My question involves a child custody case from the State of: MN.
Hi, this is my first post here. My daughter is 5 and because of contentious relationship with my ex and continued disagreements on mostly vacation/holiday parenting time our case was assigned a PTE on request of my ex in court.
We have had her for about a year. My ex has brought two issues to her to resolve in the last few months.
I feel that she is over-stepping her bounds as a PTE and is functioning more along the lines of a parenting time consultant.
Here are my two issues with the decisions:
1. Her first decision was regarding a week of vacation that my ex requested. I wanted to deny his request. My child is 5. My ex has NEVER had her in a family parenting situation as he left me when I was pregnant. Because of this, he was granted only every other weekend and one night/week for parenting time, in addition to the standard E/O holiday, etc. Our order states that we are both entitled to two weeks of uninterrupted parenting time per year. I attempted to deny my ex's request for his week of parenting time during a week in November when my daughter had school. He has NEVER had her for an entire week during the school year (has previously had her in the summers, etc.) I had a whole lot of concerns with this and brought this to the PTE -- the biggest of which my ex NEVER gives my daughter her scheduled medication when he has her for parenting time and he OFTEN drives her around without a booster seat (which is unsafe and illegal!!!!!) She granted his time anyway. I think that he legally was entitled to the time but that this was a very poor decision. This was her first decision in our case and I feel that she should have contacted her daycare provider, her teacher, her therapist (her therapist at least -- she knows both my ex and I and has been involved with both of us for extended periods of time) to find out whether or not they thought my ex was capable of caring for her appropriately for a week during school. What she did instead of that was wrote about 8 stipulations into her decision as to that my ex could have the time if he met all of the requirements I stated (including giving her her meds, putting her in a carseat, etc.) In addition to this, she called me with this decision ONE DAY before his vacation time that she granted was supposed to start. I feel that she needed to give me more notice on this and this was bad form.
Also in this decision, she made a decision statement regarding what happens with making up weekends when one of us misses one regarding a holiday. She decided that whoever is missing the weekend gets to choose which weekend they want for a make up. This issue did NOT come up as far as any specific time my ex or I asked her to intervene for. I feel that because neither of us brought this issue to her, she was overstepping her bounds.
2. Second decision: I requested a week of vacation time. She denied this on the basis that I did not give enough notice (which was per the order, and was fair.) However, in a phone call with her, she told me that she would not have granted the time when I wanted it anyway because the request included my ex's weekend. This is NOT a stipulation in our order. She argued that because I have my daughter most of the time, I shouldn't be interrupting his weekends. My argument in return was that our order does not put any stipulations on when I can take my vacation time (it also does not require me to allow him to make up a weekend, as an aside.) We had a big blowout over this. She again made her decision ONE DAY before my requested vacation time and denied it -- which made my daughter miss two parties and her science fair at school. She did not ask me if I had plans for my time with her. In addition to this, she moved my requested week of vacation forward by two days WITHOUT ASKING ME when I wanted my vacation week to be moved to. With this --- she is covering her ass, I think. She denied the time basically on what the order says (not enough notification) but she clearly wants to put stipulations on when I can take my time.
I contacted her after she wrote her decision and told her that my daughter missed several events because of the untimeliness of her decision (she didn't respond to this) and that I wanted my vacation week moved to a different time which was several days later. She finally responded, 5 days later (which is the maximum that her contract states she has to respond) and now she is telling me that I can't have the week that I want because it interrupts two of my ex's weeknight visitation periods (which are not overnights -- they are from after school until bedtime.) I am still waiting the final decision letter on this one. I mean, seriously -- if I can't take my vacation time on my ex's weekend, OR on his weeknight visitation periods, WHEN CAN I TAKE IT? On my regular parenting time? And...what's the point of that?
My ex and I have been in mediation over several of these issues. I specifically DISAGREED in mediation to have a stipulation placed that I could not have my vacation time over his weekends. I also DISAGREED that it should be specifically stated who gets to choose make-up weekends. Unfortunately, when we mediated our original order, I forgot to include that I didn't want my ex taking his vacation time when my daughter was in school (she was in preschool at the time, so it slipped by me. I meant to have this addressed.)
Here is the rest of the drama. I googled this PTE's name and found out that she had been practicing as a GAL in another state in the past several years. She has been accused of awarding custody to abusive fathers (mothers have come forward that this has happened to) and being very father-biased. I brought this up to her and asked her to explain (well, initially she didn't return my call, but when I got her on the phone, I asked about it again). First, she completely denied it -- said it must have been somebody with the same name -- then I told her that this message board that this was posted on specifically referenced a GAL with her name that was also working in alternate dispute resolution in my County, MN. She had no response for me. Denial is a river in Egypt ....
I also asked her for her resume and qualifications including whether or not she was barred/disbarred, etc. She chose not to respond to this email. When I got her on the phone today she told me that she was not a lawyer. In MN, the standards for ADR people are extremely low -- they only need 40 hours of education. I asked her for this information again. I feel like I have a right to know who is making decisions for me and my daughter and not providing this information is substantially less than transparent, which is NOT acceptable for a public servant.
I am not sure that she has technically broken my order so I don't know if I should go to court and attempt to have her order overturned. I do want to complain to her to the ADR ethics board re: her lateness, her failure to investigate the case, her failure to explain this message board situation including allegations of being biased, and her unwillingness to provide me with her qualifications.
Any advice? Seriously, this person seems like a crackpot and I don't want her involved in my case at all. It especially scares me with the whole other moms losing custody thing.
Thank you, so much, in advance.

