Child support modification

[AprM]

Their Mother is busy at a high powered job and that's your ammo against her? Better take a good luck at what you really want before you go down that road.

No, that's not my ammo against her. If she's going to continuously leave the kids at our doorstep to advance her career, that's her choice. It's also our choice to take the kids in and house them and care for them and love them. However, it is not our responsibility to pay child support to their mother and also bear the extra burden of keeping the kids for extended times that are not documented or required per their agreement. I do not want to take the kids away from her. I want to have the actual events unfolding to be documented and legally binding. The way things are going now DH is paying support as if he was a part time uninvolved parent, which is not the case.

 

[ivinsfan]

No, that's not my ammo against her. If she's going to continuously leave the kids at our doorstep to advance her career, that's her choice. It's also our choice to take the kids in and house them and care for them and love them. However, it is not our responsibility to pay child support to their mother and also bear the extra burden of keeping the kids for extended times that are not documented or required per their agreement. I do not want to take the kids away from her. I want to have the actual events unfolding to be documented and legally binding. The way things are going now DH is paying support as if he was a part time uninvolved parent, which is not the case.

Continually leave the kids on your doorstep to advance her career. Wow.. there you have it in a nutshell. Maybe now when you pester her she will just leave the kids with the nanny instead of thinking they will benefit from extra time with their Dad..go ahead and make it about the money and it might be at the expense of these 4 year olds spending time with their Dad.

Who had the idea to start keeping a calendar instead of just being happy to have extra time with these toddlers?

 

[AprM]

Who had the idea to start keeping a calendar instead of just being happy to have extra time with these toddlers?

DH has it on outlook thanks to the "meeting requests" they have exchanged to keep the schedule straight. So it wasn't really anyone's idea but it is nice to have.

I get what you are saying. I appreciate the new perspective.

 

[Scuba]

I agree with the suggestion to wait until DH retires and you know what his new income is to take action. Also to keep documenting and being nice in the meantime. If you wait a year, you’ll know more about finances post-retirement and you’ll have another year of experience to see what unfolds with the kids and their mom.

 

[Idnar7]

Not giving advice here but relating my experience. I spent much more on legal fees after the divorce than I did on the divorce. And it only hurts the kids financially. My ex had to use child support funds to pay legal fees. One example was that the decree said that child support was payable until the child reached 18. Both of my daughters graduated HS at 17. I was going to use the reduction in support to fund my first daughters college expenses. My ex wanted the money for an additional year for herself. I had already said I would pay for their college. I had to pay to have the decree modified to say "until they graduate from high school". The reduction in support amounted to $4200 for the year (this was over 25 years ago). My legal fees came out to about $4000. Who won? Certainly not my daughter. And it is not only about money. I picked them up for our two weeks summer vacation and they were barefoot and with no clothes but what they were wearing. And we were going out of state to see family. My mother had to take them shopping. This struggle went on for years. It is not just a clean legal issue. You go to war it can become a day to day, week to week, year to year ongoing battle.

 

[Sunset]

The courts make divorce about money splitting and use children custody as a measure of who gets paid or wins child support, it always will be a war/fight except in rare circumstances.

If there ever was a court system that split the money, then awarded custody without money, divorce would be much nicer/cleaner/quicker, and people fighting over who gets the kids would drop drastically.

OP can try to change the custody time now, based on actual time events, but of course courts are biased and give custody to the mother about 95% of the time.
This does not stop OP from next year, having the court recognize the new income level if her husband retires and income drops. Income changes are a common reason for going back to court.

 

[Mulligan]

All good points, thank you. According to the attorney the support amount will drop to about $750-800/mo. The attorney seems to believe that this is an open and shut case since we're only asking to document what is actually occurring with visitation and not requesting something radically new. It helps a lot that these additional overnights came directly as a result of the ex's schedule and not us requesting to have the kids more (that sounds harsh and I love them- but I don't want anyone to think that we've been gaming the system for 2 years).

This will absolutely cause acrimony between the exes however short of her packing up and attempting to leave the state (which she has threatened to do) I don't foresee it getting better in the coming years. She has been showing narcissistic traits for a long time and reasoning with her is impossible.

Ugh, I feel sorry for you and spouse. Makes me remember how fortunate I was to have a “good divorce” back in late 1990s when my child was 3. We mutually agreed on a child support amount and court accepted it. Every couple years I would ask if she needed more, some times she said no, some she said yes. It was always reasonable and I never objected. When I had daughter most of summer months during earlier childhood ex would tell me not to send any money.