied, my sons requests, but yet anyone one in her family can have my son anytime they please, her BF has been in my sons life for 7 months, he can come and go as he pleases with my son, but never me. It must be confusing to him. He is very happy at my house, he does chores, we play fun games, he never calls between visits, so I won't hear from him for a 7 day stretch but when he's with me he calls her 2 times a day and if he forgets he gets scared and asks me what should he tell his mother, he says she drills him with questions and gets mad if he doesn't call her. Something is not right here.

[Sunfl0wer]

Please post this in the legal section as well.

What is happening is serious, I could barely attempt to respond as the members in legal board are excellent.

The only thing that seems clear to me is:   Stick with the legal agreement.

Do not veer from it for any reason.

Making side agreements is not working, causing her to abuse your flexibility and alienate you from your child, stop participating in this.

It will be hard to hold her accountable for breaking the legal agreement if you are participating in giving permission to not follow it, even if it is her fault for it not working out.

She manipulates me knowing that my primary concern is my son so she takes advantage of that knowing I will alter the court order.

Stop doing this! It is harmful to the situation.

[Thunderstruck]

What does your current schedule look like? What is your ex asking for this time around? Are there changes that you would like incorporated into the order?

I wouldn't worry too much about what your ex claims S9 has been saying. Either 1) he's saying what he thinks she wants to hear or 2) your ex is just plain making it up.

9 is hard, he's in what, 4th grade? Yikes. Lots of hard math. My SD's grades dropped then too. Are there things you can do to help him get caught up?

I also wouldn't worry too much about what she claims in court. She can make allegation after allegation. Just focus on your relationship with your son and how having a consistent relationship with him is in his best interest. Instead of defending yourself, provide solutions to problems (like I mentioned above... .she claims his grades are slipping so you do some extra work with him on your time... .).

[david]

I would do several things:

1) communicate through email only. This way , if you go to court, and ex says something that an email will prove untrue you have some credence with the judge.

2) stick to the agreement you have and don't give up time. If ex wants son on your time than, in email, get makeup time.

3) If he is slipping in school, which you have not verified with the school yet, take a more active approach with you helping him. My personal experience, different since I am a school teacher, is that my ex did absolutely nothing to help our youngest with school work. She had majority of time during the school year yet son did over 95% of all his school work when with me. The little he did at her place was either wrong or incomplete. That made me realize he was on his own there. Over a period of three years I learned that ex actually made him change some of his answers and his answers were correct. My ex is a registered nurse and did well in college but couldn't do 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade math. I copied every one for court. It was about 5 or 6 inches tall. I made a cover sheet that spelled out what was underneath the pile. When we went to court ex had nothing.

4) I found that the more time I had with our two boys the better off they did at school. My expectation was that they had to do their homework. If they didn't do it at moms they had to do it with me even if it was past due. Eventually they realized I wasn't changing my position.

[david]

It's all about boundaries. Figure out what boundaries work best and stick with them.

[bus boy]

My son tells me he mostly does his home work by himself. The last weekend I had my son he had a project due, he forgot some info for his project at his mothers house, I text her to meet me somewhere with the info for his project and she said get my own info. She just doesn't want me having any kind of a positive impact on my sons life. The first time I helped him with his HM, she was so rotten she had him crying. He was filling in a chart, he didn't have enough room length ways for the last word in that section of his chart, without going into the next topic on the chart but he had lots of room going downward on the chart for the word, I pointed this out to him, I said continue down, you have lots of room. His mother would not let him continue downward on his chart, she kept making him erase the word and trying to make him squeeze the word in without going into the next collum. She would not let up, nope erase it again. The poor little fella was sobbing, nothing was changing her mind. I went to his room, held him, talked to him, got him to go and finish his chart. He went downward and fit the word in with ease. Than he asked her if the spelling was right on a word and she said I don't care. It seems if it's me that's involved she does everything to destroy it, she despises me, hates me, said I make her cringe, no matter what the out come to my son she just wants me gone. It is very hurtful Bc I scratch my head and say, what did I do. Before when he was with me, I would let her control the visits, if he had a bday party she wouldn't let me take him, I stood up to her and said its my time I'll take him to the party, she wouldn't tell me where it was, I had to go to his school with the court order to show I was the father and had the same rights as her, she was wild at me. I didn't get school pics for 3 years, I showed the order and got the forms for pics. I think of it now, I was anienated from his life. The only visits she allowed for a long time were at her house under her supervision. So frustrating being a good father and treated like a dead beat.

[Thunderstruck]

What you describe was exactly how it was when my DH first moved out and away from uBPDbm.   We've learned to just not rely on her for information and go around her to the source (the school, the company that takes school pictures, doctors directly, etc etc). Also, being VERY involved in school activities has shown that we're not the deadbeats that uBPDbm labels us to be.

Have you researched parallel parenting? We do that in our house and it works a lot better than trying to co-parent.

We can't get uBPDbm to cooperate on homework or projects either.  SD does them at after care or by herself at mom's house and the answers are all wrong. We usually end up having to do a project all the night before it is due because uBPDbm didn't work on it with SD during her parenting time.

[david]

After several years of figuring out how to work around her things got better for our boys. I never pointed it out but they figured it out and mentioned it to me how easy it was when mom stopped getting so involved. The funny thing is she never really got that involved but the little she did they saw.

I had to go to the school with our court order too.

Once I was given more time during the school year through the courts things got better because ex stopped doing anything with them and their homework. In the last two years, the only thing she did was to help our youngest with a project that he had 5 weeks to do. He did about 70% at her place and put it all together with me.

It's more challenging this way but I don't think the courts will change much else now. They are 17 and 12 now and are better able to do things on their own anyway.

[bus boy]

My access is every second weekend, Friday after school, drop him off at school Monday morning and every Wednesday for the night, drop at school Thursday morning.

His homework and school assignments are always finished. He's a good student. It seems when I get involved, he all of a sudden starts to fall behind.

My son does not get my texts, phone calls, doesn't get any message,video or pic I might send. I'm a ghost. I'm a last resort. What kind of a person gives the father's freedoms and rights to another man who hardly knows my son. I was carrying on with my son and said I'll bet you $5 she said very rude, he doesn't bet. I was use to her ignorance, I said nothing. But her bf takes my son to town all the time to do the sports gambling. I bothers me bc I'm the father and get treated like a nothing. What kind of a man does this to another man?  My son doesn't need a father, but her bf has stepped over some boundaries.