I know I was astounded when I heard that.
I mean, you spend thousands of dollars, hundreds or thousands of hours working on your custody case to get to an agreement, only to be told "go to court".
ARE YOU KIDDING ME? You have done nothing but go to court and look where it got you, back at square one.
Well guess what, the officer was right.
You need to go back to court.
But this time, things will be different.
Very, very different because this time you will take away the power that allows the other parent to do this to you.
If you don't want your power back, stop reading and move on.
If you want to make them cry because they lost a very good thing, keep reading.
Keep in mind that I am very pro-child.
I have seen parents do horrendous things to the other parent, other family members, even the child, but the child still has a right to a relationship with that parent.
If we don't ensure that relationship happens, those broken bonds will haunt them all their adult life.
So when I talk about taking away the power for them to hurt you, I urge you to protect the child's relationship with the other parent.
You will need to do all of the work to fix this problem, on your own.
There is no agency to call, no one you can pay, you just buckle down, educate yourself and do the work.
First, let's look at our objective.
The objective is to get a judge to issue an order that will prevent the other parent from creating trouble.
I am not talking about some sissy language that says "stop it".
I'm talking about restricting the other parent in very objective terms.
For instance, a restraining order would be enforceable by the police.
Language that states the parent must have no more than 15 minutes of leeway in drop off time or they lose all visitations until the go back to court.
You need an order that protects you but doesn't interfere with the child's right to visit the other parent.