I wasn't "mentally" ready to let DS start staying home by himself after school, but I did what I had to do. Texas doesn't have a "legal age" law. I evaluated whether I thought DS was ready; not whether I was ready. I consulted X (even though I did not need his permission) and we both agreed DS was ready to stay home for 3 hours in the afternoons by himself. He was 1 month away from turning 11. For the most part, he has handled the responsibility really well. He even called me because the UPS guy knocked on the door and he was scared to open it. LOL! If you think DD is ready, then that is your decision. Chances are, nothing will come of this latest threat, but if it does, you are within your legal parental rights to make that decision for your daughter during your custody period. THEY are the ones who have time-and-time-again proven to make bad decisions (like SM attacking you). They would basically be fighting their own reputations in court. They seem, to me, like wounded animals. You know how when a cat is hurt, it swipes and hisses at anything that tries to help it? Why would they keep on swiping at you when they JUST got overnight visits and SM visits back? They are only hurting themselves by continuing their petty behavior when they should be grateful. They really want to go for full custody when, until recently, they couldn't even have an overnight? Seems really stupid and futile on their part, and a judge would see that too. As far as riding in the front seat, check your state's laws on that, too. A lot of the things we hear are just recommendations and even change all the time. If there is a LAW in your state that says children have to ride in the back seat until a certain age, that's one thing. But if it's just a recommendation from some stupid research firm, or non-elected government agency acting as though they have authorities they don't have, then just blow it off and tell BD you checked the laws in your state and it is perfectly legal.

sweeby~ Thanks so much for your thoughtful reply. Your assumptions are fairly correct: - Of course we'd be delighted to have her here. BUT, we've made it clear to her that we DON'T want her to come here if she'd only be doing it out of a sense of obligation or because she thought dad (or I) would have hurt feelings if she didn't. We encouraged her to think about it very hard, weigh the options/pros & cons, etc. If, after much thought, she felt that this was the best place for her, then we would support that 100%. If she decided that mom's was the best place, we would support that 100%. She came to us with an extensive pro/con list and said she was 100% sure that she felt this was the best place for her for high school. We have said in no uncertain terms that it is not her responsibility to assure the happiness of her parents (bio or step). -I'm sure biomom wants her to stay there, which is only natural. The problem lies in her motive(s). The only thing one can assume, based on what she's said to DSD is that her only thoughts on the subject are with regards to HER (mom's) feelings. That SHE'D be sad/lonely, etc if daughter left. Her exact words have been "I'm sure you wouldn't really want to leave me here with no kids" and "I know you won't do to me what your brother did". You cannot argue with DSD's reasons for coming here...siblings and grandparents here, best friends here, much better schools here, and she just wants to spend these high school years with dad. It's not, nor should it be, about who has less strict rules, etc. Nor is it a popularity contest. - She is definitely between a rock and hard place for all the reasons you listed. She has said "I don't want to be the one to break my mom's heart...so I just want you guys to all figure it out and tell me where to go". She definitley wants to be "off the hook"...and who can blame her. She's at such a funny developmental place...very thoughtful in her reasoning, but still unable/unwilling to really stand up for herself. I have discussed the idea of a psychologist/counselor being involved...mostly as an unbiased 3rd party...just someone she can use as a sounding board, who she doesn't have to worry about disappointing. Unfortunately, geograhic distance will prevent joint parent meetings, but we hope to have a "conference call" of sorts to start discussing these issues. My DH is pretty sure that mom will want both stepdad and me to be part of the discussion, as we've both been part of the picture for so long. So, we press on. She's currently doing a Volleyball camp here for incoming freshman at the high school she will go to if she moves here. In a couple of weeks she will fly back to NC to try out for a competetive dance team there. So, as you can see from just those two things, she really is torn. Keep her/us in your thoughts & prayers (if you're the praying kind). Thanks

