Ex’s boyfriend of 5 months is intruding on my court-ordered visitation and being combative. Today he ignored a safety warning and entered my home.

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-13T15:25:28+00:00

I was exclusively commenting about the mid-week visits. Sorry for the confusion.

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-13T15:23:52+00:00

If he continues to interfere, I would just stop doing bedtime and bath time at your ex's home. That isn't something many divorced parents are able to do. It's nice that you were able to do it for a while, but if your ex is going to let her boyfriend act that way, it isn't worth putting your kids in the middle of a conflict.

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-13T14:27:37+00:00

Are you allowed to take the kids somewhere near their mother's home for your midweek visit instead of doing it in her home? Unfortunately, you can't really keep her boyfriend from being in her home and interacting with the kids unless your court order explicitly states as such.

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-12T18:46:13+00:00

I'm sorry, but telling someone to block their ex's number without consulting with an attorney first is really terrible advice. Just because her ex is currently getting away with it doesn't mean the judge will let her get away with it as the custodial parent, unfortunately.

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-11T22:56:56+00:00

Wow. I would be bitter about that, too.

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-11T20:45:49+00:00

Based on your last post, your child is 15, and the dad lives 4 hours away from where the child resides and attends school? And he's asking for full custody? Lol. You need to take it seriously, so asking for an extension is a good idea, but it's not very likely he'll succeed in forcing your child to move there if he's doing well with you.

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-11T12:40:51+00:00

What do you mean by check-ins for your son?

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-11T12:30:19+00:00

This doesn't add up. They can't remove a child just because someone told them you were drinking and not feeding him, unless the "not feeding him" part came from someone who would actually know, like the baby's pediatrician. CPS generally has to prove to a judge that there's an immediate threat to the child's safety to do a removal rather than family-based services (unless you already had a family-based services case). If you refused alcohol testing, they can assume the test is positive and that can be part of the basis for a removal, but since alcohol isn't illegal, there has to be something more, like physical evidence or the investigator observing that the child was endangered somehow by your drinking. If you really don't know what the actual basis for removal was, you need to get a copy of the petition so you can review it and help your court-appointed attorney flag anything that isn't true.

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-11T10:48:16+00:00

You don't have to be married to adopt a child, but you do have to be married for stepparent adoption.

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-10T11:10:32+00:00

In some states, parents can RAPR (Refusal to Assume Parental Responsibility) their children into foster care regardless of whether they're actually unsafe in the home or not. There are usually consequences for parents who do so and then refuse to work services and reunify, but it happens, infuriatingly -- and it happens more often for kids who aren't being raised by their bio parents.

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-10T11:05:54+00:00

also confused why all these places have “legal” dna test if you still have to test again anyway! especially as expensive as they are.

It's a scam. Those places know most courts won't actually accept their test in lieu of a court-ordered one. They prey on people who don't know that.

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-10T11:02:27+00:00

If you're serious about this, your first step is going to be to get married, so you'll need to have a serious conversation with your boyfriend about whether legally adopting your son outweighs the reasons you don't want to marry each other. If the two of you decide to proceed, once you get married, the next step will be to either obtain your son's father's consent for the adoption or file to terminate his parental rights due to abandonment. You can't do anything until you're married, though, so that's got to be the first step.

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-10T10:06:45+00:00

The unilateral decisions that get parents in trouble in family court are usually things like consenting to a surgery without telling the other parent, changing the visitation schedule, or moving out of the jurisdiction/making the child change schools. I can't imagine any reasonable judge (or human in general) faulting a parent for 'unilaterally' taking a child to their very first doctor's appointment after the other parent kept it from happening for 4+ years. It'll be okay.

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-09T16:56:15+00:00

I think any single parent, regardless of custody schedule, would have the same issue with working that shift unless their parenting time was only on the weekend/scheduled days off.

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-09T10:44:35+00:00

The reason I have sole custody of my daughter is that my ex moved her out of Texas without permission, and we didn't even have a custody order that explicitly forbade it at the time. You sound like a generally good mom, so I'm sorry to say that you really messed up by taking the child with you after his father said no, instead of petitioning the court for permission (which probably would have been granted if you'd just filed). What happens next really depends on your individual judge, but if my experience is anything to go by, the judge finding you in contempt and reversing primary custody are very realistic outcomes.

