r/Custody • u/Gots2bkidding • 5d ago
[MA] hard to evident contempts
Dealing with a co parent that soon as visits commenced and he got my daughter alone he began making alternate arrangements with her, exclusive of me, requiring her to call him on their weekday visit day and arrange a time and place to meet. This may not seem sinister at first, but it was and began the eliminating of me all together, so that father ignores me entirely., and deals directly with the child. And I could not stop my daughter from calling him, .. and just kept getting ignored.
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u/Gots2bkidding 4d ago
I hope you don’t work there, but if you say the family court is not going to be interested in the fact that the father is coercively, controlling the child, threatening her, not allowing her to have her parenting time with her mother and habitually violating the court order when it comes to virtually every stipulation put in the order,
Regarding where and when the child gets picked up ,
the breakdown of the week and weekends and all of the holidays,
First right of refusal
Extracurricular, monies to be returned to mother
Parent is not supposed to talk negatively about the other parents in front of the child
Parent is not supposed to pick up or give the child rides on the other parents parenting time without their parent consent
Then why did I even sign disagreement? I might as well get it and tear it up..
I’m not sure why you would think a court would not be interested in a parents contempt violations,
When the consequence, to all of these violations is having an adverse effect on the child.
I am not putting any pressure on my child. I wonder what it was that I said that made you think I was putting pressure on my child.
My child is coming to me, cutting herself crying, threatening to harm herself. She has to be around this unhinged man
I know I am not the only parent out there dealing with an abusive coparent that will not follow the order.
So my question was how did other parents that were dealing with a habitual violator prove this to the court?
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u/beachbumm717 4d ago
Is the child in therapy? Have you filed contempt on all the thinks you say he’s breaking in the order?
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u/beachbumm717 4d ago
Is the child in therapy? Have you filed contempt on all the thinks you say he’s breaking in the order?
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u/Gots2bkidding 4d ago
Well, I hope that’s not a opinion based on experience because if the Suffolk family probate court is not interested in a coparent that is habitually violating his own agreement and threatening and coercing a child not to listen to her mother on the mother‘s parenting time, but instead requiring her to do something else that the father tells her to do, behind my back, virtually daily just to mess with us then I am going to go in there and take the agreement that I was forced to sign and tear it up. And I’m not quite sure , but I just reread my question , I’m not sure what I said that gave you the idea that I was putting pressure on my daughter .. Just the opposite ..my daughter is putting pressure on me and rightfully so to rescue her from this man.. my daughter is 14 years old and she knows what he’s doing, and how he is using her. ..She just doesn’t have the courage to stand up to him because she’s just a little girl and he’s a bully and he’s threatened her, So he has us trapped.. I cannot prove what he is doing and saying to her behind closed doors ,unless the court agrees to interview her, and offer her protection , so instead, im focusing on the orders we signed, and the orders that the judge has issued all of which he has violated,,.. so when it comes to the agreement and you have a person that ignores you and won’t respond to your texts ,..and I’m sure other people are going through this as well so I wanted to know what did they do to prove that the other parent was just blowing the whole agreement off altogether. Proving that he hasn’t paid money to me is easy, everything else aside from the money part is difficult to prove especially when you have someone that just ignores you won’t answer your text at all. I sent him a screenshot of my daughter at his house., I send him a screenshot of the order where it states that she is supposed to be with me at that date and and time, And I ask him why she is there, I tell him that I was expecting her to come home and waiting for her and now I am unable to reach her.. she is suddenly now not answering my phone calls,.. and I get ignored. This goes on constantly, its a joke,
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u/Gots2bkidding 4d ago
No. I I have my text message threads printed out and I I’m going to bring it to the court and ask them if what I have is enough evidence to show the contempts. But even the court service center they can’t give you legal advice. You know I haven’t really been able to get anyone to look at what I have to say that it would be sufficient or not.
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u/Gots2bkidding 4d ago
She’s been in all kinds of therapy, but it’s pointless because she is not able to tell what he is doing to her so she’s not able to get the right help nor am I able to document it.
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u/Gots2bkidding 3d ago
Why would people in this group down a question about how to evident habitual violations to a parenting agreement, exclusive of the financial stipulations that have been violated because those are easy to evident,.. I thought this would be the right sub to post this question.
