My ex wife and I recently settled custody in mediation after her being unwilling to do so for over two years now. The new consent order has been in place for less than two months and she has already been caught not abiding by the terms in the order on three occasions and has possibly not followed it more than that but I have no proof of the other times. If the things she were doing were small, unimportant matters I would not care, but she she is breaking the order in big ways. Example of her refusal to follow the order: Included in the order is first right of refusal when the other parent needs overnight care for the child. Last week she went to NY and I was keeping my son for the weekend. I normally return him to her care on Sunday evenings. Her parents picked my son up instead of her and he ended up staying the night with them because her plane didn’t get in until 8:00 and it was past his bedtime. This wasn’t something that came up at the last minute, her trip had been planned for months and I tried to get her to tell me when her plane was coming in so he could stay with me and us follow the court order. Again this weekend my son has been with me and she is traveling. She didn’t tell me she was traveling beforehand though. I picked up my son on Thursday night and on Friday morning she sent an email simply stating she would be unavailable thru Sunday and if there were any emergencies with our son then I needed to contact her parents instead of her. I had no reason to believe from that email that she would not be present on Sunday for the exchange. Her parents were the ones who came to pick him up and I got out of the car and simply asked her father if she was back in town yet. He began yelling at me in front of my three year old saying he did not have to answer my questions and he didnt’ know when she was coming back. I explained that if she was not going to be back in town tonight or if they had planned on him staying with them instead of his mother that this was unacceptable and the order in place states she has to offer me first right of refusal. He said no she doesn’t and if you don’t give him to me right now I’m calling the cops. I said ok call them. When the police officer arrived, he confirmed everything I had said and told me I could leave with my son.
Also, my son is living with my ex’s parents Tuesday morning thru Thursday evening every week. Before the consent order was signed she was living with her parents so she saw him in the evenings but now he is simply living with them during the week. We had discussed this a little during mediation, but I was under the impression this would be only during the school year and not continue during the summer. I recently found out that she plans on keeping this up all summer long. Since the first right of refusal is included in the court order and she has not discussed this with me at all, she will be breaking the court order if she does this.
I said all that to ask this simple question… What can I do? My son has turned into a completely different child since all of this has happened. He was always a happy go lucky kid and now he is a ball of anxiety and constantly crying during exchanges, especially when his grandparents pick him up saying he doesn’t want to go with them. I have no idea what to do since the consent order is less than three months old. Since she is already breaking it on a regular basis is there a way that I can file for a TPA or some sort of Emergency Custody? I also want to file for Full Custody. My home environment is much more stable than hers and I felt before that if we could come to an agreement it would be best, but I can see now that this is NOT what is best for my son.
Thanks for any help you can give!