10.05.09 - 9:46 am

so i spoke with collin the day after this report was made available. while i was only given the recommendations, collin had access to a much broader range of information regarding davids report.

the sole legal custody recommendation, according to collin, stems not from my inability to parent. but mainly the distance involved from where i live and from where ashtons primary household is. ashtons school and sports and friends all reside in sherwood. regardless of the poor judgement sarah has demonstrated, she has been the primary parent responsible for doctors visits, insurance, etc. fair enough.

the parenting time plan is an ok one. one that is substantially better than the 40 hours a week i currently loathe. im not fond of the one overnight during the in between weeks and would like that to be at least two overnights in between.

the holiday stuff is fine and seems pretty standard. some of the times are a bit odd though and would need to be fixed. easter for example: 6 pm on sunday? ill have to either drive out to drop ashton off or go pick him up and that seems to be right when most families have an easter dinner. very inconvenient, more like 8 pm would be appropriate.

having a whole three day holiday weekend every year is pretty sweet. makes planning vacations or trips easy.

summer time was a big one. one week on, one week off. thats great. thats how it should be during the school year, but during the summer is fine too. its a very satisfying amount of time and perfectly fair for sarah and i.

the next part of the document has his broad recommendations, even though most of them are a veiled and/or pointed finger at sarah.

the individual therapy for each parent? pffft. no. not likely. i dont think i have anger management problems (...sarah) nor do i need additional insight for my behavior. my girlfriend does that enough for me. problem solving skills are something i can maybe work on, but dont need to pay someone to teach me. and with the last statement explicitly telling sarah that she should continue her therapy, i felt it was pretty obvious who the entire statement was intended for.

the other matters, again are all very specifically targeted toward information i passed on to david about sarah. the movies. the derogatory comments. the discussing with ashton what he will be missing out on or what new things he should look forward to when he leaves my house....all things sarah does all the time. i like that he even made specific mention of the cell phone. concerning enough for him that he felt it necessary to include in his recommendation report. and finally, telling sarah to use me as childcare if im available, instead of dusty or dustys parents like she always tends to do.

all together it was a decent recommendation. it was favorable to me in many respects, made some targeted remarks about sarah....but there was more unwritten information that collin had for me.

collin feels that if we need to go to trial, david the evaluator will be a very valuable witness on my behalf. he will strengthen my position. this is good. very good.

distance. distance is the biggest problem to david, according to collin. if we go to trial, and collin asks him what were his stipulations for granting custody to sarah he will probably say something about this. that changing custody over to me and switching ashtons location and school and world around would be far more damaging than maintaining sarah as the primary parent. the modification would be far too stressful for ashton. if i were to live in sherwood or tualatin, how would that affect his opinion on full custody to sarah?

collin seems to think his argument would fall away, leaving him to suggest that i would be in a better position to have full custody than sarah. this is huge. that merely moving would suddenly open this up for me. but it comes with cost. it means we would for sure be going to trial.

if i was satisfied with the evaluation recommendation, collin is confident that even though sarah would immediately reject it, he could get her attorney to make her agree to it. we would settle and all this would be done. an additional thousand dollars or so.

however, since custody is in reach, if i wanted it, i should pursue it. collin knows that money is an issue. he only wants to proceed with this if i can give him some confidence in financial backing ie put down a 5 to 10k retainer. we would go to trial. we would hammer down on sarah and it could very well end with me having full custody of my son. putting me in a position to better raise ashton. and showing sarah that her years or horrible behavior have paid off dearly for her. a purely selfish desire, but a consequence sarah has been sowing for some time now. or maybe even inspite of the trial, i may not be granted custody.

so it comes down to cost.

its like im at a safeway, looking at two things on the shelf. one for $2000 and the other is $15000. what do i want to buy? what is more worth it to me? do i just want the parenting time? do i want the full custody?

big choices. tough decisions. especially for someone unemployed, with very little income already sapping his grandfather of his own inheritance.

collin also shed some insight into davids feelings about sarah. david felt sarahs answers to many things were "very unfortunate". especially the movies topic.

she apparently downplayed the severe inappropriateness of them. sarah told david that she talks to other parents about the movies ashton has watched, and even watches them herself before allowing ashton to. apparently some parents thought that district 9 is completely appropriate for a six year old, and so did sarah since she apparently had already watched it. david also got the impression that sarah uses the movies that ashton watches selfishly, as in a babysitting device. thats very sad for me to hear.

david mentioned that sarah has some very strong unresolved emotional issues that he couldnt identify. based on how reactive and defensive she is in regards to me, he felt that perhaps she still had some residual unresolved issues with her breakup with me. he was very concerned about how comfortable sarah was with referring to me as "another dad". that he sensed sarah was trying to replace me as ashtons father figure with dusty. this was a big problem for him, and while collin says he didnt explicitly say this, his wording was pretty straightforward.

apparently the only other concern david had about me, other than distance, was my journal. if i remember the conversation we had about it, the fact that it was public was inappropriate. but he acknowledged that i had recognized this and subsequently privatized it.

and finally, something collin felt i should know. a small comment david had made to him in which he asked ashton if he could have three wishes, what would he want?
ashton responded with a request for some toys, but also that he "wants to live with his dad but see his mom alot."