Removing Visitation Rights from a Non-Custodial Parent

My question involves a child custody case from the State of: Kansas.

My husband has had residential custody of his children since he and his ex divorced. She at best has had supervised visitation due to drug related issues and legal trouble for theft until these past 3 and half years. She has worked her way up through a family counselor to have overnights every other weekend, split holidays, and this summer and last summer my husband has allowed extended summer time. This year was 3 weeks in a row.

During her time this year our 13 and 14 year old boys (no prior legal trouble of any kind) went with their cousin who is 17 (extended, extreme amount of legal issues) snuck out of the house in the middle of the night and broke into and robbed a grocery store. The kids told the adults the next day they found 4 cartons of cigarettes and 4 cases of beer. The adults took the stuff and spilt it between them and used it. 2 days later she claims she figured it out and made the boys turn it in. They are facing 3 felonies and a misdemeanor. They were released to my husband.

In the meantime we have found out in these past 3 weeks our 13 year old has taken pills (skittles?), attempted to walk to another town unsupervised with no ones knowledge of where he was, drank alcohol to the point of passing out and smoked cigarettes with her knowledge. We don't know what to do. They are obviously not safe with her but we've basically been told that because they are in his custody and safe with us there isn't much that can be done. We can't keep them from her. We have also been told if these incidents would have happened when they were in our custody they would have been taken from us.

Is there truly that difference in parental rights and parenting time for custodial vs non custodial parent? Is there anything that we can do to keep these children safe when they aren't with us??

I need you to read this post with objectivity, ok?

Dad has two teens, and before this year Mom had only very limited visitation. This year she got 3 weeks but after the incident the boys were returned to Dad.

Now. This is where I think you're going to disagree, and do so strongly.

Dad has been the primary caregiver for over 4 years. Those two teens didn't simply wake up one morning and decided to become criminals. What happened? What happened during Dad's parenting time that somehow morphed into the current events?

They were, effectively, on Dad's watch. What went wrong?

Now we have the termination of Mom's rights. Not going to happen - not at this point. It takes an awful lot for the State to take such a drastic and final step and again, Dad might end up with being blamed at least in some part since he doesn't appear to have taught them right from wrong.

Dad needs to tread carefully. How did he punish them?

If your husband believes that visitation should be suspended or supervised, he can bring a motion with the custody court asking for that relief. Given that no small part of these behavior problems are coming from your children (they're old enough to be responsible for their own actions, and for those actions to reflect on the parenting of both households), and that courts are disinclined to suspend visitation, it would make sense for him to work with a lawyer.