My SO and I have been together for over 4 years. SS is 5. We have spent the last 2 years in court with BM over various things.

Essentially BM wont follow the decree and has violated a list of things. SO filed a contempt order against her. She retaliated by trying to pick SS5 up at 4am in the mornings on Tuesdays (decree says SO has SS5 Saturday through Tuesday after school and it also says BM can pick SS5 up before school on Tuesday - apparently she thinks that means 4am). Obviously SO refused to let her pick him up at 4am. However she kept trying anyway. She came at 345am one morning and SO's brother was sleeping on the couch and she started banging on the door. He was half asleep and got up and opened the door (he wasn't wearing his contacts so he couldn't see well at all)and she barges her fat a** through the door and starts yelling that she needs to pick up SS5 and for SO to get him up and give him to her now. At this point hes also banging on our bedroom door and yelling ... everybody including SS5 (SS3 at the time) is awake by now. So he gets up and tells her to get the F*** out of his house. She trys to shove her way through the bedroom door to get to SS5 who had came into our room in the middle of the night. She keeps yelling and finally he tells her to just go outside and he would get SS5 dressed and she could take him since he was already awake. She refuses and insist on taking him now, and says that if SO doesn't let her have him now that she is going to call the cops. She walks into our kitchen and calls the cops and tells them that SO is shoving and pushing her around when she is trying to pick up her son.

The cops show up and talk to everybody and obviously nothing happened so they leave and she leaves and no report or anything is filed. The next day SO gets a knock on the door and the sheriff is there and she has filed a EPO claiming that SO beat her up. She even went up the next day and filed a police report stating that she went to the doctor because her arm hurt and she might have a torn ligament or something and had her arm in a sling and supplied them with pictures of her arms with supposed bruises on them.

Two weeks later, another lawyer, and other retainer fee,and a trial later, the case is dismissed and the judge tells her she doesn't need to pick SS5 up that early and a child that young doesn't need to be up that early.

She went through 3 lawyers and 6 continuances for various excuses until the Contempt case was finally tried. We won, and she had to pay what she owed. SO also asked for attorney fees since there were so many continuances that just drove up his lawyer bill. He was granted attorney fees plus 10% annum. So now he has a judgment against her that is just now in the discovery stage and she has to provide all of her financial info within 30 days. She conveniently "got layed off" last November.

SO offered to forgo the judgment for Attorney fees if she would agree to the motion to modify that would tie up all the loopholes and loose ends in the decree that she keeps abusing. She refused of course. He is in the military so he is also asking for visitation for his parents with SS5 2 weekends a month when he is on deployment so SS5 can still see his family. Up until SS5 was ab 2 and a half we got along ok. I would pick him up from her if SO was unable to, we even talked on the phone occasionally, everything was basically civil. This happened when we had him for a while during the summer because she was depressed and she came by to see him and tried to take a nap with SS5 in mine and SO's bed. She got mad when he told her if she wanted to see SS then she needed to go into the living room, not our bedroom. Then she flipped a switch and refuses to let me pick him up and keeps him away from me every chance she gets. SO was deployed last year and she didn't let anybody see him while SO was gone.

SO is also asking that SS5 be allowed to go to school in our school district which is a much better school district with a wider variety of curriculum, and much better test scores and graduation rates and everything. Previously she has stated that she would do whatever she had to do to get SS5 to be able to go to school in our school district because she didn't want him to go to school in her small and not so great school district. SO has even offered to provide transportation to school every morning, which would mean we drive 20 mins to pick him up, then 20 mins back to get him up, everyday. She refuses saying that the decree says hes goes to school in my district and that's how its going to be.

She denied all of the claims in the motion to modify and counterclaimed for more child support citing extreme changes in financial situation. Ie. she is lazy and lives off of child support and unemployment, and now wants more child support since my SO has an excellent job and works very hard to provide a good life for SS5. She also counter claimed for a change in custody because she doesn't want SO to have custody of SS5 on Mondays anymore saying that it interferes with his weekly school schedule. So basically she is trying to take an extra day away from SO. The funny thing is though is that SS5 is for the overwhelming part only good (gets a smiley face) on the days we take him to school Monday and Tuesday, and bad (frowny face) Wednesday through Friday, the days he is with her at school. We have his agenda book that shows this pattern to prove it also.

SS5 doesn't react well to change. Last fall he was having lots of trouble in school ... again, only her days. This was all around the time that BM had her new boyfriend of 1month move in with her and his 2 daughters. SS5's teacher kept trying to talk to BM about it and BM wouldn't talk to her about his behavior problems. It got to the point that his teacher called me to talk about because she didn't know if we knew about all of the issues ... some we did, some we didn't. So she wanted to talk to us to see if we could help out somehow. So both his teacher and the people at SS5's daycare are telling us that SS5 needs to spend more time with S0. BM refuses, of course. Bm's boyfriend moved out after a couple of months, and SS5's behaviors improved a little bit. However he still acts up on her days more than ours. BM is also pregnant with then boyfriends baby and is due within the next 2-3 weeks. SS5 is acting up at school again. Last week he cried and cried and wouldn't let go of me when I dropped him off at school Tuesday morning. He even ran out of the classroom after me crying as I left saying he didn't want me to leave and he loved me. His teacher had to pry him off of me. I felt so bad for him.

So now SO and BM have mandatory mediation for July 6th and, if nothing is resolved then, they will go to trial.

It scares me to think that SO could lose another day a week with SS5, although I don't see how he could with all of the things that I have previously stated. Bm wants to change custody to provide a more stable school schedule. If SO shows SS5's behavior on BM's days versus his days, does she have a chance of getting it? Advice? Opinions? Sorry that this is so long!!!