I thought the best way to begin this blog space would be to offer the timeline story of the how and the why of this preposterous nightmare.
Lets just say the visitation process has been strained, to put it lightly, from the beginning. Not to burden you with the details of the relentless onslaught of tactics to shorten or disrupt my visitation periods but they were consistent and exhausting.
If the visitation period was to last more than a weekend then incessant phone calls would rain in throughout the visitation period. It's very difficult to have quality time with your daughter when you are the non-primary parent when the primary parent is calling you all the time to talk to the child. Especially when the child is 3, 4, 5 years old and at any given time something the mother says can invoke the process of missing the primary parent and now you spend the next hour our so reconnecting and diverting their attention away from the the process of wanting to be with the primary parent. It is one of the most cruel things in the world.
This intemperate behavior continued without much reproach until the holiday season of 2009.
As Christmas approached in 2009 I was informed by the X that the only time I would get to see my daughter over the Christmas break would be the weekend prior to Christmas. The decree states that I am to get her for one week. The Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays are alternated and in 2009 my holiday was Thanksgiving and the X would get Christmas, but only the week of Christmas. Not the entire 2 weeks.
Thanksgiving that year was tested as well and at this point I was very frustrated and lashed out that she should just keep her for the entire time throughout the holiday, including the weekend before. I later retracted that and did get her for the weekend before but the catalyst to this battle as it stands now was being denied not only my allotted week of Christmas but then getting an email from the X at the beginning of 2010 stating that she has decided to remain out of town for an extended period of time and that I would not get my weekend visitation either.
This marked a change in the X actually denying me structured visitation by not being in town and blatantly saying she was denying my visitation rights. There was an unofficial week scheduled for the beginning of the 2010 year as well but that was retracted. Supposedly they were still out of town but I later learned different. They were here the entire time but I was not given the opportunity to see my daughter. I went well over 6 weeks without seeing my daughter during that period of time. I thought that was long but later I was to learn differently.
At this point I did not know what to do and so I approached a lawyer about what was going on.
After some discussion it was determined that it might be $5000 to settle the case, possibly get a ruling of her being in contempt of the decree and implement an entirely new decree that would spell out some details that were left out of the first and clear up some of the unclear parts of the first one.
Had I known now what I didn't know then I really don't know that I would have done anything differently. The fact is at this point the case is still in limbo, almost 2 years later. I have no visitation right now and my options are exhausted.
I am aghast that this is what we have in place for this type of behavior and abuse within our country. The sad part is - divorces happen and visitation needs to be implemented so each parent can participate in the childrens lives. There are laws in place to intervene if the father does not pay child support but there is nothing in place when a stand-up father's rights are being violated by the other parent.
It is time for some change. Please share any comments or ideas below.
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