My partner (m) has a son who he currently has Friday-Saturday every weekend since him and his ex separated 7 years ago.
We have a really good co-parenting relationship between the four of us, so ex and their partner and myself and my partner.
Stepson is about to go up to high school and we would like to change the childcare agreements (all informal, no court was ever involved) we would like to go to week on, week off but it didn’t go down well with ex. I’m just wanting some advice on how best to approach this as we really don’t want it to go to court.
some things to add are:
- ex has had another child and son doesn’t get to see his sibling at the weekends so would be nice for them to see his sibling outside of school times
- ex often makes plans and doesn’t tell us so we will say see you next week and they say no we have booked stuff (we don’t argue as he needs quality time with his mum and sibling but it can be hard to plan or a little annoying if we had plans too)
- We want 50/50 but will continue to pay the same amount of support to the ex so there is no financial loss
- Ex wants son to come to ours after school everyday and then get picked up when she finishes work as our house is closer to high school. She expects me to feed which kind of makes me feel like I’m being used as free childminding (I don’t mind, I love him but it feels like a bit cheeky)
- Son has expressed he wants to see dad and me more and has said some really sad things like he wish he could tear himself in half to see both
would really like advice, it’s such a difficult position, everyone loves him and wants what’s best for him but how do you know what’s best. Ex partner I think is scared to change routine and says she will miss him too much which I get but my partner feels the same. He loves his son so much and sometimes feels like he misses out on the “serious bits” like school and clubs and it feels like we are the “fun” parents because we always get the weekends