hi, this might get a little long because it's a complicated situation but something happened with my boyfriend and his daughter this weekend and i need some advice about whether anything illegal occurred and if there is anything we can do about it.

anyway, the bm asked my bf if he could keep sd4 this weekend because she was having surgery on her ankle, so he was finally going to get to see her this weekend after almost a month of being denied visitation. sd was dropped off to me friday evening and i watched her until my bf got home from work which turned out to be late, and he didn't arrive home until about 10pm. once he got home the three of us left to go spend the rest of the evening at my bf's mother's house so sd's grandmother could visit with her also. well, my bf's two sisters (sd's aunts) were there and the four of us (the two sisters, my bf, and myself) got into an argument about a previous issue that had happened a couple weeks prior. the two sisters got angry and left the house and went home to where they stayed with their father.

we left that evening around 11:30 pm and sd fell asleep in the car on the way home, making the time my bf had spent with her so far about an hour and a half.

the next morning we woke up around 9:30am and left the house to take sd shopping. before we went to the store we wanted to take sd to visit my bf's aunt because it'd been months since she'd seen sd also. when we arrived at his aunt's house, his aunt told him that his mother had been trying to get ahold of him earlier that morning and told him to call her, which he did.

when he called his mom, she informed him that bm had been trying to call him all day to tell him to bring sd home immediately. my bf had no idea what she was talking about since the arrangement was that he was to meet bm's parents the next morning to drop sd off. so he called bm to find out what was going on and bm went off on him and threatening to call the police on him for kidnapping if he didn't bring sd home that second.

since they were angry at my bf and i, my bf's sisters had called bm later the previous night claiming that he was drinking and driving in the car with sd riding without a carseat. it was true that she wasn't in a car seat but the reason was that the last time my bf got to see sd he let bm take the only car seat that he had, and she had not returned it even though she knew he didn't have another one. she was buckled in though with the seatbelt. and he did drink a couple of beers but i drove and i didn't drink anything, so they outright lied to her. anyway, he told her he would meet her parents the next morning as arranged, and she started throwing insults so he hung up the phone.

we went ahead to the store and took sd shopping and headed home around 3:30. we got home around 4pm and lo and behold, guess who pulls in the driveway RIGHT behind us, but bm's parents. they got out and took sd by the hand and buckled her into her car seat, told my bf they were "in the neighborhood" (which is fishy anyway because none of her family knows where our apartment is in our town, so the fact that they were right on our tail leads us to beleive they waited and followed us to our apartment) and asked him to get her things. he went into the apartment and i followed him and basically told him to go out there and tell them to f*** off, but he said he didn't want to get into a fight with bm's father because it wasn't him pushing the issue, it was bm who he should be arguing with, so he went ahead and let him take her even though i told him not to. bm's dad didn't even let my bf tell his daughter goodbye or give her a kiss or a hug or anything, they simply left. this was at 4pm making the total time he spent with her about 8 hours in the past month. and after all this who knows how long it will be before he gets to see her again.

my question is, is it legal for the mother to deny him visitation like this if he pays his child support every month (which he does)? what do we need to do to make sure this kind of thing doesn't keep happening? and did she do anything illegal? should he have done anything differently than he did? this situation just confuses me to no end so please help if you have any ideas!!!