Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone mandated a notification period or protocol for work travel in their divorce settlement?

I’m currently in divorce proceedings initiated by a spouse who travels frequently for work and on an unpredictable schedule. In other words, it’s not like he is gone M-Th every week or every first week of the month. His travel can be anywhere from an overnight trip mid-week to a 10 day trip overseas that requires weekend flights on either end.

During our marriage, he was often slow to tell me about work travel. During divorce, the discovery process has revealed that many of his “last-minute” trips were confirmed months before. For example, trips were booked for 2-3 months that would include weekends away or impact our visitation schedule, but he told me only days before that “a trip had come up”, necessitating rescheduling kids’ time with him or them not seeing him at all that week.

This pattern of communication and travel planning has obviously impacted our kids’ schedules and ability to plan time with him, as well as my ability to plan my work schedule.

To complicate things, STBX is asking for 50/50 custody but right now only makes time for the kids ~1 day/weekend if he is in town. I’ve been informed that if we go to trial it’s possible that he would be granted 50/50 regardless of his current travel patterns and that modification might only happen after he repeatedly failed to uphold his end of that arrangement, which could take months or years. I would like to pre-empt that if I can since I am trying to become financially independent and rebuild my career to support my family on one income.

Does anyone have experience building in a legal framework to mandate communication and advance planning around travel? Obviously it’s something my attorney is working on with me but I would appreciate hearing real-world examples of how people deal with this. I can’t be the only one in this situation but it feels like I am.

Actually, it sounds to me like you angling to maximize child support.

That’s not how child support works.

It's EXACTLY how child support works. The formula is heavily dependent on how much physical custody you have.

The game some couples play is women scheme to get 100% physical custody because they want as much child support as they can get. The flip side is men will demand 50/50 even though they may not actually do it. In some particularly extreme cases, men will even try to get 100% so as to not owe any custody or even receive it. These are not people who love their children, of course.

Anonymous wrote:Doesn’t sound like your stbx is particularly reasonable, so my experience might be not at all applicable. I went back through several years of my ex’s travel and showed him how 50/50 wouldn’t be possible unless he cut back on travel. He ended up agreeing to 70/30 (we didnt get the courts involved).

On a day to day level, it’s pretty aggravating because he does have some last minute travel that I accommodate. On the plus side, he never seems to mind if I have unexpected travel (due to my parents’ poor health), so there’s that.

Anonymous wrote:If you want more than 50/50, you need to make 50/50 inconvenient for him. Stop being the fill-in babysitter and let him scramble to find an overnight sitter, or coordinate with family or tell his boss he can’t travel because he doesn’t have childcare and take the professional hit. Women have to do it all the time. Welcome to parenting, bud.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


Thank you, that’s helpful. They are in middle school but with no after care and no bus service. The way it works now is that I pick them up and take them to various activities or bring them home. If I were working, that obviously wouldn’t work and I would need an afternoon nanny/driver until my workday ends. I think I need to negotiate the ongoing cost of a nanny/driver into our settlement, particularly since I don’t think he has thought through how he would care for them on school days on his time. He usually wraps up the work day around 6ish but once in a while has the flexibility to finish his day around 2 or 3, so he imagines his schedule as very flexible. But I don’t think he realizes that he would need to sustain that on a daily basis for 5 days at a time. And he certainly hasn’t thought through summer and their morning sports practices or anything like that.

It’s tough because I think I’m going to be negotiating with his magical thinking based on an ideal non-travel day. He doesn’t have a grasp of the reality of daily caregiving.

Depending on your state, work-related childcare costs might be included in the child support calculation.

We had a nanny since our child was born because my ex was an absentee parent, and I worked full-time in a high-paying job. When we divorced, the judge ordered him to pay half the nanny's cost in addition to child support (which was minimal). This was largely based on our own precedent with having a nanny and his bad behavior during the divorce process.

While not working, he often took off at the last minute for random personal trips. I had a ROFR when he skipped town, and my nanny was very accommodating, while my mom would often fly in to help. It takes a village.

He had 50% custody on paper, but exercised maybe 10%. Whatever. He wouldn't have paid more child support anyway. He was delinquent or in contempt on multiple issues in the parenting agreement. Again, whatever. I let it go and kept putting one foot in front of the other.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone mandated a notification period or protocol for work travel in their divorce settlement?

