My husband and I got married in January and he has a 7 year daughter. Before we got married we talked about what would be a better schedule for his daughter. It had been she would come Friday night to Monday morning and be with her mom during the week. We talked about having her a week at a time. We thought it would give her more stability. When my husband first talked about it with her she said that we would need our time and that my step daughter and I would need to adjust so we waited a few months and my husband brought it up again and the mom would keep ignoring him or changing the subject. She finally said she has one month left of school (which wasn't the case when we first talked about it) and that it wouldn't be good to change then. So when summer started we started the week to week thing. Then after a month of this she decided she didn't want to do it anymore and we needed to go back to the other schedule. After not working for over three years she went and got a job Friday and Saturday doing hair and her argument was that she works the weekends and my husband works during the week so my step daughter should be with whatever parent is not working and basically called me a nanny. And no I am not a nanny. I do not get paid. I can't quit whenever I want.I am going to be apart of her life forever. When my husband and I have kids, which we are trying, they will be her siblings. We're a family and I take great offense that my role is of a nanny. Anyway, she fought against the week on and off and for the month of July she had my step daughter for almost three weeks with out us hardly having her because her family was in town and each week decided to stay another week but that wasn't true. My step daughter said they had left awhile ago when we got her again. So we got her for a week and now she is going back to school and we want to continue doing a week at a time especially during the school year but she refuses. She and my husband have joint custody and have been able to solve things without the court for four years. My husband has bent over backwards for his daughter and has even left a great job to move states when the mom decided it was time to move. She was even having money problems and my husband started giving her a little more in child support to help her out. He stopped when he found out she bought a new phone, i pad, and $20 a week for my step daughter. She lives in her dads basement, refuses to work full time, lives off food stamps and welfare, and she doesn't care about my step daughters education. I am in school to be a teacher ( I know I have probably made a million errors. Don't judge. I'm typing fast) and I am a substitute at the elementary schools in my area and have worked for a school for 6 years where I worked closely with teachers and taught reading to kids falling behind. Education is so important to me. Mom would never tell dad when parent teacher conference was after first semester even though he always asked and she would ignore him. She would tell him she was doing great in school and they were working really hard. My husband believed that was true. My step daughter had good grades in Kindergarten and she is so smart. Mom went on a trip for two weeks so step daughter stayed with us and it happened to be at the end of the third quarter and we got her report card. She was really behind and had missed about 20 days of school. My husband was so upset. The last quarter we worked hard help her grades but we never even saw the final report card. When it was brought up to mom she said that the school she went to in Kindergarten which is a really great charter school taught her everything wrong and her teacher couldn't catch her up. Step daughter says she would quickly do homework before bed and when she came home from school mom would be asleep or watching tv and that she always plays on the ipad while her mom watches tv every night. She refuses to talk in person. In their papers it says that if they can't agree then they get a mediator and when my husband brings that up to her she says he is just threatening her. My step daughter loves to come over and has really adapted to the new situation. She and I have developed a good relationship and I just want whats best for her. Do we have a case to take to a mediator and win a week at time? Has anyone been in this situation?