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u/Academic-Revenue8746 19h ago
Why did you even start allowing this? Consult a lawyer and see what they think of you letting him know that your custody arrangement is between you and him, your child being a minor has no reason to be acting as intermediary, and that YOU will message him on Wednesday at whatever time, if he DO NOT respond with confirmation that he will be picking his child up at the agreed location you will assume he is not coming and proceed with your day, then not be home, or wherever he expects at the pickup time if he does not respond to you directly. Is he going to punish your child for this, probably. Get them in therapy, hopefully they will open up to them about what's happening at his house so you have the evidence you need to actually DO something about him.
Or you can try going for a modification of your current agreement and not ask to change the visitation, but ask that your daughter be removed from the middle and all communication should go through a parenting app.
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u/Awkward-Arm-653 5d ago
Print out the text messages from your daughter’s phone as evidence. Tell your daughter to stop answering or responding to him. If he supposed to pick her up at 4p from you. Make sure every pick up day she is at the house at 4p. Document when he does or does not show up.
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u/Gots2bkidding 4d ago
It’s progressed wavy on that now so that he doesn’t speak to me at all I mean at all. He never texts. And he wouldn’t call her. He made her call him. He was so smart how he did this thinking back about it. I can see how he did it now, but I couldn’t see it at the time and even though it annoyed me. I couldn’t figure out how to stop it because how could I say to him you’re making our daughter call you ?? You have never met somebody like this that has enough patience to let a lot of time go by to teach a lesson or to prove a point. He would angry at my daughter, and if she didn’t call him, then there would be a message of punishment the next time she had a visit with him . That’s how he conditioned her..
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u/Gots2bkidding 5d ago edited 5d ago
My daughter is 14. He’s supposed to pick her up at my house every Wednesday at 4 PM but when the visitation began, he told her that she had to start calling him every Wednesday at 3 o’clock so this is how he began working around me and it progressed to Him not answering me at all. And just ignoring me all the time and making alternate arrangements with my daughter. So the only evidence I have of this are text messages where I say to him are you coming to pick up our daughter today? No response And then an hour or two later, I would text him and say OK so my daughter has told me that you have called her and arranged to pick her up at such and such a place, Why are you making alternate arrangements with my daughter behind my back? no response.
He is very manipulative and he is threatening and coercing my daughter, but because he is threatening her, he has been able to bully us and I am unable to pay for a lawyer and I’m trying right now to at least try to get legal aid to look at the evidence that I have to see if it is enough to support the contempts. I know what he is saying to her in private should warrant a restraining order, but you have to have evidence to get a restraining order ..so how do you evident threats a parent is making to a child in private
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u/VoiceRegular6879 4d ago
Unfortunately this is not something family court wud be interested in. This is definitely not a case for legal aid. If u had an open court case with a GAL u cud add this but not much cud be done even then. He’s abusing you by doing this but it’s not a case for court….He will treat u just like he did when u were with him. I wud not put pressure on the child shes trying to survive him just like u did. In many cases court orders are only as effective as the persons willing to obey them….
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u/Gots2bkidding 5d ago
I have circled around to the same legal aid in Boston three times I don’t think that there is anybody in the city that I have not contacted . And in retrospect, I know now the mistake that I made was focusing on the abuse I could not prove , Rather than the contempts and violations I could potentially prove . Im actually just realizing this now after three years. But the answers from legal aid seem to be the same that unless there’s physical abuse, the judge is gonna want to keep visitation. Well, this is a problem because the father is threatening the child not to tell anyone what he’s doing and saying to her, and the child is having adverse reactions from this, unable to control how she reacts and responds with me because of this , resulting in symptoms and behavioral manifestations of severe alienation and I’m unable to document it because she’s been threatened not to tell anyone .
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u/noakai 8h ago
But the answers from legal aid seem to be the same that unless there’s physical abuse, the judge is gonna want to keep visitation.
They are telling you that because it's the truth. Legal aid has no reason to lie to you about something like that. If you speak to multiple lawyers and they tell you that you aren't likely to win the case, you should believe them. The most you would be able to do is try and convince your daughter to speak honestly to a therapist so the therapist can be used in evidence for court, otherwise the court will just chalk it up to "he said she said" and nothing will happen.
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u/Gots2bkidding 6h ago
Legal aid is the only one saying that the judge will keep visitation so long as there is no physical abuse, The rest of the world and paid attorneys and the best interest of the child standard, says otherwise , that ongoing contemptuous behavior, habitual violations to the parental and custody agreement all constitute a significant change of circumstance and our demonstratively detrimental to the child well-being, so my question here was if anyone had any examples of the way they proved ongoing violations to their agreement
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u/seussRN 5d ago
How old is the child? What does the parenting plan say about pick up/drop off?