How do you live without Caller id? Best thing invented for SMs... whenever BM Calls I let it go to the machine - all the better if she acted like an idiot - save that one for court.

BM would never call my house phone - if we had one. We don't though. She calls DH's cell phone. He has to deal with her. At one time she hadd my # for when DH worked late, but she absued it & is now blocked.

How old are the kids?

BM doesn't have my number and we don't have a home phone. DH deals with her EXCLUSIVELY through email. No text, no phone. She has the number for emergencies but it has taken 5 yrs to train the freakshow that it means 911 type issues.

FightingCrazytrain has it down pat. ROCK solid boundaries, no niceties. Ours is super high conflict as well, and will find anyway to disrupt the peace even at her own expense.

SD is 14 though, so has her own phone. (which is a WHOLE other thread...LOL)

Get an unlisted landline and buy a cheap tracfone for when she needs to speak to the kids when they are at your house? Keep the tracfone at your house. It doesn't go back to BM's.

Why not use Google Voice or MagicJack? With our MagicJack, we had a phone number to give to BM (and other places we didn't want to necessarily talk to). The MagicJack not only SHOWED who was calling, if they left a message, it would email the sound file to your email account so you could listen to it no matter WHERE you were.

I am not sure how Google Voice works but it has to be similar.

It was our super awesome way to comply with the CO saying that BM had to be able to contact our house but yet never having to actually SPEAK with her.

Get a phone with caller ID. Document every single time she calls and what happens. If she hangs up on you, document that. When and if it goes to court, you will BOTH have documentation of what's going on, and it will be her word against yours. And the judge will likely disregard all of it as being silly nonsense. But with caller ID, you should know when it's her and avoid answering at all.

In our house, BM is ONLY allowed to call the house phone to speak to skids (no cell phones). She is permitted one call per day; same for DH when skids are her home. When she calls us, I do not answer. At MOST, I pick up the phone and hand it off to skids. If DH is home, I don't touch the phone.

During the summer, she tried calling in the morning and night. So after she was able to speak to them in the morning, we unplugged the phone until we went to bed (usually around 11pm).

When she was able to speak to the skids in the morning, she started calling even earlier. What started as a 8am call before summer camp, turned into a 6am call when she was heading to work. So we started leaving the phone unplugged until 8am the next day (about the time we're heading out for the day).

This worked for us because we don't use our house phone for any other reason; it's dedicated to BM calls. I don't even know the number lol

Your BM needs boundaries. Your DH needs to set AND enforce them.

There is nothing in our co about phone calls either. BM was told bluntly that no phone calls or texts would be answered from her only emails. She was also told that SO would only reply if it was an exchange day. All phone calls go to voicemail and the kids decide if they want to call the other parent about once every 5 to 7 days... that is it that is all. Mostly the skids use Voxer on smart phone to contact parents.

There's nothing in our CO about phone calls either. By my understanding of the law and how it works is that in a typical 50/50 custody situation, both parents have unlimited and unrestricted access to the child so long as it doesn't interfere with the other parent's visitation. If it does interfere, then the two parents must be able to come to an agreement. For example, if my wife's ex calls every day (and he did at first), that is fine but this doesn't give the ex the right to violate what we consider to be common/normal phone etiquette. Therefore, if the ex calls during supper time, we politely inform him that it is our dinner time hour and we'll get SS to call him back. He cannot DEMAND to speak to SS right this instant (and he never has). A couple of times he called passed the bedtime hour. We would say SS is in bed and SS will call back tomorrow. My wife's ex *tried* to make an issue of it, but we were never denying him access. We were simply applying normal household phone etiquette. So really, no one is at fault here and no parent threatened the other with court motions either.

In your case, it *seems* like it is going that way. I get the impression that BM is not so much interested in talking to her children as she is in looking to start a fight. So as other's have said, document these instances. I don't know how excessive phone calls need to be for a judge to consider it a nuisance.