I’m currently in divorce proceedings initiated by a spouse who travels frequently for work and on an unpredictable schedule. In other words, it’s not like he is gone M-Th every week or every first week of the month. His travel can be anywhere from an overnight trip mid-week to a 10 day trip overseas that requires weekend flights on either end.

During our marriage, he was often slow to tell me about work travel. During divorce, the discovery process has revealed that many of his “last-minute” trips were confirmed months before. For example, trips were booked for 2-3 months that would include weekends away or impact our visitation schedule, but he told me only days before that “a trip had come up”, necessitating rescheduling kids’ time with him or them not seeing him at all that week.

This pattern of communication and travel planning has obviously impacted our kids’ schedules and ability to plan time with him, as well as my ability to plan my work schedule.

To complicate things, STBX is asking for 50/50 custody but right now only makes time for the kids ~1 day/weekend if he is in town. I’ve been informed that if we go to trial it’s possible that he would be granted 50/50 regardless of his current travel patterns and that modification might only happen after he repeatedly failed to uphold his end of that arrangement, which could take months or years. I would like to pre-empt that if I can since I am trying to become financially independent and rebuild my career to support my family on one income.

Does anyone have experience building in a legal framework to mandate communication and advance planning around travel? Obviously it’s something my attorney is working on with me but I would appreciate hearing real-world examples of how people deal with this. I can’t be the only one in this situation but it feels like I am.

Actually, it sounds to me like you angling to maximize child support.

That’s not how child support works.

It's EXACTLY how child support works. The formula is heavily dependent on how much physical custody you have.

The game some couples play is women scheme to get 100% physical custody because they want as much child support as they can get. The flip side is men will demand 50/50 even though they may not actually do it. In some particularly extreme cases, men will even try to get 100% so as to not owe any custody or even receive it. These are not people who love their children, of course.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


Thank you, that’s helpful. They are in middle school but with no after care and no bus service. The way it works now is that I pick them up and take them to various activities or bring them home. If I were working, that obviously wouldn’t work and I would need an afternoon nanny/driver until my workday ends. I think I need to negotiate the ongoing cost of a nanny/driver into our settlement, particularly since I don’t think he has thought through how he would care for them on school days on his time. He usually wraps up the work day around 6ish but once in a while has the flexibility to finish his day around 2 or 3, so he imagines his schedule as very flexible. But I don’t think he realizes that he would need to sustain that on a daily basis for 5 days at a time. And he certainly hasn’t thought through summer and their morning sports practices or anything like that.

It’s tough because I think I’m going to be negotiating with his magical thinking based on an ideal non-travel day. He doesn’t have a grasp of the reality of daily caregiving.

Depending on your state, work-related childcare costs might be included in the child support calculation.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your ex might be planning to remarry immediately and palm the kids off on the new wife.

OP and I can’t find a single trace of an affair and I’ve always assumed my STBX DH was too wrapped up in work or antisocial to bother. His extensive travel haunts me and even with all of the financial records I now have as part of the discovery process I’m still wondering if there could possibly be someone else. It seems like every one of my friends’ first questions was whether it was an affair. How on earth would I know?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone mandated a notification period or protocol for work travel in their divorce settlement?

I’m currently in divorce proceedings initiated by a spouse who travels frequently for work and on an unpredictable schedule. In other words, it’s not like he is gone M-Th every week or every first week of the month. His travel can be anywhere from an overnight trip mid-week to a 10 day trip overseas that requires weekend flights on either end.

During our marriage, he was often slow to tell me about work travel. During divorce, the discovery process has revealed that many of his “last-minute” trips were confirmed months before. For example, trips were booked for 2-3 months that would include weekends away or impact our visitation schedule, but he told me only days before that “a trip had come up”, necessitating rescheduling kids’ time with him or them not seeing him at all that week.

This pattern of communication and travel planning has obviously impacted our kids’ schedules and ability to plan time with him, as well as my ability to plan my work schedule.

