Question:
My parenting time question deals with the amount of travel I am doing for child custody exchanges.
My divorce decree does not address transportation and who travels how far when exchanging the children. My children live far from me, but I still make the long drive every weekend to see them.
This significantly cuts into my parenting time – I don’t count sitting in the car as quality time – and my travel and gas expenses are enormous while my ex-wife stays put and doesn’t pay for anything.
Is there anything I can do to modify the child custody agreement or input language into our divorce decree that discusses how to handle parenting time pick ups and drop offs?
Answer:
This answer only includes general divorce help for men since I am only licensed to practice in Indiana and am thus unable to provide any financial advice on divorce on laws in other states.
Regarding the distance between you and your children, typically parents must meet each other halfway. If there is a great distance between the two parents, such as here, then they still need to meet halfway. Another option is you pick them up at her house, and, when his parenting time is over, she picks them up at your house and takes them home.
If the distance is too great for every weekend, then there may be other options for you to exercise parenting time.
Where I practice, there is a parenting time schedule when distance is a factor, meaning the schedule needs to be different than parents living in the same town. This type of schedule when distance is a factor means that you may not see the children every weekend, but you’ll see them for longer periods of time throughout the year, such as during school breaks.
Divorced Dads Guide:
This may work out better for the children because they won’t be in the car every weekend, but they still get to spend a lot of time with their dad during the year.
Therefore, regarding what you can do, you can take this matter before the judge, so you can address that you meet halfway, maybe not every weekend as it is too burdensome on both parties and the children, but at the times of year when you’ll have the children for the long breaks from school.
Please understand that my opinions are based upon the limited facts that you provided to me. For financial advice on divorce, I urge you to contact a divorce lawyer.
To set up an appointment with a Cordell & Cordell mens divorce attorney, including Indiana Divorce Lawyer Rachael S. Cunningham, please contact Cordell & Cordell.
transportation
I too have struggled with this. I’ve been divorced nearly 13 years and my son is 15. I have always been the one to pick him up and drop him off, sometimes I’d get last minute instructions to go to some other location ie a grandparent’s or aunts. My ex has taken several liberties such as going out of town and preventing me from seeing my son on my weekend. I am not a wealthy or well to do but I did present my situation to a lawyer. She stated that in GA, I could pursue contempt charges but I’d spend a lot of money only to get her scolded by a judge. My lawyer did write a letter addressing this and also included the issue of transportation. She suggested that we trade pick up responsibilities and we followed that for about a year and it was great, until we moved 2.8 miles further away. My ex then refused to pick our son up and threaten to report me to the police. Well now I’m back where I was before.