My sons father and I were never married and live 3 hours apart... over the last 5 years we have met half way to exchange visitation... he has never once showed up to pick up our son, his mother has always done it and she has always been the "decision maker" when it comes to his fathers opinions.. she is retired and has nothing better to do but meddle in our raising of our son. First I have to say that we have no court ordered visitation and things have always been amicable. Until recently (in the last 3 months) my son has been coming home talking about how his dad is drunk all of the time and how he finds his hidden liquor bottles behind his bed. He has always had a drinking problem but I feel that it has gotten worse since he recently lost his job( actually his last 3 jobs) He once got a DWI on the way to pick our son up... hence the reason for my serious concern! So I have stopped taking him to meet them half way and wrote up a visitation agreement that I feel was completely fair ( every other weekend and alternating holidays) but I put in it that he would need to be supervised by his parents. I didn't feel this would be asking too much since he lives with them and they are wonderful grandparents... however now they have started a war and are taking me to court and I was just wondering what I need to know before this all happens... whos rights are what and so forth... I am a single parent and hiring an attorney is going to be costly so I wanted to do as much of the foot work myself as I could.

Well he has as much rights being the father as you do being the mother. While you can't go back in time this is something that should have been gone in court as soon as the child was born. Does he have a lawyer? Basically if he does and you don't then plan on losing or really him getting everything he wants because that's basically the way it plays out when only one side has a lawyer. Do you have a more specific question? Because he has tons of rights as do you because the child is both of yours equally. Why didn't you go to court sooner? Is the father even on the because? There are a few more questions that I could ask but it would be easier knowing those answers before going on.

Yes he is on the because and paternity was established at the time that the courts did the child support... which he was also paying on time until February when he lost his job. It was never taken to court because he and I had aways agreed on things together but now his mother is doing all of his bidding and he won't even speak to me. And when she calls it is only to say hurtfull things and throw his drinking problem at me saying that I am making it worse by keeping our son at my home.

In our state, there are free consultations with lawyers to answer questions such as yours - but it would also help if you can locate a record of his DWI. Local papers in our area publish such things as who went to court, what the charge was and what the fine was on a weekly or monthly basis (depending on whether it's a small town free publication or the larger area paper that you have to pay for). Your local library may have the papers on file, so that would be a good free source to check.

As stinawords states, you could lose everything if you go into this without legal representation, so talk to a lawyer about possibly doing some kind of payment plan if they don't want to go after him (or his parents, if they're funding his legal fees) should you win. My husband has been in court a couple of times over the years (for drinking and driving), and when we didn't have the cash up front, the lawyer allowed a reasonable arrangement.

Good luck! You're in my prayers!

Well you should be able to find a record of his DWI and you can bring that in as evidence that he could possibly be a danger to the child. As for his mother, you don't have to listen to her on the phone you just need to prepare yourself for court.