Location: Boulder, Co
My ex has recently filed paperwork to get custody of my 12 year old daughter. He had been absent for seven years. Child support payments were sporadic and spotty, which led him to lose his license at least once that I know of for lack of payment.
The paperwork he filed claims he was “kept from his daughter for six years”. He has moved to two other states that I know of since we separated. He currently lives in Florida. Any contact I attempted to make with him for the first two years after he left, he would hang up on me immediately after I said hello. So I just stopped reaching out. I have maintained the same email he set up for me when we were together. He has never reached out on it. He only recently (within the past six months) reached out to try to see our daughter, of which she was very hesitant and didn’t want to do on her own when I discussed it with her.
I believe what has sparked this sudden interest in our daughter is his new fiancé. He has really tried to convince her (his fiancé) that he didn’t actually abandon his child, and is going to new lengths to convince her he is actually a good person.
I want my daughter to have a choice in whether or not she sees him. When she was younger, he was very inconsistent and would tell her he would see her and never show up, which was very damaging to her. I am worried how his behavior will impact her now. She has been in therapy off and on since she was 8 to deal with abandonment and trauma. I am also worried about her stability (as she starts school in August) having to travel to a different state if it comes to that.
I am not sure how to even fill out a parenting plan for our initial status conference, because my daughter is adamant she doesn’t want to see him.
Any help or advice on how to make sure my daughter’s wishes are prioritized would be greatly appreciated.
Comments
You need to hire an attorney.
You are probably right about the fiancée. That’s a very common phenomenon. This isn’t really a legal issue specifically, in terms of the law, but you could start out with FaceTime calls. And then transition to supervised visits in Colorado. At a neutral location. He would need to fly to Colorado, and pay for someone to supervise the visits. And then step three would be unsupervised visits in Colorado. Step four or step five might be her going to Florida. And then one of two things will happen. Either they will hit it off, and it will be something that enriches her life, or he will be discouraged by the cost and the time required to do all of those things and he will back down. But at this point her desire to not have any relationship with him doesn’t matter. I think that if you approach this in good faith, but with very strict parameters, it’ll either work out well for everyone, or he will back down.
Have an attorney handling this.
We just finished a 7 year custody suit. GET A LAWYER. Don’t cheap out, find someone good and start documenting EVERYTHING.
His reason may be not wanting to pay child support. If he has full custody you will have to pay child support. Back in the day, all dead beat dads moved to Florida because state law allows them to not pay child support.
You need legal counsel, not Reddit.
Get an attorney and know that if you can prove you provide stability for the child, you will have a better chance of sole legal and physical custody. He will likely get a step up plan for visitation and any good attorney will throw in reunification therapy as well.
Your daughter is at an age where her wishes will be taken into account, but probably not old enough for her to have the final say. You should start preparing her for the likely outcome that she will need to meet him. Based on what you’ve written, I can’t imagine that he will get any physical custody.
As others have said, don’t try to navigate this without an attorney. Boulder Bridge to Justice and Rocky Mountain Legal Center offer lower cost legal services, and will be able to make a good referral if they can’t take you on directly.