"What to Do About the Ex"

If it were me I would take him back to court if the finances were there and get his parental rights stripped from him. He has no right to dictate to you what is best for your son if he is not part of his life.

I would definitely take him back to court especially if he not going to see him that much. It is doing more harm than good fot this to go on. My main concerns would lie with my child, his dad has time to do everything else but when it comes to his son(which needs him) he has other things. So my advice to you is: I would take him back to court and fight .

The advice that Laura gave you is EXACTLY right. I had the same situation happen to me. My ex skipped town in the middle of the night, we haven't seen him since. The courts would NOT take his rights away b/c they feel that will leave the child a "bastard child". They can only be relinquished if you remarry and that person adopts your son. I remarried, my ex agreed b/c it got him out of child support. Totally insane if you ask me...but that unfortunatly is how our system works. Good luck!!!

You are definitely between a rock and a hard place. Speaking from experience, if you file for full custody, (1) the courts will not take away his vistations unless you can prove him unfit, (2) this will cause your ex to WANT to see his child more often just to tick you off. You will go the hard way to get exactly what you DON'T want.
As you said, you have that now anyway. You said that your ex likes to dictate on your child's medical care, but if he sees him only twice a year, how is he able to be there for the appointments? Is it written up that you HAVE to confer with him on that stuff? If not, then just don't. Stop telling him when the appointments are and what is going on. If he asks, tell him what happened and what you decided and when he has a fit that you didn't ask him first, tell him you planned to talk with him on his next visitation, but that he never showed up. If he calls you often, start getting busy. When he asks about the doctors visits, ask if you can discuss it later that someone just knocked, or there is a long distance call coming in on the other line. If he ever takes you to court over it, tell the truth, you were going to discuss it all when he came for his visitations, but he never came.
I know this seems, to some, very insensitive, but I know what it is like to watch my child be ignored and neglected by their father while he is still so busy harrassing me!

~Take care~

Hi K.. I have a similarly situation. My son is 5 and his biological dad does not do anthing for him at all.I was letting him talk to my son, but he never kept his word. So I stopped that because my son was being pulled around by his lies and having to be disappointed. Since I've done that my son does not ask about him or mention him. My son knows who is there for him. In the long run he will realize that he (the dad) has missed out and he won't be able to get that back. My son is such much better off. I left well enough along and that was the best thing I could have done for my son. Thers' so much I could tell you on this subject because I learned this through the experience. But good luck I hope I helped.

I just finished a long drawn out child support/custody battle myself. I have a couple of questions for you. First of all, is your parenting plan in writing? What dictates how much child support he pays and how much visitation he gets? If you don't have this in writing, it needs to be. With the new child support laws that are in place, he needs to be paying you a lot more than what he pays currently, because the less visitation a non-custodial parent has, the more support he has to pay. Which makes perfect sense, because the child spends more time with you, and obviously costs you more money to support. Happy meals aren't free, ya know? Secondly, if there is already a court ordered parenting plan in place and he's just not abiding by it........i've got one word for you.....CONTEMPT. you can go to child support court and file an order of contempt, you do not need a lawyer and it takes about 5 minutes. I know this from experience, unfortunately. He has responsibilities and you have rights that protect you and your son, go out there and take advantage of them!!

My advice is fight for your son and have it stated if possible that you will make all of his medical decisions for your son since you care for him 24/7 and know his needs. He might disagree on a treatment for your son if he is mad at you and wants to hurt you. My son's father left me when I was 6 weeks pregnant and has never asked to see him and my son is now 4 years old. I chose not to fight for child support or put his name on the birth certificate just to keep him from having any say in how I raised my son and I have no regrets about it but when he is older and wants to find his dad I will help him so he can tell him why he didn't want him but if he chooses not to find him that is fine with me to. Good luck and God Bless you for choosing to adopt a special child that takes a special person and that apparently is not your ex or he'd be around more to help you...

Ok, coming from my experience in working in a law firm that handled custody issues, I can tell you that even if you have "full" custody your ex is still going to have visitation rights and a say in the decisions. The only way to get rid of him entirely is if you are remarried, have your new hubby adopt your son (of course, that depends on your ex giving up custody). As long as your ex is your son's "father" he has the right to make decisions as to his well being. Now, in saying that, I do not know what the laws are in Mississippi but in Tennessee if you can prove that you have the child more than you should according to the custody papers you can take him back to court to have your child support increased based on you having him 95% of the time (or whatever percentage it is). Good luck!