I don’t see that you’re in contempt. If he missed his scheduled weekend, and you’re offering yours, then I see that as a nice thing.
Personally speaking, unless there is a huge conflict, I would allow him to pick-up and drop off as he requested. You still get your weekend, and he gets to see his Dad. The difference between Monday @ 4:30 and Tuesday morning is no big deal (unless something urgent was already scheduled).
Remember, this is what is best for your son.
If he contacts his attorney he will have to show that he is attempting to alter the schedule and his attorney will likely tell him that there’s nothing to be done. It sounds to me as though your ex has other plans for his Friday & Saturday night and since the daycare is closed on Monday (If I read this right) you are essentially just moving the visitations back two days and he is missing one overnight. Instead of Friday night - Monday morning, he has Sunday morning - Tuesday morning. Swapping weekends is sometime necessary but it sounds as though you generally have more time with your child.
No you are not in contempt of the order but it’s very unrealistic to stick to a custody order. There are always going to be changes in schedules and needs. As long as the visitations do not interfere with school or some other necessity then you should consider allowing it to happen, even though it’s not a scheduled visitation. Keep record of it if you think that you will end up back in court, but realistically, if you stick to the court order word for word, you are all going to end up with conflicts at one point or another. Since you and your ex do not live in the same state, it makes visitations fewer. Since your ex is in the military, it’s possible that there could come a time when he is forced to give up his visitations.
Though you have primary physical custody, it would be better for your child that you and your ex try to work together as much as possible. It wouldn’t hurt to remind your ex of this either when you tell him that legally you don’t have to allow. Ask him to please try to follow some sort of schedule with your child and that you two continue communicating and trying to work this out. Your doing this for your child.
Unless it was his weekend to have visitation then you are not in contempt of the court order.
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You only have to give him what is specified in the Court Order. He has no case unless you are denying him his “rights”. DO NOT let him bully you! DO NOT! You’re ok.
We have joint custody with me as the primary custodian.
He has every other weekend and certain holidays. I did a visitation calender based off the court order. The court order stated that the visitation and child support would take effect 1 February (we were in court 30 January.) The actual order was not signed until 9 May, but the judge read aloud in court the order and what was suppose to happen.
I was told that I had to strictly abide by the court order and the judge/court could not do anything about issues that occur when an agreement between us was made that deviated from the court-order (swapping weekends, ect…)
My ex is residing in GA. The last time he saw our son was the weekend of 10 Oct.
He emailed me wanting to pick-up our son this Sunday morning and dropping him off at daycare Tuesday morning. This is officially my weekend; but our son needs to see his dad.
Visitation is suppose to be picking up at the school/daycare after school hours on Friday and dropping off at school/daycare the following Monday for the child to attend school/daycare.
Because of our schedule here and the fact daycare is closed I offered the following:
That he could pick-up our son from the daycare by 5:15 pm Friday night or we could meet at the park in ****** Saturday morning and he had to return our son to daycare by 4:30 pm Monday.
He emailed me stating he would no be in town until Saturday afternoon and that unless I was willing to be more flexible he would take that as a no. I counter offered to meet him SAturday when he came into town.
I know for a fact that he gets off work around 5:00 pm Friday evening and that he has a 4-day weekend (he is military) with SAt, Sun, Mon, Tue off. He has more time to use, but it is not convienent to him.
He does not take our sons life here into consideration and any possible schedule conflicts or that it is officially my weekend.
He has not replied, and probably won’t. I think he will probably contact his attorney stating that I will not allow him to see our son, when I have offered a plan that is not the same as he asked for - he just doesn’t agree with it.
Am I wrong? Am I in contempt?