Transport of children

[toxicwaste]

I was just wondering how other people work picking and dropping of children/step-children at the other parents house.
My two children's father lives about 12 miles away and we share the running around between us, pretty much 50/50.
On the other hand my partners ex wife lives about 400 miles away and we have to do 100% of the travelling in order to see the children. It doesn't seem fair to me, but I was wondering what is 'normal' (!)

I don't know your specific circumstances regards why he moved away but it's not always as easy as "he chose to move away" some times it is.
Happy to just agree to differ but personally I'm sticking to my feeling that if my dd wants to see her dad then I'm happy to share the burden of the travel and would never make her feel that I didn't want to. Unless of course it was genuinely making me ill.
But I amm coming from the experience of having dsd crying on my shoulder because mum is refusing to do the one drive of the week she had agreed to do leaving dsd stranded at her dads unless in her mothers words "you make your own way home or tell your dad to get off his fuckjng skinny arse and bring you home. If he wants you to spend time with him he can make the effort" which in fact he had been doing that while weekend. Of course, he did take her to her mums and now does all the drives so as not to upset dsd. But dsd interprets this as her mum being a, lazy and b, not giving a crap about whether she sees her dad or not. Which is actually about the size of it - in our own situation.
We all bring our own baggage to these threads.

Sorry whole weekend

I think we all look at things from our own perspective and bring our own map of the world to threads like this.

I am looking at it more from the point of view of what I feel is reasonable and what I would negotiate over. I have been on the receiving end of an RP who just doesn't budge and is obstructive, and really not invested in her dd having any form of relationship with her Dad - I do know what that is like. I think that is very different from my feeling that two parents should share care, and as such if I organise my life around dd for 12 days of the week, he can do it for 2. That's not to say that I would let that feeling get in the way of dd's relationship with her Dad.

Alternatively - maybe I'm being a mug for having my DD 10 days out of 14 and still doing half the driving

I agree that everyone's situation is different - not just who moved away, but why, how far etc. On the whole, I'd think that something close to 50-50 would send the right message to the children even though it might not be fair to one parent or the other, for whatever reasons.

As a slight aside, I'm interested in the whole bit about cost and CSA. Me and DH incur enormous travel costs (he does 100% of long journeys caused by his ex moving away with the sole intention of making contact difficult - you'll have to take my word for it, but it's true) but have been told by the CSA that you can only get a reduction in maintenance to help cover travel costs if you don't also have a reduction for contact time. So, we get the 1/7 reduction because DSS is with us every other weekend, but nothing towards the travel. Has this changed??