Phone Calls Being Changed

Okay, I think that I have a better picture of what is going on. The kids miss you and when you call and just talk to them on the phone they are reminded how much they miss you. Then when they get off the phone with you, dad has to deal with the pains they are going through getting used to this new arrangement. He'd rather deal with that as little as possible. At the same time, you want to stay as close as possible to your children.

TC may be right about the number of calls that a judge will allow. If so, anything more than two per week will have to be at the discretion of dad.

I really don't know what the standard for Alabama is. It would be good to find out for certain what this is before you go to the effort and expense of bringing this before a judge only to find out that you didn't have a chance to win to begin with.

As far as the effort is concerned, livealittle is right on. You have to get your hands on those phone records and keep good notes about what is going on every time that you call.

Unless something is being said by your ex that is going to materially change your case I wouldn't recommend trying to transcript and provide copies of all your recordings of your conversations with dad nor the children into the discovery process. First of all, the shear volume of material that you will generate depending on how long this takes to get before a judge will become a full time job to manage. You'll spend 15 minutes talking on the phone and follow that up with another hour or two transcripting every word and cataloging the recording into some sort of storage system either analog or digital. This is way over kill for a civil matter. If this were criminal case I could see it. Secondly, a good attorney can use bits and pieces of your transcripted conversations with your children taken out of context to make you look bad. There is no sense in giving them that opportunity. Record the conversations if that makes you feel better but don't plan on ever using any of it in court unless you really have something that changes your case.

If you keep a fairly clear and concise journal of your phone calls, I'm confident that will more than suffice as evidence for the judge. Compile any points that you want to make into summary sheets and incorporate these summaries into your journal. You can even submit one or two page summaries to the judge but do not submit the journal as evidence. You save the detailed journal to reference if and when you are called to provide testimony on the witness stand. You are allowed from what I am told, and remember I'm not an attorney, that you may reference a personal journal while giving testimony on the witness stand.

You don't want to provide the journal to the judge or dad's attorney during the discovery process because dad's attorney again might find something that you've written in it that works against you. A good attorney can take anything that you write and turn it around on you if you give them enough ammo to work with.

So, find out what the standard is on phone contact to understand if this is a battle worth fighting and then do your homework and prepare to argue your case being careful not to give dad's attorney anything they can turn against you.

If you can't fight this one in court then you are going to have to use your persuasive skills with dad to work this out.

I would think he would be considerate of you if you were originally willing to accept less child support than mandated by the state. Something that I didn't understand in one of your recent posts was how dad was required to pay you $700.00 a month when the kids are with you. Since the kids are with him most of the time, was this when you had them in the summer?