Asking for Safety based Parenting Plan examples/clauses / Supervised Visits

[Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits.]

Hi all,

Haven't been on in a while - it's been nice to have the mental break while "someone" has been away by choice.
Have to put together a Safety based parenting plan which includes supervised visits -  or at least a framework of one this weekend to show our attorney.
There seem to be a few things online but I cannot believe the lack of true examples.
We are trying to put together a plan for a UdxBF who has skipped out of town (thankfully) but also skipped out on all compliance ordered by the CE.
He will be back at some point demanding to see his D12 with no compliance that was ordered or his co-occurring "mental illnesses" and past drug use (has to drug test, go to AA meetings based on what CE said in order to see D12)

I know some of you have been so kind as to do comprehensive detailed points for a parenting plan considering someone with BD.

I'm wondering if anyone has had to put one together and could send (private message me, if that's more comfortable) any type of examples or phrases we can put in our template for specifically supervised visits.

We want to seem solution oriented while protecting her with supervised visits when he shows back into town.

Goal in PP is requesting heavy compliance for a long period of time and supervised visitation while demonstrating this (we don't hold out hope he will be able to) and then if compliance graduated upscale in visitation with no supervised visitation.

 Recapping - UdxBF skipped town, skipped out on what he mediated and the compliance he agreed to in mediation, skipped town after being awarded more time with D12 from the CE (i.e. a "let's see what happens approach after he was instigating chaos/conflict for a year) so we do have some leverage.  The Judge also just said at the first hearing (quick hearing to set aside agreement done in mediation and go back to square one and set trial date)  to him that he is mentally ill based on the CE's report and that he has to comply with all conditions to see his daughter.

Any and all help, examples, phrases, clauses, experiences in what you guys asked for in supervised visits for pre-teens would be so helpful.

The attorney is not much help - so we want to be fully prepared and then have him fill in the blanks.

Thank you!

[Hard Rock]

Hi all,

Haven't been on in a while - it's been nice to have the mental break while "someone" has been away by choice.
Have to put together a Safety based parenting plan which includes supervised visits -  or at least a framework of one this weekend to show our attorney.
There seem to be a few things online but I cannot believe the lack of true examples.
We are trying to put together a plan for a UdxBF who has skipped out of town (thankfully) but also skipped out on all compliance ordered by the CE.
He will be back at some point demanding to see his D12 with no compliance that was ordered or his co-occurring "mental illnesses" and past drug use (has to drug test, go to AA meetings based on what CE said in order to see D12)

I know some of you have been so kind as to do comprehensive detailed points for a parenting plan considering someone with BD.

I'm wondering if anyone has had to put one together and could send (private message me, if that's more comfortable) any type of examples or phrases we can put in our template for specifically supervised visits.

We want to seem solution oriented while protecting her with supervised visits when he shows back into town.

Goal in PP is requesting heavy compliance for a long period of time and supervised visitation while demonstrating this (we don't hold out hope he will be able to) and then if compliance graduated upscale in visitation with no supervised visitation.

 Recapping - UdxBF skipped town, skipped out on what he mediated and the compliance he agreed to in mediation, skipped town after being awarded more time with D12 from the CE (i.e. a "let's see what happens approach after he was instigating chaos/conflict for a year) so we do have some leverage.  The Judge also just said at the first hearing (quick hearing to set aside agreement done in mediation and go back to square one and set trial date)  to him that he is mentally ill based on the CE's report and that he has to comply with all conditions to see his daughter.

Any and all help, examples, phrases, clauses, experiences in what you guys asked for in supervised visits for pre-teens would be so helpful.

The attorney is not much help - so we want to be fully prepared and then have him fill in the blanks.

Thank you!

[ForeverDad]

My impression of most court approaches is that when restrictions are set up, then the expected goal is to find a way to dismantle them over time as the person meets certain landmarks.  However, when there are setbacks, it's hard to tighten the restrictions after they're gone.  You may have to go back to court to make your case all over again.  So how should your order be written to handle if he meets some requirements then once contact is allowed then Ex relaxes and falls back to prior behavior patterns?

