breach of agreement re: alcohol

[vocalise]

I'm really not sure what to do, or whether to do anything at all. Six months ago, dd's dad and I mediated and filed a legally binding agreement about custody and visitation. While the schedule of visitation has changed since then by mutual agreement, I have presumed that the rest of the agreement still stands, and is still legally binding. In it, dd's dad agreed not to drink alcohol for 24 hours prior to a visit.

This morning, when he showed up to pick up dd, he reeked of alcohol. The kind of reek he has after drinking 10 or 12 beer the afternoon/evening before. He wasn't visibly drunk, and I wasn't worried for dd's safety at that moment (he doesn't drive, and he only visits her for one hour). But he has breached our agreement.

What do I do? Confront him about it? Let him know I noticed, and that it erodes the shreds of trust that I had left? That I won't be handing dd over the next time it happens?

The reason that particular stipulation is in our agreement in the first place is because I have had a few scary experiences with him drunk in the past. He hasn't ever been "scary" with dd yet, but I'm worried that it could happen. Thus the clause. That he chose to ignore.

The worst part is I kind of expected him to ignore it. He really just does whatever the heck he wants in the world in general, legally binding agreement or not.

WWYD?

[Rosehip]

Does the agreement lay out what happens if he has been drinking? Could you prove he'd been drinking? Did you let her go with him?

[MsChatsAlot]

It all depends on what your agreement says will happen if he shows up under the influence.

My initial thoughts are taking a zero tolerance approach if this is as serious as you say it is. I would say, "You have breached our agreement, you cannot take her." And close the door.

If you let him take her...where does it end?

[ElliesMomma]

yes, get a backbone over this.
you said he's done some "scary" things - what are they?
you said he hasn't done anything scary with your DD. how do you know? he is now seeing her without you around.
sounds like he is an alcoholic.
no offense, but you sound like the wife or STBX of an alcoholic, enabling without really being aware of it.
if he reeks of alcohol, he's drunk. he know it, and you knew it too.
he's testing you to see if he can break the agreement, and you let him.
i would NOT have some big discussion about it, "ie, if you do this again, i won't let her go." just next time it happens, act on it ON THE SPOT.
shut the door in his face, lock it, and tell your daughter that daddy is not able to care for you right now.

in short, without a CONSEQUENCE for his actions (drinking), he WILL continue.
now, he may choose to continue drinking even in the face of the consequence of you not giving your daughter to him drunk... but that's his problem, not yours.
good luck.

edited to add: sorry, just realized this is single parenting. i am no longer a single parent. however i have been a single parent, and my kids' dad is a recovering alcoholic. your post caught my eye b/c i was ready to do an "agreement" regarding alcohol use if he wanted to see our daughter and he was still drinking. fortunately, he quit drinking altogether and has been sober for more than four years now. i married him after he'd been sober for a year. alcoholism is such a tricky problem, for the whole family. for example, i always worry that he will relapse. if he does, we will probably divorce and have a similar agreement to yours re: drinking. it is absolutely necessary that the sober spouse enforce such an agreement.

and ps: getting drunk the night before to the extent that you still reek of alcohol in the morning is still drunk. if he were driving, and a cop smelled the alcohol on him like that, i would think he would be getting drunk tested, don't you? you should use the same criteria. and someone who is getting drunk chronically like that, may never be "truly" sober, even if they are stopping drinking at, say, 4 am and coming over to pick up the child at 10 am. alcoholics are addicted to alcohol, and it is very very hard for them to stop without appropriate help (ie, AA). if you want to feel some sympathy for him, think of it this way: he's counting on you to make sure he is really truly sober enough to be with your daughter, b/c he really can't trust himself to moderate his own drinking.

[vocalise]

Thanks, ElliesMomma. I needed that reality check.

What I did was I sent him an email last night asking him about it. He hadn't responded by the time he came for his visit this morning, so I asked him about it at the door. He went all shifty-eyed, paused a lot, and said that he had been drinking but that it was before the time cut off (which is actually 18 hours on paper, but I thought of as 24 because so few people drink in the MORNING). Anyway, I told him I found that hard to believe, and could he tell me who he was drinking with so that they could corroborate his story. Again, he went all shifty-eyed, and said he'd been drinking alone. So, basically, his explanation was he got pissed all by himself in the morning, and the stink still hadn't worn off 18 hours later. Sure, buddy.

So I told him that until we could rectify the situation by filing an agreement that better protected dd (because in our agreement, I don't actually have any recourse built in; the mediator just said we could return to mediation if the agreement wasn't adhered to), he would need to find someone to accompany him on his visits. He's mad, to say the least, and feels that I've overreacted and that he was actually just smelly, not dangerous.

Not sure if I'd get burned in court for my approach on this (I'm not denying him access altogether, just covering my ass until we have a more clear arrangement in terms of the what-ifs on paper), but he's afraid of court, so I don't think it'll be an issue. What ticks me off is, no matter what happens, I'll always need to be hypervigilant, and continue to watch him to make sure he's not drunk.

I'm so sick of this man. I'm always second-guessing myself, and it's so stressful, because he isn't normal, but I don't have a frame of reference for what he *is*. He has a fantastic way of pretending to be "reasonable" (even our couples counsellor ages back said that to me: "he seems like such a reasonable guy"), when actually he's just lying to everyone, including himself.

