Co-Parent Constantly Trying to Twist Visitation Order to Their Liking
I have sole physical and legal custody of our child (3). Our child and I are making a move from an adjacent state to our state of jurisdiction (California) to my home state. I got permission from my coparent and the courts to make this move happen.
A custody and visitation order was established in late 2025 giving my coparent and I a split summer schedule - this year my coparent is entitled to 4 weeks in the second half of the summer and I am entitled to 4 weeks in the first half. My coparent suggested that since I am moving states, it would be better for our child (and easier on myself) for my coparent to do his visitation with our child during the first half of the summer in my coparent’s state of residence (we currently live across the country from one another and I am moving to a state that is my birthplace and is slightly geographically closer to his state, making travel time shorter and more affordable). I initially hesitated, as I wanted to stick to the court-ordered visitation schedule so there was no confusion or misinterpretation of when and how long visitation is taking place. My coparent pushed back hard, insisting it would be better for our child to be with him while I moved so it wouldn’t stress out our child or myself. I agreed to a little over 4 weeks, beginning in late May, about a week before the move begins.
My coparent is required to give me at least 30 days notice of the specific dates he will be exercising his visitation on. He has never done this, he has always put it on me to choose the dates that work best, as he claims he cannot interfere with our child’s school schedule (which is ridiculous given our child is in daycare, not preschool or elementary school and there is no set schedule for things like Spring Break or Christmas Break). It was the same this time around. He asked if he could fly our child back to my new state “the weekend after July 4th” and made a sarcastic jab about how “it’s the only holiday I’ll get to spend with him,” as he did not exercise a week of his visitation time during Spring Break because we could not agree on travel costs (our order is silent on travel costs and we are going back to court in a couple of months to get the judge to order to split them). I hesitated again, as I do not celebrate the 4th of July, but did not like the idea of my coparent keeping our child for a moment longer than 4 weeks and I also do not completely trust he will keep him safe from fireworks and water safety and whatnot. I ultimately agreed, however, with the assumption he would fly him back on July 5th, as July 4th is on a Saturday.
Here we are, less than 2 weeks out from his visitation time with our son. I laid out my expectations (since I asked my coparent to provide me with proof of plane tickets that he was bringing our son back to the new state and he refused, stating he was not going to buy plane tickets in advance because it did not make sense to him) and told him I expected him to have our son back to me no later than 11:59 pm on Sunday, July 5th, 2026. He immediately acted confused and said that we both agreed upon the weekend AFTER July 4th, which would be July 10th-July 12th. I stated no, I do not consent to him having our son for a moment past July 5th, and that we were settling into a new state, my son will be enrolling in an elementary school that has a good preschool program and is going to be enrolling in a sport like T-ball. My coparent is insisting that because neither one of us clarified (even though it is literally his responsibility to lay out the visitation dates for me per the court order) that I HAVE to allow him to keep our son last July 5th and that it’s my fault for not clarifying and that I cannot pedal back and change my mind now despite not consenting to any time after July 5th when his 4 weeks will be well over.
He went on a tangent about how he didn’t get our son for Spring Break and how he didn’t get him for Easter either (even though Easter is not a holiday listed out in the visitation schedule, he is going off of a verbal agreement we came to in mediation that stated he would get him every Spring Break and every Easter). Again, Easter is not even listed in the visitation order. I reminded him that I am already doing him a favor and the heavy lifting by deciding the visitation dates myself and not making him do it and allowing him to have our son during the first half of the summer versus the second half. I told him that anything outside of that set visitation schedule requires both parents to consent and I do not consent to anymore time past July 5th because it is over the 4 week allotment and we literally have court the following Monday. I told him that I am so unbelievably frustrated, I give him an inch and he takes a mile and he does not respect my consent or lack thereof, he feels he is entitled to more visitation and more legal/physical custody than he actually has. I told him I was cancelling the plane tickets and we would just move the dates to the second half of the summer (like he was originally supposed to get) because he is trying to control/twist visitation to his benefit and not respecting my rights and my parenting time as the custodial parent. I also am tired of the constant misinterpretation and have been told before by other parents to strictly stick to the court order because of issues like this, so it’s clear we need to be doing that only.
The last time we went to court (for a child support hearing, not even about visitation or custody mind you) he brought up to the judge that he missed Spring Break because of our inability to agree on travel costs and the judge literally sighed and said that our child needs us to work together so he can see both his mother and his father, but like genuinely HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH SOMEONE LIKE THIS??? This is not even coparenting, this is playing an exhausting game of tug of war with a coparent who has 0 legal or physical custody and has a DV felony. I am so sick of feeling like and being painted as the villain when I have been bending over backwards, breaking my darn spine to have him see his child. Why can’t he just man up and abide by the court order and give the dates like he’s supposed to instead of waiting for an opportunity to twist words and manipulate scenarios to his advantage?