About two months ago, an order was issued in our case. This was after I petitioned the Court to limit the time my daughter has to spend time with her spath dad. He lived 90 minutes away from her and had an every other weekend parenting time schedule. This isn't a lot. But when parenting time is spent listening to your parent fight with his significant other CONSTANTLY, it makes for a long three days. So I requested this. What I got in return was nearly a year of absolute hell, a $20,000 debt to a family law attorney, and a new order that basically did the opposite of what I set out to do.
So now spath dad gets MORE days, MORE holiday time, and MORE time to make our daughter miserable. The order came out in July. Immediately after the order was issued, he requested the two weeks of vacation that was granted to him and then basically monopolized our daughter for the rest of the summer. The irony of that scenario is that he didn't actually go on vacation with her. He worked, and left her home while he was at work. And when he couldn't get her to the activities that were court ordered, he had his fiancée do it. He was specifically court ordered not to do that. The judge wanted him to concentrate on spending more time ALONE with her. So that all ended in dramatic fashion when he asked me to take her, in the middle of his vacation. I know he resorted to this because he is also ordered to make her present at EVERY SINGLE sport and extra curricular event. And during his vacation time, it became very obvious to him that it wasn't possible to get her to all of her events because he worked. So he "gave back" his vacation time. He did this, of course, by trying to convince me that it was because he was trying to be "fair" and not take our daughter away from me for too long. Hilarious! Then later in that week, he told me that his boss "canceled his vacation."
So I told him since his boss "canceled" his vacation, then I guess vacation was over and our daughter could remain home for the rest of the summer. That didn't go over well, and he got special favor with the Court and got an emergency phone conference with the judge. I had to pay my attorney for this. The judge told me she had to go back to his house. Our daughter was devastated. By the end of the day, after all this drama, court involvement, paying my attorney, spath decides he's going to let our daughter stay home three more days before she goes back to him. NUTZ!
So after the vacation time was over and Labor Day passed, I figured school would start and we'd get into a better routine. He's allowed to have her after school (or soccer) on Mondays and Wednesdays. After school started, soccer interferes with that a lot. But, he's been pretty consistently taking her for even just an hour or two after the games and practices.
But here's why I believe that in the next four years before she emancipates, I know I will NEVER have peace from him......
Last week, she hurt her knee in soccer. This means, she's sitting out of games and she's not playing up for Junior Varsity like they had asked her to. So this past Monday, she was sitting on the sidelines for the Freshman team. I go to the games to support her even when she doesn't play. I show up to the game, and spath is not there. I just assumed it was the same thing as always. He would never come sit there in support unless he could watch her do something good and then take credit later for it. If she's sitting on the sidelines, he could care less about the team itself or any of the other players. So I watched the game, said goodbye after, and told her I'd see her when her dad brought her home later. One of the soccer moms asked me to meet her for happy hour after, and since our daughter was with her dad, I agreed. Seems like a normal day, doesn't it?
Well, nothing is ever, ever normal. As I'm sitting at happy hour, I get a call from my mom asking where my daughter is. Of course, I casually respond, "She's on the bus on the way back to school. What's up?" She responds, "Well, her dad is here, wondering where she is." Huh. He's never picked her up at our house after school The plan has always been he picks her up after school or after soccer...at school. Long story condensed, he proceeded to call, call again, left two messages, one threatening to call the police, and then emailed me twice that night. He was accusing me of interfering with his parenting time and keeping our daughter away from him. See what I mean by making drama out of nothing?
It's never going to end.
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