I guess I could use some help with the "what if" part of our new document. If he shows up with signs of intoxication again, then he will forfeit his visit? How would I prove he's really intoxicated if he denied it? Also, if he did this again multiple times in the future, how many chances before visits would be supervised? What would you put in there? Help me sort this out, mamas who've been there.

[pranamama]

the fact that he has only 1 hour visits is the biggest thing in your favor right now. Does he have a history of alcohol related legal problems. I would try to keep his visits short, and also meet somewhere so he has to drive to get to you so you can report him for drunk driving if he is intoxicated. Once he has overnights it will be really hard to do damage control....

[vocalise]

He doesn't drive.

He also rarely works, as in he quit his 20-hour-a-week job to take an on-call position three months ago, and has worked four days since then. He says he wants more visitation with dd, but won't agree to a schedule because he might have to work(!). He wants to have visitation whenever it works for him.

He lives in a sty of a bachelor suite that's currently unfit for a child (and so sees her in public only). He blames me for the fact that he doesn't have visitation with his daughter in an "intimate" setting; he thinks that I should be either opening my home to him or transporting dd to and from his place for visits. When I asked him whether he'd be willing to clean, child-proof, and make his place child-friendly, he said that he didn't know what I meant by those terms, and that she would be safe, regardless, because he would be "watching her at all times". That didn't exactly give me a lot of confidence that visits at his place would work for dd, even if I did agree to transport her all the time. He says he can't afford to transport her in a timely way (busing to his house would take 45 minutes from my place, which would use up a lot of the visit and be pretty onerous for dd, and he's unwilling to pay for a cab or get help from his family or anything). He says he can't afford anything, actually. I once asked him if he could track down a rain-suit (used would be fine) for dd because she was coming back from visits soaked and he did look (to his credit) but didn't buy one because they were "too expensive". He came back with snow pants that were too small and not waterproof, so she still came back from visits soaked.

Okay, this has turned into a huge vent. I think the reason I'm writing all this out is because he blames me for all of it, and I often feel like I'm going crazy.

He doesn't intend to have overnights anytime soon (he actually threatened to ask for overnights in court when she was four months old, and then laughed about it later and admitted that he wouldn't want to have to do nighttime parenting).

He doesn't have legal issues to do with alcohol that I know of, but he did admit to assaulting a cop (when sober) on one occasion during a demonstration, which makes me wonder if he has a criminal record. Unfortunately, where I live, that kind of information is not available to the general public, so it doesn't really matter.

So I feel resentment about having to be this "gatekeeper" parent, and fear that if things got to court, the judge would see me as being paranoid because I don't have concrete evidence of what his apartment looks like, or how he behaves when drunk (the drunk behaviour I referred to in my first post involved sexually harrassing/assaulting me, lying to get his way, and choosing to drink to the exclusion of finding work or seeing his newborn daughter).

But, yes, I think I'll stay firm on the hour-long visits for now, for all the reasons I just listed.

[violet_]

Wow -- if you're looking for a little sanity check here -- what he did is NOT ok.

If he still smells of booze, he shouldn't be let alone with your daughter. How sad for your DD that her father can't be bothered to show up sober to visit her. I think your impulse is right to go back and add some teeth to your agreement. It's kind of obnoxious, but what about having him pass one of those hand-held breathalizer tests you can buy? They're pretty cheap, and it provides an enforceable standard -- much less subjective than sniffing him. Good luck!

[mamazee]

If he still reeks of booze, it will show up on a breathalyzer. I don't know much about this kind of thing. If he shows up smelling like that, can the police come over and test him? If they do, then you've got proof right there. What kind of teeth does this agreement have? You have to be able to test him or there is no way to enforce it. Again, I don't know how it works but he can lie a hundred times.

And IME with an alcoholic dad, sometimes the times they get scariest is when they aren't drinking and want to.

[Halfasianmomma]

hi vocalise,

My stbx is also an alcoholic who loooooves to blame me for all the things in his life that go wrong, have gone wrong, or can potentially go wrong in his life. It's called blameshifting and it's what addicts do.

I heartily recommend finding an Al-Anon group so that you can get the support you need in dealing with this...man. It seems he'll be part of your life for a while since he's the father of your child, and it'll really help to be in contact with other parents who also deal with an alcoholic ex-spouse. They can also give you some strategies on how to deal with yours.

I'd start journaling about everything that's happening right now (with time and dates and brief description of events). If this does end up in court, it'll help a great deal to have that under your belt. You can totally restrict access based on his apparent drunkeness. The safety of your child is at stake. If he doesn't like it, he can get a lawyer and fight it out in court. Until then, he can keep his nose out of the bottle before he comes to see his child.

[vocalise]

Thanks everyone. He showed up today with his brother there to supervise, and afterwards, he signed a new agreement that says he may not drink for a full 24 hours before a visit (which, because he sees her six days a week for an hour, really means he can't drink at all), and that if he shows any signs of intoxication upon arrival, the visit will be forfeited. If he wants to challenge me about whether or not he is showing signs, then he can be evaluated by the police, and have his visit after they have given him the all-clear.

While I don't have a heck of a lot of spare time or childcare to be able to attend al-anon, I will definitely do some reading at the very least. They probably have online meetings, too, right? And, yes, I've been documenting everything from the time dd was one month old, just in case.

Thanks for the support, everyone.

[Super~Single~Mama]

I think that you can actually file a "Visitation Violation" in court if he continues to do it. If it becomes a pattern at all, do it. Once a week, once a month, for several weeks or months and you should file. There can be court mandated consequences for violating a visitation schedule.