To complicate things, STBX is asking for 50/50 custody but right now only makes time for the kids ~1 day/weekend if he is in town. I’ve been informed that if we go to trial it’s possible that he would be granted 50/50 regardless of his current travel patterns and that modification might only happen after he repeatedly failed to uphold his end of that arrangement, which could take months or years. I would like to pre-empt that if I can since I am trying to become financially independent and rebuild my career to support my family on one income.

Does anyone have experience building in a legal framework to mandate communication and advance planning around travel? Obviously it’s something my attorney is working on with me but I would appreciate hearing real-world examples of how people deal with this. I can’t be the only one in this situation but it feels like I am.

Actually, it sounds to me like you angling to maximize child support.

That’s not how child support works.

It's EXACTLY how child support works. The formula is heavily dependent on how much physical custody you have.

The game some couples play is women scheme to get 100% physical custody because they want as much child support as they can get. The flip side is men will demand 50/50 even though they may not actually do it. In some particularly extreme cases, men will even try to get 100% so as to not owe any custody or even receive it. These are not people who love their children, of course.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone mandated a notification period or protocol for work travel in their divorce settlement?

I’m currently in divorce proceedings initiated by a spouse who travels frequently for work and on an unpredictable schedule. In other words, it’s not like he is gone M-Th every week or every first week of the month. His travel can be anywhere from an overnight trip mid-week to a 10 day trip overseas that requires weekend flights on either end.

During our marriage, he was often slow to tell me about work travel. During divorce, the discovery process has revealed that many of his “last-minute” trips were confirmed months before. For example, trips were booked for 2-3 months that would include weekends away or impact our visitation schedule, but he told me only days before that “a trip had come up”, necessitating rescheduling kids’ time with him or them not seeing him at all that week.

This pattern of communication and travel planning has obviously impacted our kids’ schedules and ability to plan time with him, as well as my ability to plan my work schedule.

To complicate things, STBX is asking for 50/50 custody but right now only makes time for the kids ~1 day/weekend if he is in town. I’ve been informed that if we go to trial it’s possible that he would be granted 50/50 regardless of his current travel patterns and that modification might only happen after he repeatedly failed to uphold his end of that arrangement, which could take months or years. I would like to pre-empt that if I can since I am trying to become financially independent and rebuild my career to support my family on one income.

Does anyone have experience building in a legal framework to mandate communication and advance planning around travel? Obviously it’s something my attorney is working on with me but I would appreciate hearing real-world examples of how people deal with this. I can’t be the only one in this situation but it feels like I am.

Actually, it sounds to me like you angling to maximize child support.

That’s not how child support works.

Anonymous wrote:Your ex might be planning to remarry immediately and palm the kids off on the new wife.

Anonymous wrote:Your ex might be planning to remarry immediately and palm the kids off on the new wife.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone mandated a notification period or protocol for work travel in their divorce settlement?

I’m currently in divorce proceedings initiated by a spouse who travels frequently for work and on an unpredictable schedule. In other words, it’s not like he is gone M-Th every week or every first week of the month. His travel can be anywhere from an overnight trip mid-week to a 10 day trip overseas that requires weekend flights on either end.

During our marriage, he was often slow to tell me about work travel. During divorce, the discovery process has revealed that many of his “last-minute” trips were confirmed months before. For example, trips were booked for 2-3 months that would include weekends away or impact our visitation schedule, but he told me only days before that “a trip had come up”, necessitating rescheduling kids’ time with him or them not seeing him at all that week.

This pattern of communication and travel planning has obviously impacted our kids’ schedules and ability to plan time with him, as well as my ability to plan my work schedule.

To complicate things, STBX is asking for 50/50 custody but right now only makes time for the kids ~1 day/weekend if he is in town. I’ve been informed that if we go to trial it’s possible that he would be granted 50/50 regardless of his current travel patterns and that modification might only happen after he repeatedly failed to uphold his end of that arrangement, which could take months or years. I would like to pre-empt that if I can since I am trying to become financially independent and rebuild my career to support my family on one income.

Does anyone have experience building in a legal framework to mandate communication and advance planning around travel? Obviously it’s something my attorney is working on with me but I would appreciate hearing real-world examples of how people deal with this. I can’t be the only one in this situation but it feels like I am.

Actually, it sounds to me like you angling to maximize child support.

That’s not how child support works.