Not sure if you have kids of you own but if you do, you need to go ahead with whatever plans you had with your children and let your DH stay behind and deal with BM drama and schedule changes.

Plan a trip to the zoo, If DH agrees to let BM have the kids for 4 hour or so, "Sorry DH, we made plans and are keeping them. You can stay home with SD and do the drop off and pick up while we do what we planned to do"

One of two things will happen, either SD will get sick of missing out on the fun and say NO to BM's requests of your time or TWO your DH will get sick and tired of being on BM time schedule.

She couldn't arrange this on HER time? Oh, of course not, because this is her way of proving who is boss.

Bio usually changes her mind 3 times about location on where exchange happens and she usually tried to fight with my DH about it EVERY TIME. Causing multiple phone calls and texts back and forth.

To me, it sounds like she's just showing who is in control. Your DH needs to put a stop to this.

You cannot value your DH's time with his kids more than he does. Make plans without your SO. Take the rest of the kids to do whatever you had planned without your husband going on these weekends so he can't sit around waiting for her then come join y'all later.

101Stepmom101,

You are absolutely correct. One thing that your husband should understand is that the court order is the court order. The amount of visitation time is no more a suggestion than the amount of child support. As pertaining to child custody, visitation, and child support, the idea is for BOTH PARENTS to look after the child's best interests - financially and emotionally. One piece of advice that my lawyer had given me over ten years ago was that it was very important for child support to be paid on time and for visitation schedule to be followed religiously.

He also advised me that the court understands that things come up the require both parents to be flexible. However, the total amount of time the non-custodial parent spends with their child should ultimately never face a reduction. Also, flexibility should be exercised with discretion. Flexibility for the sake of being a good citizen can easily become a slippery slope that results in the visitation schedule becoming arbitrary in comparison to what is in the court order. This undermines the stability and consistency that is important for kids - particularly those that live in two different households.

I don't let discussions about the visitation schedule get out of control. The way that I see it is that, if the weekend is my weekend, it is my choice to be flexible or not. It takes two people to have an argument. I'd politely excuse myself and would hang up on her if I must. If she starts a barrage of texts, I'd block her number for an hour. She knows that I will be at her house to get my daughter on the Friday before the contested weekend like clockwork. With that said, here is my opinion in the form of what I would do in your husband's situation:

If my daughter's mom called me and said "I need to have her this weekend because we have a hair appointment", my answer would be "Sorry, but we have plans". That's it. There would be nothing on the end of that sentence that would indicate that the door was open for negotiation. I would tell her to have a nice day and excuse myself. I would not hang on the phone and listen to silence, sighs, or give her a chance to push harder.

Now, if my daughter's mom called me and said "My sister's wedding is during your weekend and we need to get our hair done the morning of the wedding", my answer would be "If I can have her the weekend of (insert preferable date here), that would be OK for me". If she does not agree, then there is no deal. I don't care if the weekend that I choose happens to have another event, holiday, etc. If she agrees, I send her a meeting request (yes, from my e-mail account) that encompasses the alternate weekend and the content of the meeting request has a summary of our discussion.

You see, the reason that I do this is that, unless she accepts the meeting request, the deal is off. That way, if she tries to renege on the alternate arrangement, I have evidence of the deal going bad. She knows why she gets the meeting request - it's to hold her accountable as well as to keep a record of how often she requests changes. So, not only does she not renege on these alternate arrangements, she doesn't make a habit of them.

Also, I do not exercise flexibility with a mere part of my weekend. Flexibility in my case always comes in the form of trading weekends. We live too far away from each other to mess around with splitting days and hours. It also makes for easier time accounting.

I hope this helps.

Based on your description.. you would do yourself a favor by getting DH a book on Co-dependency. He and BM are likely the poster child example of the problem.

NO is the most powerful word your DH needs to add to his vocabulary with BM. He needs to use it often.