DH went to court last week petitioning to have primary placement of SD13 (SS12 wants to continue to live with BM because he doesn't want to leave his friends and school). SD has been asking to live with us since this summer. DH tried to negotiate with BM over the summer but she wouldn't discuss it other than to say "No".

So to court we went and WE WON. It was a long day and an emotional one but SD officially lives with us now. We set visitation so that SS and SD are with us the 1st and 3rd weekends, with BM the 2nd and 4th weekends then the rare 5th weekends we will have SS and BM will have SD. We will have both kids Wednesdays overnight and BM has them both on Thursdays overnight. The best part (other than getting SD where she wants to be).....BM has to do all the transportation for her parenting times and we do it for DH's parenting time! She has never had to do any of the transportation so I hope she has a new appreciation for the time it takes to do so.

CS was a little tricky but we came out ahead there too. BM is voluntarily unemployed and DH makes pretty good money. So they figured his 20% at about $900 and BM's 20% at about $200 so we would pay her $700. We offered to pay her $900 if the $200 difference could be applied to the arrears that DH accumulated during the 20 months he was laid off. These figures were done off of estimates from DH's net income and are actually lower than what he would have been ordered to pay had they done a full review! Plus DH is in the final interview stages for a new job that would be a huge raise and BM can't request a review for CS for at least 3 years! By then we are hoping SS will have a change of heart decide that he too wants to live with us.

I'm nervous about BM making things difficult for us with SD but I'm happy to have a girl finally! And I couldn't have hand picked a better kid.