Thanks everyone for your responses/help. We don't have a pool builder because we were owner-builder up to shotcrete. After that, we used a licensed pool plaster company for the tile, coping, stone, plaster (i.e. all the finish work). The owner of the pool plaster company maintains that an epoxy plug is a good fix for the broken conduit. However, we've had 6 licensed pool contractors out to assess the damage and NONE of them said an epoxy plug is the proper way to fix the leak. ALL of them said that the shelf would need to be completely demo'd and the conduit (to all the lights) replaced. At this point the conduit to only 1 lighted bubbler is clear, at least enough to get the wire through. The other 2 pipes are still completely blocked (and 1 is broken). Another thing ALL the pool contractors told us is replastering just the shelf will not look good. They ALL said it will look like a big patch: The color won't match the rest of the pool and there will be a 12 foot wide, highly noticeable demarcation line where the 2 plasters meet and, since the water depth is only 9 inches deep, there's no way you won't see it. (FYI, we thought about adding a line of tile to try to cover up the demarcation line, but quickly realized that it would be an odd look for the design of our pool and just end up looking like we're covering something up. Plus the plaster color would still look different than the rest of the pool. Only one contractor considered doing that at first, but then thought about how it would look with our pool and said there's no way it would look right/not look out of place.) Since all the contractors said our pool is going to look pretty crappy with such a huge patch (and we want our pool to look right) we've decided to replaster the entire pool and are going to recover as much money as we can from the plaster company's surety bond. We're also going to try to find out if they have general liability insurance since they damaged pipes that were already existing when they began their work. 3 of the pool contractors we talked to told us a couple of interesting things that we were hoping to get clarification on: They said since the area of the shelf is more than 10% of our pool it's more likely that the plaster company's surety bond company would accept a full replaster of the pool as the proper fix rather than just patching/replastering the shelf. Has anyone heard of this? Btw, the pool contractor we've decided to go with put in their estimate (and is going to tell the bond company) that a full replaster is the only way to make the pool look right (i.e. not look like it's been patched). Our pool plaster was supposed to be Stonescapes Midnight Blue (it's written in our contract), but the pool contractors we spoke to said that unless the plaster company handed us a warranty certificate from NPT then we didn't get what we paid for: A true Stonescapes product backed by NPT's warranty. They said it's common for pool companies to say that they're going to install Stonescapes, charge the customer a higher $ amount, but then use a cheaper product (i.e. either not use Stonescapes at all, or buy the stones from NPT but mix it with a cheaper plaster not warranted by NPT). Does this sound right? Any input would be greatly appreciated!

Liberals... do what makes you feel good, take God out of schools, okay to burn the flag, disrespect the President Ingeorgia, if you're going to be so critical, at least don't be a hypocrite. You criticize others for disrespecting the President but I have seen you refer to President Obama as "obamination" several times, including when he was still in office. I guess your comment only applies when you like the President. I don't like Trump at all but I would never call him names like you call Obama. I'm more respectful than that. The generalizations you make in the rest of your post are sad. I had no idea that rap music is a liberal thing. I'm happy to support keeping religion out of the government and whatever gender people choose to identify as. I support peaceful protesting. I have never celebrated the death of police officers and I find that implication disgusting and incredibly offensive. It's also a downright lie, which is funny since you also call liberals liars. I don't believe the government should be able to force women to have children, especially if the children are rape consequence, endanger the life of the mother, or are terminal themselves. I recently read about a woman who found out in her second trimester that her child will be born with a severe deformity and die immediately upon birth. Her doctors recommended termination but Texas passed a law that prohibits insurance companies from covering abortions unless it's a medical emergency. Since this child could be carried to term, this woman has a choice to either carry this terminal child to term or pay $8,000 to pay for it herself. They want to force this woman to carry a baby she knows won't live for another 5 months and make the child suffer during childbirth only to die shortly afterwards. Are you okay with that? It's barbaric and inhumane for both mother and child. These are the sort of things we will face if we let the government make these decisions. I'm not pro-abortion. No one is pro-abortion. I don't like when women use abortion casually like birth control. But I think it's worse for the government to make decisions about women's bodies.