Ex makes his own parent plan rules
My husband continues to violate our temporary parenting plan. He never returns the boys on time, sometimes keeping them for an extra overnight and sometimes when he is supposed to drive them back to me, he texts saying I can only have them back if I drive the 50 minutes to his new place to get them. I have filed three complaints for contempt and it takes forever to get a hearing. We finally just had a hearing and the judge said she wasn’t going to have a trial on the contempts now and would consolidate everything for our divorce trial which isn’t until January. I don’t know what that means and I am worried my husband will just continue to get away with his behavior.
How do I enforce the temporary orders if the judge won’t?
While it is frustrating, it is not unusual for the court to consolidate contempt matters for the time of a divorce trial. COVID put a huge strain on what was already an overburdened system so preserving resources by consolidating things helps. You have to be vigilant in creating evidence you can use at trial. Keep a calendar of every actual pick up and drop off time. Keep it contemporaneously and then make copies of it to use as exhibits at your January trial. You will need to testify that you created it and that you did so on an ongoing basis so you could accurately tell the judge all of the times he violated the temporary order.
You also need to save all the text messages from him and print screen shots to also offer as evidence at your trial. This way the judge can see his demands to change the driving provisions last minute during his parenting time. Do not argue with him over text — the judge will see both sides of the conversation.
If his behavior continues, file one final complaint for contempt in December and ask to have it scheduled for hearing the same day as your divorce trial.
It is not unusual for consolidated contempts to become less important during a trial so you have to make sure you offer the written evidence and also testify to how late he is and that he fails to return the children. You need to testify to how his violations impact you and your children and how it upsets the schedule. It may impact their activities and/or school for example.
Finally, judges usually want proposed judgments at the time of a trial. Make sure you give the judge proposed judgments on the contempts as well as the divorce. You can ask the judge to alter the parenting plan going forward, reducing his time to something that might be easier for your husband to comply with as a penalty for his failure to follow orders. Be sure to put your requested schedule in both your proposed divorce judgment and your proposed contempt judgments.