WE had an emergency hearing & it still took four months. BM up and moved 400 miles away & wanted DH to take far less then the standard visitation & do transportation. She refused to budge - he had nothing to lose. Cost $10,000.00 or so. But she had to move back or give up custody - so it was to his benefit. Good luck to you.

From the first filing of their custody suit until it made it to court took 9+ mos.

The background and rest of the story:

My DW was a 16yo single mom and in most states single moms get custody .... period. No paternity was entered until later when the SpermIdiot wanted paternity established. Then he freaked out when CS was set at $110/mo. He was 22 when my SS was born.

My DW went on to graduate from HS with her class with honors then left the state with SS to go to college. Not a word from DickHead until the grapevine informed him that DW was dating someone. Then he got all paternal, whined to SpermGrandMa and she filed for custody for her toothless moron son...... Then the battle started. It took nearly a year from the time DickHead's custody petition was filed and they delayed the court date a half a dozen times. In that time my wife and I married, DickHead (now 24) married his 16yo girlfriend to keep form going to prision for statutory rape (divorced her 3mos after our court date), we ended up in court, the judge handed him his ass, my wife retained custody and visitation was established at 7wks/year (5wks summer, 1wk winter, 1wk spring)and CS was raised to a whopping $133/mo.

Money does play a big factor. When it all started my DW was a single teen mom college student on welfare. SpermGrandMa and SpermGrandPa were bankrolling the SpermIdiot's legal bills. When I joined the mix we were just about at parity. Over the next 5-8 years I finished an MBA, my wife finished her double major BS with honors, an MBA with honors and became a CPA. 8 years after they tried for custody we owned their idiot asses. While we had focused on education, raising the kid and on our careers DickHead had spawned 3 more out of wedlock children by 2 more womb donors. For the last 8 years of the Custody/Visitation/Support order they did what they were told when they were told or threatened to kick their asses in court.

Over the next 8 years we ended up in front of a judge 3 more times. Twice at their behest and once at ours. We kicked ass every time. Total legal cost to us was ~$10K. Total CS paid by SpermGrandMa and SpermGrandPa on behalf of DickHead over 17 years..... ~$45K. Total cost of our half of visitation travel costs ....... ~$11.5K. So they actually paid for all of our legal fees and all of the visitation travel costs as well as paying for $23K of vacations for us. Gotta love karma.

Preventing your kid from being totally jacked by the shallow and polluted end of his gene pool .... PRICELESS!!!!

Baring the idiot asses of the blended family opposition publically and in court ...... AWESOME!!!!!!

So, use every tool you have to protect your Skids from the toxic half of their blended family. Most importantly, have fun while you do it.

IMHO of course.

Good luck.

Ours took 18+ mos. Ended just prior to a custodial evaluation, when he told me I could have the kids if I moved away. If I chose not to do so (I had told him we would stay there until and unless he moved), he would fight me for full physical and legal. Yes, you read that right. I could have the kids if I moved them away from him. That ran me !20k.

In the 15 years since, we had one additional situation that required court. That took ~12 mos. Due to his delays, he was ordered to pay a large portion of my legal fees. Roughly $15k.

Ours took 1.5 years. 18 months. From when DH first filed to compel a paternity test to the final CO on child support. BM had gone to another state before SS was born though, so we had a lot of cross jurisdiction, lawyer switching to do.

15k in legal fees later, all we got was "You pay x amount every month based on your income." It was pure bullshit. The only reason it ended was because our lawyer got fed up with BM and her lawyer trying to drag it on (BM knew this was the last and only connection to DH so she was milking it for all it was worth) that he sent a certified letter of stepping down as DH's counsel to them, so the process would have taken much longer and much more expensive to BM had he gotten a new counsel. (It basically would have began from the beginning again.)

This bluff helped end it, as well as made BM back off on getting DH's tax returns every year.

No visitation was set, or else it would have taken even longer. Neither lawyer wanted to go in front of a judge, thinking both their clients can work it out.

My opinion is, if it seems to be taking longer than you think necessary, compel your lawyer to take it to court and let the judge decide, especially if you're doong everything by the books.

ours has been going on for 2 years. BM has more money than we do, and even tho she has lost legal custody so far, she still has 50% physical. We have gone thru mediation, GAL's, and we are now awaiting a trial...but the wait for trial dates is into May.