So my fiancé has a document created by his ex wife's lawyer (smart huh?) that stated that following the divorce he would have 50/50 custody and no child support. His ex has never followed this document. When she first left him she left all three kids with him for 6 mths and visited 3x. Recently, the last two summers, she decided she could not her oldest boy so she left him off with his dad for the summer, kept the daughter and the youngest went back and forth. He has had the boys every weekend for two years that I'm aware of. So my point is it has been whatever she wanted despite the custody agreement. He had wanted to avoid going via courts because then you get designated holidays etc.

Anyway two months ago she told him it would be best for the kids to have the stability of one place during the school week and the arrangement then changed to her having them Mon-Thurs and he would have them 3 nights a week.

Then they met for a child support hearing. She was there with the best lawyer in town and he had none because he couldn't afford one. (He now has a free lawyer) The magistrate (is this what they are called?) lets the exes lawyer speak first- and she stands there and blatantly lies: Says that Ex has full custody and he has VISITATION. He then holds up the document that says 50/50 that she won't abide by and the magistrate says "I'm not concerned with that Sir...(with custody agreement) This is a child support hearing" He says to his Ex "Are you going to sit there and blatantly lie like that?

Anyway, he was ordered to pay an amount that coupled with his other obligations leaves him $150 a month roughly for food/gas/insurance. Of course I'm picking up the slack to help make ends meet but this devastated him.

Following the court hearing she continued to drop the boys off the last few weekends. I kept bringing this up to him- how is she going to say she has full custody and take your entire paycheck and then get her weekends free?

So things came to a head last night. His brother mentioned to him that he should just spend time during the day with the kids and then take them back to her house for the evening while he's paying all his money for this supposed arrangement. So he did. The boys blew up and cried and spewed all the crap their mother has fed them about him being a bad dad and how he must not love them etc but he held strong and dropped them off at her house. (They had spent the whole day playing video games contently at his house.)

Ex calls in a PANIC: "I have to go to work! My husband and I work tonight! Kids (11, 13, and 14) will be alone" So my fiancé says "Pay a babysitter with the money I send you. She says "I was gonna give you some of that back so you can buy Christmas presents" and he says "No just tell the kids that half the gifts you get them are from me"

I feel like this is only one battle won in war. It's so sad for the kids but I'm glad he is finally sticking up for himself.