Ex-wife passes parenting duties to daughter

My wife and I are trying to figure out the right parenting plan for our kids. She travels a lot for work and even when she is around, often employs her 20-year-old daughter as a kind of Uber driver for our kids, who are 12 and 15. She insists regardless of her travel schedule we should have an equal parenting plan and our two kids can stay with their sister when she travels. I’m not OK with that proposal for many reasons but I don’t want to be seen as denigrating their sister.

I also suspect my wife wants them equal time to keep her child support obligation low. She earns twice what I make as a teacher and hates that she pays me support.

Right now we split time, but on nights she has the kids, she often has business meetings late or travels, so her daughter gets them from my house after I have made sure their homework was done and often after I

have fed them dinner. They get to her house in time to go to bed. She leaves the house before they go to school and relies on her daughter to get them to school — they are often late.

Am I being too picky? I don’t want to deprive them of time with mom but she isn’t really spending the time she has.

Not every situation calls for an equal parenting plan and you just provided a host of facts that call for something other than equal.

I am sure there are a number of reasons why your wife wants equal parenting time, including the financial reasons you suspect.

There is also a certain negative feeling associated with a mother who does not have at least equal parenting time with the children.

In this case, traditional roles are reversed. There is nothing wrong with that, and your children should not be made to suffer the consequences for your wife’s career goals when you are right there.

By insisting that the parenting plan reflect actual parenting, you are not taking away her time and you are not minimizing their relationship with their sister. If your wife has the children every other weekend from Friday after school until Monday morning and dinner one night per week so long as she is present, that is more beneficial to the kids than an arrangement where they barely see her and are having to depend on their not-somuch-older sister to act in a parenting role.

Taking it a step further, the children are probably not happy about how little time mom spends with them and likely make their sister’s job harder for her. At 20, she should not have to play the role of stand-in mom/babysitter for teenagers and is not likely equipped to do so.

Take a stand now before the temporary order becomes permanent, because it is much harder to undo this later if you agree now.