The W responded a few mins ago with: "Telling her she "making your depression worse" and telling her we will go to court over it is only increasing her anxiety. You cannot put those things on a 15 year old. She is not responsible for your depression and making her feel that way is cruel. She told me she wants to spend time with you when she is ready. Your forcing he is making things worse.I know its hard for you. The emotional damage being done is hard for me. This is not about us.Its about them and and I will do everything in my power to be there to support and listen to them I will not orce them. We have agreed on that and now you want to force it. I am done with this conversation"
Absolutely nothing about this message say anything else other than concerned mother of your children. Every single thing she said is right. You cannot emotionally manipulate your children to get what you want. You are the adult. You are the parent.
The court is going to ask if you and W actually tried to enforce the visitation schedule you planned between yourselves with out lawyers and a judge first. I strongly, strongly suggest you have a conversation, and for documentation purposes probably via email regarding the visitation schedule. I've said it, others have said it. You guys made a schedule you have to both be willing to stick to it, and enforce it, even if the kids hem and haw over it. Your W will not help you to enforce this if you continue to turn this into a pissing contest or make it about youe needs with your kids. This isn't about you. Don't forget those words.
That being said. You can't let them just choose to always be by mom because it's easier than fighting, or because you want to appease some one in that other household, but you do need to start really thinking about when is an appropriate time to acquiesce to the requests to stay by mom and when it's time to ask W to be a united front. Like this move. I do understand them wanting to be in the new place this weekend to settle in instead of being shuttled by you and then back to an unpacked disaster to start the school week. But things like that are easily over come. You just trade weekends. So you get two in a row or however you guys work it out. Maybe 4 days in a row in the future instead. The options here aren't all or none, and both you and W need to stop thinking like that or you're going to waste an ever loving crap ton of money on lawyers. You both need to be firm with the kids TOGETHER, and flexible TOGETHER, or this is never going to work. And your kids aren't babies. If you two don't sit down and figure this out soon you'll be fighting about this until you have grandkids coming around.
