Hello,
My son is almost three years old and I want to get soul custody of him and I was wondering how I would go about that. Right now we have shared custody of him, but his mother is always rude to me and my girlfriend; she freaks out if I don’t do exactly what she wants. When she gets mad at me she threatens to move away without telling anyone and she tells my girlfriend who has been in my sons life since he was 4 months old that her and her family is not allowed to be around him because she wants him to have nothing to do with any of them. Before we went for shared custody my girlfriend was going to get a restraining order on her because of the way she acted towards her, my girlfriend dropped it because she moved out of the city. With little things like potty training and getting him to pronounce his words properly his mom doesn't think that it is important. At the end of his week with us he is speaking better and telling us when he has to go pee but when he comes back he has forgotten everything we taught him the week before. It is really frustrating because we know that he would be fully potty trained and speaking a lot better if he was with us full time. Is there anything that we can do? :confused:

I Think That Your Child's Mother Is Very Immature. She Is Probably Still Upset That She Is A Single Parent And Probably Wants You Back. Being That You Have Moved On With Your Life Gets Her Mad And She Will Use Your Son Against You. Be Smart And Do Everything Through Court. She Can't Leave The State Without Your Consent On A Letter Stating That You Give Her The Okay To Leave. Joint Custody Means Both Decide Not Just One Parent. Have Faith In God And Don't Feed Into Her B.s!

If you have a court ordered visitation agreement in place,she cannot legally move without the court's permission. If she does, she can be prosecuted for kidnapping.

As for custody, there are two types, physical and legal. Physical custody refers to the primary caregiver and it appears the mom currently has that. By "shared" custody I assume you mean the child stays with you part of the time. This is normally referred to as visitation. Legal custody means you have a say in how the child is raised. So I am assuming you have shared physical and legal custody, but you want sole physical custody.

Since she was awarded physical custday you will have to prove her unfit as a mother to change the custody. This will be difficult to prove and slow potty training is not going to do it.

Scott makes an excellent point. Basically, you can't do anything without help from an attorney.

While I understand your frustration, your complaints aren't enough to over turn the courts decision to give her primary custody. It might be a tough road, but try talking to her first about your concerns. I'm sure she won't be happy to hear it, but if you try to be civil as adult parents it might get through to her.

Failing that, contact a lawyer for proper advice. Its possible to change your custody agreement but with those complaints it will be an uphill battle.

Good luck.

The note was to not use PMs for followups.

You can file a motion with the court. But without a very compelling reason, and it doesn't sound like you have one, the judge is not gong to award you full custody.

Unfortunately, I am in the same boat. My stepson's mother is a lazy parent who has allowed her son to rule the house since he was a toddler. She promotes a very unhealthy liftstyle for him (video games all day long and fast food nearly every day). He lacked socialization at a young age and has problems with it now (he's 9).

However, when my husband last took her to court to increase his visitation, his lawyer was totally honest with us and said unless she is beating him or doing drugs in front of him, we have basically no chance of getting primary placement until he is old enough to decide for himself.