I have never saw going to court over every detail as a good idea. Because like you said, many times the order is ignored anyways. If there was a big issue I would think about it. The only time I took my ex to court was the initial custody/support hearing. My dh only took his ex to court to get custody.

Do I deal with some crap from my ex? Yes, at times. For the most part we are able to work out the details. My dh's ex was a big pain until she moved out of state. Now she is a far away pain! While I would love for my dh to take her to court to get child support, I see it as a waste of money on our part. She has other kids and does not work, her bf can't keep a job. So even if she is ordered to pay the chances of actually getting money from her is slim. And the cost/hassle of taking her to court is unneeded stress right now. And I am not sure how we take her to court when she lives out of state? Anyone know how that works?

I remember my lawyer talking about this issue when I was going to court for cs from my ex. He said that people pay outrageous amounts of money to get all these little details in court orders (like no members of the opposite sex of parent that is not a relative around children, exact pick-up/drop-off times and locations, extensive visitation schedules, and such) and he made the comment that they are not always followed anyways. And like you said, taking it back to court can make you seem petty.

I know in some cases this stuff is needed, because one of the parents may be out to cause trouble and make things difficult. And some parents would drive the other crazy, as we have seen on here! But I think WHENEVER POSSIBLE it is best to work things out among eachother instead of court.

Sometimes, the threat of court is a good solution. Even if it doesn't do much good to actually go to court (nobody wins in court, except the lawyers), the thought of spending more money and giving a judge the power to take away your parental rights (meaning, the judge can lower your visitation or change custody & support.. I'm not talking about severing the parental rights) should be a deterrent to someone that is ignoring the orders. However, in my case, it's the person that is ignoring the orders that is threatening to go back to court all the time. We ARE frustrated. We DO document EVERYTHING. We are prepared if she takes him back to court. We aren't going to take her to court for the problems she's causing, however DH is going to take her to court because she should be paying support. If she decides to retaliate by taking us to court for custody, we will certainly be prepared to show the court what's she's been doing and it may end up backfiring on her and she may lose some of her time.

My son's father would play these games with me. My son was on year round school schedule so he was two months here, one month there. On the months he was with his dad, if I went to get him for a weekend, they wouldn't be home. I wasn't late. They decided because it was my birthday weekend, they weren't going to be home. They didn't call to let me know they were leaving.. just left. During the weeks my son was there, they wouldn't answer their phone. I had to go to court to get phone calls ordered. I never missed a call and was never late. They still wouldn't answer the phone and they would record the calls if they did answer it. As for enforcing it, Kathline you are right. There is no way to make someone be a grown up. However, I did file a contempt action (without an attorney) and charged him with 66 counts of violating our custody order. (one count for every missed phone call or visit). He was convicted of 11 counts and ordered to pay $50 for each count and do community service. He never paid a dime and as far as I know, never did the community service. I could have taken him back to court to enforce that, but by that time, he had decided to stop seeing my son. Our last order was when my son was 11 years old and stated 'no visitation' because his dad didn't go to the mediation or hearing. He had already cut off contact & the court said if he wanted to see his son, he could file a motion. He never did.

You can open up a case with the local child support agency. They should do everything. Many times, if they can't locate the person, it takes them forever because they don't have the time to spend on those ones, but if you provide a good address & keep them informed, they will open a case, get the order, keep track of arrears, and collect. It doesn't cost anything.

I'm so glad somebody asked this! My ex refused to do so many things that were part of the court order. He did pay his child support, but he refused to provide me with the written records for our son's college fund (which may or may not even exist), to reimburse me for medical expenses or health insurance when my plan was better than his, or to fork over quarterly profit payments from a townhome we jointly owned (which thankfully, is now sold.) I never took him to court, but SO wanted to.

Dh's X is always in non-compliance with the court order as far as costs. She's supposed to pay half of med bills, childcare and support. She doesn't. She doesn't get the boys half the time she's supposed to have a visit or she won't keep them for the court ordered visitation window. The BIG one in my mind - she's not supposed to smoke or drink alcohol will she has the children - but she does. We're at that point to where its like 'okay so what can we really do about it?' The bills we can go through small claims. The scheduling? The court can't force her to spend time with her children. The booze? We could strip all visitation rights from her after another lengthy battle and another 20G in attourny fees...but DH and I both feel that if WE force a no contact with BM the boys will spite us for it, instead we use the order in the existing decree in which DH has the ability to cut visitation short or skip that particular visitation if she is inebriated.

We did open a case with Child Support Recovery - cost 25 dollars and haven't heard anything back yet. :/

Most of the time it is a waste of money for petty little details you know the other person wont do and there is nothign a court can do to force if they choose not to follow orders.
But yes, threats of doing it sometimes work. But other times, it doesn't
My Dh ex threatened to take him to court for braces. He said, go for it. I barely have money to pay for extracurricular activities, which i've never refused for the sake of the kids ( he would pay in installments) but i dont have half of 8,000$ to pay for braces. Sd is not even severe. Its a mild overbite. She threatend a few months ago , we haven't heard a peep since. But if she goes that way, it will get ugly. And Sd did become worried when she hears about court. SHe starts to panic. As much as she is cause problems now adays, i hate seeing her like that. Its not fair.

Hubby and ex ... go to court every 3 -6 months ... we compile issues he wants resolved ... His next court date is in Aug. They just went in January ... thats when we got a very specific order .... exact times for every day of the year holidays, weekends, summer schedule, vacation weeks, birthdays, EVERYTHING... CO stating neither party can discus litigation with the children.... that took almost a year to get ... each time hubby went to court he would tell the judge she is going to tell the children everything discussed here ... the final straw was when she told the judge she let them read the hubby's letter to the court with the issues he wanted addressed ... thats when he signed the order.... hubby waits and waits then she pushes his buttons and he files contempt charges on her.

They are going in Aug to see how the "new schedule" is working out. By then she should have done atleast one of her vacation weeks. She is in contempt right now she is basically on "probation" until August with regards to visitation.

CS is deducted automatically from her... (she refused to pay for 18 months)... That only went into effect after hubby went to court and said ... I am not leaving here with out DOR taking the money from her because she at this point owes almost $10,000...

Whenever anything was asked of her ... the response was take me to court ... hubby asked for 18 months for her to take the kids on a saturday any saturday one saturday in 18 months and she didn't want to hear it ... refused. She had the kids on thurs and sunday nights @ 5:30pm.

She called DSS on hubby because he told middle son he had to wait 4 days to get a new pair of sneakers... broke them on sunday had to wait to thursday to get a new pair... DSS was called into court and DSS recomended her visitation be limited to consecutive days on non-school nights.

They are just bitter with each other... but after this last court date she called here complaining about something and I sailed into her ... if you two want to fight over petty stuff..... blah blah blah ... do it with out me. Since then its been easier ... guess she realized I make life easier for both of them.

So to answer your question ... Going to court over minor issues does not resolve much but we keep a log of everything and that comes in handy when writing his little spiel to the judge of issues we want addressed. It has taken 2 years to get to this point.

We have had many issues resolved but it took time.

Sidenote: She got a new BF in Nov. since then she has been much more compliant ... don't know if it has anything to do with him or not ... but hubby and I were discussing this the other day ... hope he sticks around because we are afraid if he does not she will revert back to her old ways.

Which would be very sad for the kids.