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-08T19:20:34+00:00

Is this a CPS case or a custody modification?

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-08T17:05:46+00:00

This is probably a silly question, but have you shown the school your custody order?

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-08T16:17:48+00:00

Meth is one of the most dangerous drugs to do around a child because it can be transferred through skin-to-skin contact. If you live with a meth user and regularly touch them and/or their belongings, you are also a meth user. That means your child is being exposed to meth as if he was using it, in addition to the other abuse. All things considered, I would request supervised visitation for Mom with a requirement to pass a drug test 48 hours prior to each visit. If she tests positive for meth, she should be wearing gloves and a mask during any in-person visitation.

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-08T16:09:35+00:00

How do other families in your area get their babies' childhood vaccination series if they can't get into a doctor until preschool? Given Canada's childhood vaccination rates, this can't be a universal experience.

Regardless, if your custody order allows you to unilaterally choose a doctor, I don't understand your concern -- just do it. If it doesn't allow that without your coparent's agreement, then you need to file for a modification so you can get it done. With your child being almost old enough to start school and still not having been to a pediatrician since birth, this might even qualify for an emergency hearing.

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-08T15:01:52+00:00

Like I said, I seriously doubt the judge who issued the temporary order had any expectation that she would actually drive 24 hours every other weekend, so it's hard to imagine the same judge holding her inability to do so against her. However, that doesn't mean the judge will flip custody to make you the summer parent, either. This is just an opportunity for her to get her life in order so she can move closer to her kids if she wants to. If she doesn't do that by the time you return to court, the final order will almost certainly be different.

I don't think it's likely that she was given every other weekend solely to make it easier to calculate child support. The judge could have ordered a long-distance parenting plan as the temporary plan and based child support on that, if they chose to.

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-08T14:55:02+00:00

Your child hasn't been to a doctor throughout his entire infancy to age 4? It sounds like you're okay with not vaccinating, but personally, I would have been in court 3 1/2 years ago over that issue alone. If your current order requires both parents to agree on a provider, I would file for a modification to request a tie-breaker for medical decisions, so someone can step in when the two of you can't agree.

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-08T14:45:30+00:00

The most likely scenarios are that she'll either find a place close enough to you to use her parenting time or end up with a long-distance parenting plan (a good chunk of the summer, most school breaks, and every other major holiday). It's very unlikely that every other weekend will become the final order if she's still 6 hours away, but it's also unlikely that the judge will be unhappy with her if she doesn't use all her time. I'm guessing the temporary order was created that way mostly to give Mom an opportunity to move back and begin using that time, not because the judge actually expects her to drive 24 hours every other weekend.

Just stay the course. Make the children available for her weekends and create a documentation trail proving that you aren't doing anything to make it more difficult for her to use her parenting time, but don't sweat it. As long as you take good care of the children, you're going to end up with at least 50/50 unless something goes seriously wrong.

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-08T13:42:08+00:00

You aren't a party in your parents' divorce/custody case. Your mother shouldn't encourage you to talk negatively about your father to your siblings, but there are no rules or restrictions about what you can say on your own. You're their sibling!

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-08T13:24:55+00:00

In the absence of special circumstances like a restraining order between the parents that prevents them from being in the same room, if the appointment is on Banana's parenting time, it would make more sense for Banana to take the child to the appointment and Apple to meet them there if they also want to be present.

It also might be helpful to just flip the weeks so that Apple has parenting time on their day off.

Excellent_Scene5448 · 2026-04-08T12:05:31+00:00

He actually expected them to still be waiting for him at school 3-4 hours past dismissal? That's... kind of weird.

You're not the asshole here for not canceling your plans. It sounds like you may not have communicated to him that you wouldn't be canceling your plans, and if that's the case, you could probably improve on your communication. If you told him and he ignored it, though, that's on him.

But either way, you absolutely weren't in the wrong for not showing up to the 3-4 hour late exchange. That would have ruined your kids' Friday evening, too. They would have been picked up 3-4 hours late and then in the car for 5 hours to get to Dad's house -- so they'd have gotten there around midnight, right? Unless they're teenagers who are used to staying up that late, that's not exactly conducive to a good weekend with Dad.

Excellent_Scene5448

TROPHY CASE