AITA for insisting my ex-wife and I stick to our court ordered custody order?
The original poster (OP), a man in his 30s, describes an ongoing conflict with his ex-wife regarding their court-ordered 50-50 custody schedule for their children, which mandates a 7-day on, 7-day off rotation.
The ex-wife, remarried with a new child, frequently requests extra days with the children to accommodate visits with her current husband's family or to celebrate his birthday, which coincides with the OP's birthday and Father's Day.
When the OP insists on adhering strictly to the court order, citing a past refusal by the ex-wife to negotiate makeup time, he faces anger and accusations that he is interfering with family events, leaving him questioning if his firm stance is unfair.
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The poster is under significant emotional pressure due to repeated demands from his ex-wife to alter the es**blished custody schedule, which he perceives as attempts to gain extra time without guaranteeing reciprocity.
He feels he is being forced to choose between maintaining the legal agreement designed to protect his time and facing personal attacks for prioritizing the court order over spontaneous family events.
The central question is whether the OP is justified in rigidly enforcing the specific 7-day blocks of the custody order, even when it conflicts with the ex-wife's desire to include the children in extended family events, or if his refusal to be flexible, given the history, const*tutes an unreasonable obstacle to co-parenting.
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This one sparked a storm. The comments range from brutally honest to surprisingly supportive — and everything in between.