Time sharing agreements

Ultimately I have failed with my attempt at blogging so I'll take another stab at it today...

The first question always asked when people learn that I'm a divorced dad is "do you get to see your daughter often?".  The answer to that question is yes.  I promise that I'm not trying to pass judgement on anyone else out there through the course of this post.

Ladies and gentlemen please keep in mind that "joint custody" and "time sharing" are two completely different things.  Time sharing indicates how much time you get, and custody indicates who make parental decisions like what school, doctor, sports or legal decisions made on behalf of the child.

Through the course of my divorce process, like most people, the time sharing process was the most hotly debated.  I gave up almost everything to increase the amount of time that I was able to have with my daughter.  Ultimately I ended up walking away from my house, my dogs, and most of my valuables in order to achieve a 50/50 time sharing split.  If you're curious about how we set it up it looks something like this:

Week 1: Mon-Mom Tues-Mom Wed-Dad Thurs-Dad Fri-Dad Sat-Dad Sun-Dad
Week 2: Mon-Mom Tues-Mom Wed-Dad Thurs-Dad Fri-Mom Sat-Mom Sun-Mom

We thought that this situation might work better for us and our daughter due as opposed to the more traditional week on week off that some couples do.

Years ago it seemed that the national trend regarding time sharing was extremely biased towards the mother, with most dads, if they were lucky, being given every wednesday and every other weekend.  Several men that I know who were divorced a decade or two ago only were awarded every other weekend.

Time sharing was a crucial fight for me, and I'm probably in a different situation than a lot of people, but in the same boat as many others.  My ex-wife is not from the city were we currently live, hell neither am I, but due to my work I'm stuck here.  Through the divorce she had indicated several times that she wanted to take our daughter and move closer to family.  If she has a legitimate cause to leave there isn't much that I can do to prevent her from doing so outside of legal action.  But when I have 50/50 time sharing with my daughter it certainly improves my chances of preventing her taking my daughter across the nation.  Keep that in mind when you are going through your own process.

I don't pass any judgement on parents who don't feel that they can handle a 50/50 time share, or dads who feel that their children are probably better off spending more time with their mother.  I get it, everyone has their own parenting styles.  And lets be honest, there are lots of moms and dads out there who just shouldn't be left with a child in their care.

If you want to be active with your kids and develop a very strong relationship with your kids post divorce, I strongly suggest that you shoot for as much time as you can get with them.  Just make sure that you're being reasonable.  Don't go after more time when you don't have that time to devote to your kids.  That could backfire and you could be taken back to court by your ex in the future with her demanding a larger time share.

Also, the time sharing arrangement should be about your relationship with your kids, not the financial aspect of meeting a certain threshold to decrease your child support.  I know parents who have sought more time just to meet that threshold for the decrease in child support payments as well as mothers who have fought against their husband having more access to their children to keep the payments as high as possible.  If the financial aspect is your primary concern you should probably just give the other person sole custody of your children because your priorities are pretty screwed up.

Always remember during the discussion that this is about the kids, honestly nothing else matters.  It should be every parents goal to make sure that their child is cared for and loved in a safe, happy environment.  Make sure that you offer that to your child.  Your child is NOT a weapon or a bargaining chip.

Precurser

Here's the funny thing, I've never wanted to write a blog, never wanted to expose my dirty laundry.  However some of this stuff is just too funny or too infuriating to pass up.  I know that everyone says this as the opening line to their blog.  I guess some people, including myself, just can't resist the urge to blurt things out to the few people that actually follow their blog.  Am I one of those guys that thinks that I will develop and maintain one of the top blogs?  Hell no, I neither have the time nor the energy to devote.  I just thought it would be kind of fun to give it a shot.

A little about  me:  I'm a 32 year old divorced dad of a 3 year old little girl.  When I found out that it was a girl my mother laughed at me and said that God was getting revenge on me.  Little did we know that my little girl would arrive with blonde hair and blue eyes.  Yes, God has a sick sense of humor.  And now that she talks, and oh my lord does that child talk, she has her mothers mouth and my personality, lord help us all.  Don't get me wrong, if you follow along you will quickly realize that she is the light of my life.  There is nothing in this world more important to me than the safety and welfare of that little girl.

I work in Florida politics so you'll probably get increasingly annoyed by incessant long winded rants about political issues of the day.  If you don't agree with me and my stances that's fine.  I have two rules with debating issues, if you can't back up your information, don't put it out there, and the other being don't be rude.

To continue on about my work, nothing contained within this blog in any way expresses the views of my clients, this is 100% me.

I love to tell stories about what is going on around me, my daughters epic mouth, and the things that come out of it, you'll see.  I am lucky enough to be surrounded by an incredible group of people that I can call my friends.  My family has been a huge influence on my life, my mother especially.  My family is anything but short on personality.

My girlfriend, who currently lives with me is also a huge supporting role in my life.  She is a kind, caring soul who is also phenomenal with kids.  She has helped me to develop into the kind of dad that I want to be for my daughter.  I can't say enough great things about her.  However, as intelligent as she is, and believe me the girl is incredibly bright, she has a continuous stream of complete brain farts.  Some of the things that come out of her mouth are even more surprising and idiotic than the 3 year olds.  But not to belabor the point, she is an amazing human being.

I love to surf, it is one of my greatest passions.  Luckily my daughter also enjoys the beach, so we get to go down and visit the grandparents pretty frequently and enjoy the bounties of the beautiful florida coast.  One day soon I will have that kid on her own surfboard and all will be right with the world.

Apparently I have also become somewhat of a go-to person for people going through divorces.  As much as I like being a person that people turn to for advice on this issue my heart breaks for them.  Divorce is an ugly thing, it's not fun for anyone.  I left my wife almost three years ago and fought like hell for a 50-50 time share split.  As I said before, I wouldn't trade anything in the world for my daughter, and I walked away from almost everything in the course of the divorce to gain that time share with her.  Through the life of this thing I'll probably also make a few posts about the process and what I went through and the things that I still have to deal with.  Make no question about it, being a divorced parent isn't easy, especially when the parents have completely different parenting styles.

Well I think I've said more than enough for the first post.  Let the rambling posts begin!