Welp mediation is today at noon.....I will post afterwards to let you all know how it went.

So mediation started at noon yesterday and we did not get out until 4:30pm....

and NOTHING was accomplished.....

XH is an [censored] and eventhough he has a 2 income household (he makes close to 5 or 6,000 a month) and his wife claims her son and they reap those benefits....I am the primary care giver who has 1 income and xh is trying to refuse to change the tax filing status....I indicated we need the money to put down the deposit for an apartment....to which he started crying about his hardships having to feed 3 mouths and paying off the IRS and his rent just went up....(so why did his wife get a new car?)

I simply looked at him with a bored look and said...you want to discuss hardships...at least you have an apartment I have to live with my parents and YES i pay rent.....when I was in school and had to take a pay cut and work late hours for only 5 hours in the worst part of town then get 4 hours of sleep and get up to care for our son....the nights when I lived on my own then and would come home and there was enough food to just feed my son I went hungry....all the "free" day care at the college.....was not "free" I had to take time off work to volunteer my time to pay for it as well as attend school....you got off the hook for that I have made the scarifices....I have used more gas than I could afford to chauffer him to you on YOUR visitation days.....I can't afford it anymore....I will not sacrifice anything for you....DS's needs come first and the one thing he needs now is a roof over his head that is OUR own.

He looked at me and said thats life.

the mediator said well he doesn't want to budge and I said neither will I....but I am willing to meet in the middle. so we have to go BACK in january.

The only thing that was accomplished was getting a letter for taking my son out of state to see family for the holidays and then something I didn't bring up was our storage unit....getting that cleaned out....nothing I brought to the table got resolved and eventually it got turned into XH whining about how his son (step son) is being bullied in school and they may have to have him change schools.....I found myself thinking....ok so we go from our DS to your Step son...WTF are we discussing a child that has nothing to do with this situation for.

Why did the mediator let it get so far out of hand? They are there to keep the important issues on the table & keep the conversation and negotiation on those issues only until they come to a solution.

You should not be driving your son to his father's house. That's ridiculous. If his father doesn't come to get him then so be it.

My custody order says that my ex gets my son Friday night through Monday mornings every other week, plus Wednesday nights through Thursday morning every week. This adds up to 10 nights every 4 weeks...over 1/3 of the time. Guess what? He stopped taking my son on Wednesdays about 6 years ago (when he got remarried), and stopped keeping him Sunday nights about the same time....because it was "inconvenient" for him to take him to school. It was only inconvenient because my ex moved about 30 miles away from me. His loss.

My son, who is now 13, fully understands that his dad is a flake and can not be depended on. I have NEVER said one bad word about his father, but I have not shielded him from the truth either. I used to tell him that his father wasn't coming because he was working late or whatever. Finally I just stopped making excuses for him and started letting him listen to the voice mail excuse messages his father would leave on my cell phone. He gets it now. It takes a while...but they know who takes care of them.

I would suggest you stop transporting your son and let his dad get him if he wants. Don't provide the transportation for him.

I would also go back to court and get a real child support order. If you were in Texas he would be paying 20% of his income (only his income, not his wife's income, and it's regardless of other children), plus health insurance, and YOU would be the only one legally entitled to claim him on your taxes. It sounds like you might be better off with a standard custody order than the "arrangement" you currently have. Fight him for everything if he's going to be such a jerk about it.

Mediation is a waste of time when one or more of the parties refuses to negotiate in reality.

Go to court. Don't accept some mediator's opinion that your failure to yield to WH's staunch position is risky. Roll the dice in court...then you can accept a final determination by the judge whatever that may be.

If the judge screws you...shame on him/her.

Screwing yourself (by accepting any mediocre deal) hurts you more.


The court won't keep you stuck in mediation forever. All you need to do is APPEAR reasonable in any future mediation hearing but just refuse to accept crumbs. Sell yourself as the person in reality and the likable one. This may help if the court/judge actually reads the mediator's notes when actually deciding your case. They may look to see who frustrated the settlement process (thus forcing the judge to spend his/her valuable time sorting out a case) so they can PUNISH the unreasonable party. Appear reasonable (to the mediator) but await your day in court.

Mr. Wondering