Coparent Child Exchange at Police Department

[livednlearned]

Congratulations on moving this forward! You must be relieved.

You are wise to expect there will be challenges.

With intense emotions come disordered thinking and impulsive behaviors, in order to fill intense needs right now at all costs.

That makes it hard to follow the custody order. My ex would say "this is in the order" without looking at it. I would send him the exact phrase.

So even with hard evidence of the actual wording a few clicks away, my ex (former trial attorney) would pull things out of thin air.

You have the 30,000 foot view because you can regulate your emotions.

She doesn't have that.

So when she gets lost in the weeds, it is you who has to regulate your emotions and get yourself back to that 30,000 foot view.

Document everything, like you're doing.

And don't give an inch on boundaries because there will be no reciprocity and every inch becomes a mile. You'll have a harder time going back to court saying you want to change things when it becomes clear you were voluntarily changing things on your own.

[AnuDay]

Thanks foreverdad,
The Order has a lot of concrete terminology but looking at it now I can see ways that she might try to find a loophole.  I didn't get all the wording that I wanted to get (because the judge still saw the UBPD mom as competent), but I got a lot of it in there using the information that I've learned on this site. I can definitely see her trying to stir up problems though. Right now she's tired and overwhelmed. She didn't put up too much of a fight.
Turk, as far as the touching thing goes that issue was not resolved. Hard to imagine, but I forgot about it. I tried asking for an order so that I would know the adult caretakers the mom hid from me, but the judge wouldn't allow it. She was really on the UBPD mom's side. 
I was going to ask for notification if injured at other parents home but again the judge really had a bad attitude towards me so I couldn't muster the words.
Thank you for the advice LIL. I am very relieved. It's like a war ending. I needed a whole day of rest and reorganizing my life.  I was so drained.  This stuff is traumatic. Even in front of the judge there were petty issues the UBPD mom wouldn't budge on that got me fired up. The judge had to tell me to remember the ultimate goal.  The UBPD mom is such a menace but I'm glad I don't have to worry about police calling me anymore or showing up at my house.  Most of her major threats have been extinguished.

[Turkish]

How did the judge word the ultimate goal?

[AnuDay]

She said "Don't lose sight of your goal.  I believe a lot of the concerns that you have will go away after you have a shared parenting plan/joint custody order in place.  You were basically flying solo for the past 4 years. 

[ForeverDad]

Judges really expact that with a framework that most parents will Let Go the bickering and emotions and start focusing on the kids and Moving On. Most can do that.  The judge is expecting you both to buckle down and follow the order.  Most courts seem to studiously avoid the mental health aspect.  Most here never had the court or the professionals around the court putting a diagnostic label to the behavior patterns.  They just deal with the behaviors. Generally they give more attention to the Parenting behaviors (how kids are impacted) than the Adult behaviors (how the parents interact with each other).

So when you do end up back in court, list the issues in priority order, parenting issues first.  My mistake when I returned to court was that I had a neatly printed list grouped by topics.  We got to #3 on my list of 11 issues.  Guess what?  We didn't even get to the most urgent ones.  As I wrote, organize your list in priority order.  Bring extra copies in case judge and ex's lawyer need copies.  Minor issues may get ignored.  Despite all my complaints during the two years in temp orders, no clauses were ever changed.  The court's own social worker recommended I move up to equal time, no changes, they just moved on to the next step.  Then the custody evaluator recommended "Mother should immediately lose her temporary custody" yet nothing was changed, they just moved on to the next step.  The only way I could figure that delay out was that they consider the temp order as just 'temporary' — two years! — and no rush to fix it until the final decree.