Holly cow we have progress. I'm almost ready to crack out the champagne. The threat of court proceedings and the prospect of splitting at minimum a $50k court bill finally got some action. We sat down and sorted out 95% of the agreement, mainly all the stuff about the kids and how we would split holidays etc. The finances will be sorted this week and I am finally in a position to find a place of my own to rent. With any luck I can be out by the end of the month and start getting settled somewhere. The only real issue we have left to sort but it is a sticky one is the actual weekly schedule and that is where I'm looking for some help from all the wise people on here. A while back a what was supposed to be short term solution was put into place and here we are over a year later still on it. The stbxw works Saturday mornings so that has been a tough one to navigate. Currently W looks after the kids Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. I look after them Thursday, Friday, Saturday and we alternate Wednesdays. Swaps occur after school during the week and Sunday morning. Not terrible but there are two major draw backs. First I don't get any evenings to go out and socialize with friends where I don't have to get up for work in the morning or have any weekend days to perhaps sleep in or take care of things that I cant during the week due to work. Second, this schedule completely screws up teh weekend for the kids and neither they nor myself or W really get a quality weekend with them. I spend Saturday running them all around to dance then hand them over to their mom Sunday morning. She gets to enjoy Sunday evening with them but that isn't much.
There has been a bunch of back and forth about this with several schedule proposals made and reviewed but we couldn't come to a solution based on her Saturday work hours. This week my IC suggested the following:
We alternate Sundays and on my Sunday drop off would be Sunday Evening (I'm open to various timing) and on the weekends where she has Sunday we switch off Saturday when she gets off work (about 3 pm).
Under this schedule we would both be responsible for the kids on two days a week that we each have to work as she has Monday off, she would not have to worry about child minding at 5am Saturdays, the kids get to spend more time with each parent every second weekend, both parents get some weekend time alone to participate in social activities or just rest. To me it seems like a win for all parties but it is still a flat no from W. So I would like to hear some of your thoughts.
