Custody Concerns II:
On Tuesday we talked a bit about some of the things to take into consideration when deciding which parent should be primary care giver for the minor children. Today I thought it might be helpful to encourage some discussion and thought about a few of the problems that can come up once that decision has been made.
Divorce is never an easy thing as I’m sure most of you are aware; it’s also not something which is simply over as soon as the judge makes his ruling. Ideally that would be great were it true but unfortunately divorce seems to breed a form of drama all it’s own.
The situations I’m going to mention here are probably the three most common sources of difficulty in custody arrangements, if you’ve given some thought to preparing for each of these then you should be well ahead of the game:
- Romance; odds are pretty good that eventually your ex will find someone new and become involved in a romantic relationship. This can be a difficult experience on a host of levels not the least of which is the idea that some other guy is now spending a great deal of time with YOUR kids! In fact if she is the primary care-giver he may be spending more time with them than you are. In the best of situations this can be difficult simply because your children may think he’s kind of neat and may talk about him quite a lot; not an easy thing to hear especially if you’re still harboring some feelings for the ex-wife. It’s easy to respond poorly to this situation and wind up alienating your children at the very time you are wanting to draw them closer to you. To make matters worse you may have reason to believe that this individual posses a threat to your children; this is when things get really complicated! The first impulse is to protect your children by forcing this person to stay away from them. The problem with this approach is you really can’t force anything at this point without the collaboration of the court, law enforcement or Child Protective Services and to enlist their aide you need solid and convincing proof. We’ll talk more about this in Saturday’s post.
- Moving; Western culture tends to be pretty fluid with families moving from one town to another fairly frequently; this doesn’t suddenly stop just because you’re divorced. In fact there is a tendency for one or both parties to move to a new location within a relatively short time of concluding the divorce. Maybe for a new job, to be closer to supportive family or just to get a fresh start on life, whatever the reason if there are children involved odds are that distance may suddenly become an issue. This is one situation in which going the extra mile to make the divorce as amicable as possible can really pay off. If you and your ex-spouse haven’t engaged in a war during the divorce process and are still able to hold civil discussions about what is best for the children then there is a chance that a potential move can either be diverted or modified so as to lessen the impact on the children. Otherwise, just prepare yourself to make some long trips to pick the children up for their visits and don’t succumb to the temptation to decrease the frequency or length of the visits due to convenience. I know several men who barely have any relationship at all with their children because they haven’t made the sacrifices in time and money necessary to maintain regular contact.
- Legal challenges; this is more likely to happen if you are the one who ends up being the primary caregiver. Social conventions still tend to assume that the woman is naturally somehow the better parent. When a guy ends up with physical custody of the children it naturally puts your ex in the position of feeling some social condemnation and thus pressure to fight to “get them back”. The result can be several years of constant legal warfare with some pretty dirty tactics being used against you. We’ll discuss that a bit more in depth on Saturday but for now let me just note that I’ve had personal experience with this and the best tactic for me was to pay attention to the details of the children’s care, document everything and find an attorney who knows their stuff. After awhile the other party will start doing themselves more harm than good with the constant pettiness; so patience, patience, patience.
These are the three big sources of problems in custody arrangements; or at least they have been in my experience.
Saturday I’ll post on some of the most common tactics used in custody warfare and what I’ve learned regarding each one in real life application.
Until then everyone be well
Bill
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