Every summer my husbands ex stirs up trouble. She spends all year refusing to communicate and agree to a visitation switch but as usual, when she wants something, she turns on the communication flood gates making her demands. In fact, both in March and in may we were invited on mission trips to haiti which fell on our visitation weekends and she refused to even allow a switch or even acknowlege our request. We of course accepted her denial and forfeited our visittation. Something we would never due except for the mission trips (I am head of a non-profit and that is why our involvement is so frequent) this year my husband have learned a lot and thought we had experienced it all until now.

Because every summer she makes demands and requests of visitation changes that put us in a bad position with the kids, we thought we would protect our plans by making them known. Back in April we notified her that we would be unable to accommodate a switch the first week of August because of our plans for my husbands 50th. We had no idea of any of her plans but thought we would be proactive. We are not infrindging on her visitation-this is all during our visitation. But again from experience, we knew we needed to document something--yes everything is documented.

Our visitation is every Wed, Thursday and every other weekend. He has shared custody with his spouse to answer that question.
Basically we get two weeks and she gets 2 weeks and then normal visitation resumes. My husband was smart enough to have his 2 weeks spelled out in the decree because his ex is impossible to deal with. We, as we always have, cooperated already with her 2 weeks this summer and she has taken it the first 2 weeks of July. But she decided even after our email in April to send us a letter in June demanding to let her take the children for an extended visit in August. Wouldn't you know it is during that week we told her we had plans and wouldn't be open to a request for a switch. She wants our Wednesday of his birthday weekend. She said she bought flights and we need to cancel our plans or postpone our plans because it will cost her money to change her flights. We of course said no. She then demanded in 2 very rude long letters to our home and when that didn't work scheduled a mediation. My husband -who just lost his job did not agree to mediation because he said he sees no reason to pay $60.00 to say no again. Now she is asking the court for an emergency hearing to show cause of this.

Will the court entertain her? Will we now have to run to court, pay court fees and fight for what is awarded visitation? Can an ex spouse use the court to say "he didn't give me what I want so will you just take it from him?" Even if we weren't going out of town, can she do this and get away with it? She goes to CA every year with the kids and she knows the visitation schedule, how can she abuse the system like this?

Happens all the time. But even if it goes before the judge it sounds like you already nitifed her before she bought any tickets. If that is the case the judge might laugh a lot. The court isn't made for this type of abuse of the system. And most likely she will be called for it.