is he up to something?

[yumummy]

When my ex & I split up our ds wasn't born yet. Ex let it be known he would go for shared residency at some point in future. He has always had regular contact since ds birth and is a good dad. Now ds is 3 and at nursery ex still sees him as much as he always has in fact he insists that contact hours must always increase as dc gets older - so now I want a weekend in the month with my ds my ex says he must make up the hours somewhere else in week otherwise I can't have ds. Surely this hours increase does not make sense? As ds gets older, goes to school etc I will be losing time with him too and if ex says his hours are just to increase I will be left with little time. Is this what he is trying to achieve informally - notching up his hours to somthing like half the time so in a court he can demonstrate he spends x number of hours already?
Sorry this sounds paranoid, even cynical but unfortunately the past has shown that ex and his family can be manipulative and underhand. I get caught short because I am naivee!!

I think its nice that ds gets to see his Daddy but surely as you suggest the more he is at school the less you 'get',and as he gets older the time he wants to spend with friends etc will increase and again double your loss of hours .....I think you need a new arrangement taking into account these changes so you both get your 'share' of ds.

How often does he see him? And how often to you see him?

Is he angling to be considered the "main carer"?

are you saying you dont have a weekend when you have your ds at all? cant you do alternate weekends?

and yes it sounds like he is trying to make it seem like he is the main carer, i think you need to try and come up wiht an arrangement that suits both you, if you want 50/50 care and think it would work then fine but get something in writing and maybe get some legal advice as it sounds like he is being controlling int he amount of time he has ds?

My post was probably premature as currently I am main carer no question. Ex sees ds 2 full days a week - saturdays and 1 week day. When he is in position to do overnight I hope we can move to alternate weekends. It's just that when ds started pre-school ex insisted on still having him 1 week day and seems to be counting up hours rather than basing contact on ds needs. I can't get my head around the calculating hours business & not sure what was behind it.

It doesn't sound to me like he's playing at something slyly to take over care, it looks like he doesn't want to lose time with his child, which he also will do in the future if the child is at school ... he'll only be seeing them after school instead, like you. Could it be that he doesn't want his child's relationship with him affected. Is he really asking for such a huge thing? One week a month, you get the full weekend, he gets 2 after nursery's in the week.

Why is he not in a position to have him overnight?

My thoughts would be that there would be no way that he would never be awarded 50:50 if your ds has never actually lived with him and that arrangement would be totally unfair on your child. But that is my opinion not based on any evidence.

Try not to let him push you into agreeing to any arrangements which are suitable for your son.