If you can, try to get discretion to limit or withhold visitation when you have concerns based on recent events.  Of course you'd have to be able to justify your decisions if your Ex contests them.

[Hard Rock]

Thanks for your response.  That all makes sense.

The issue with going for discretion to limit or withholding visitation is that we are in a constant battle trying to justify and taking the blowback.  It would be exhausting because we've been in temporary orders for 2.5 years and trying to do that very same thing in a sense or a version of what you are recommending.
It was a nightmare.

I guess that can be Plan B if we're denied supervised visitation - which we know is hard to get.
Or what do you think about asking for that secondary as the next level after supervised visitation?

There will be a parenting coordinator on as that is what the CE mandated to recognize or "head off" if he is going into "mental health crises" (I put that in quotes because most of it is purposeful sociopathic behavior, most of the time).

Does anyone have experience/success getting supervised visitation.

FD - did you get it written into court orders to be able to withhold visitation?

[ForeverDad]

My court studiously ignored what was behind my Ex's behavior patterns.  So did the child counselors and the custody evaluator.  They agreed she had issues but refused to get specific.  It's as though they expected her to behave better (let go and move on) after the divorce was final.  Of course, that didn't happen.

That's why the typical consensus here is to encourage productive focus on the poor behaviors patterns and not a diagnostic label.  They give more attention to the behaviors impacting the children than to us parents.  It seems murder trials may get a PD reported but for anything less it doesn't happen much.  After several years my court finally castigated her for 'disparaging father in the child's presence'.  I got custody before I got majority time, so she was never limited to supervised visits.

[Hard Rock]

Yes, FD.  That seems about right.
We outlined extensively for the CE the behaviors, in a meticulous well-documented way (no conclusions, just laid out the facts.).
(BTW - Evaluations are a sham and a money making scheme, after seeing what this guy did and he's supposed to be the best of the rest).
 Massive amounts of hours putting that documentation together.
What translated was - He gets more time, he has to comply with certain "checks", then he makes an agreement in mediation (which benefited him monetarily), walks out of the country with no notice to kids, and we're expecting him to come back because the agreement has now been set aside by court and a trial date set. (and we're not dumb)
 He fought like a rabid dog for more parenting time and manipulated the CW, got it, walked out on kids.
Don't get me wrong, we're not complaining.  But we know he will be back and especially because his amount of spousal support will now be in question in court and could be reduced.
He'll come back to play mental games and act like he wants to see the D12.
It's about the $$ and he always uses mental war tactics with the D12 and trying to get more time.

Protections need to be put in place for D12 because when he is unstable and anger is flaring... she suffers.  Now she's had a bit of peace while he's been gone and is really coming out of her shell.
The conflict he created was so bad for her she was having physical issues but would not tell us anything for fear of his retribution.

So... we're going to offer one more deal (a possible re-do of mediation) - to look reasonable to the Judge and because we don't want him back.  And it's going to be a deal that protects her.
If he doesn't accept, we're in court in a few months and we'll take our chances and try to get as much as we can for her protection.

[livednlearned]

It sounds like what you are looking for is not so much points in a parenting plan but language that creates a conditional obstacle to spending time with D12?

Meaning, if D12's uBPD dad does x, then he can y. Or does that language already exist?

In my case, N/BPDx acted badly. I filed a motion to suspend visitation.

Then, there was a hearing. At the hearing, we proposed that ex do 3 things: attend anger management, get substance abuse treatment, and undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

Once he met those conditions in 30 days, he could resume visitation.

Of course, we all knew N/BPDx would struggle to meet those conditions and that's exactly what happened. He is no longer in S15's life. He could be, if he just did those 3 things.

The key in my case was to propose a reasonable solution (the three things) and then have a time limit for getting them done (30 days), plus some other parameters (psych eval had to be a MMPI-2 with a forensic psychiatrist) with consequences for non-compliance (no visitation until the three things were done).

Later, I filed a motion for sole custody and got it. But of course, that does not cover visitation so the other piece was proposing a reasonable solution that we knew N/BPDx was likely too disordered to complete.

Any other healthy parent would take care of things stat and be sure to comply to avoid such severe consequences.