I completely understand that, which is why I was wondering what HIS options were. I think its a completely different message we are sending if we say, "we are willing to help you fight to adjust the visitiation schedule" which is what we are doing. And then saying, "we will support you if you want to try to fight to get your mother's custody removed, but we will not fight to get this part done for you". If he can make his case to a judge about her influence, and the judge agrees with him, then that is between him and the judge, rather than us saying, "yup, she's not supportive of your choices so lets cut her out of them". I see both sides of this, so I'm not going into this lightly, it is a struggle. But, if he can articulate WHY she shouldn't have a say so, and he can stand up and explain that himself, to the satisfaction of the court, then I see that different than me saying, "hey yeah, let's just get rid of anyone we don't agree with". Maybe I'm fooling myself about that because I'm too close to the issue so secretly I want this to happen. I have watched him get hurt time and time again, and part of me hopes that she loses all say so in his life. But I am honestly trying to support him without judging what he wants, and without owning his issues, when those issues belong to him alone.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember upthread that your dh has primary physical custody and they have joint legal? If thats right, my lawyer (in NYC) explained that the difference between joint legal, and full legal aren't many, practically speaking. She said that in joint legal, the custodial parent is usually the "tiebreaker" when parents disagree b/c thats who the child lives with, and so its hard for the non-custodial parent to "win" in an argument, and unless there is something HUGE happening that is detrimental to the child, then the custodial parent would "win" even in court.
If your dh's situation is slightly different, where there are "carve-outs" kind of, and each parent has complete discretion over specific aspects of decision making, then thats different, and maybe your dh should try to alter the arrangement so its pure joint custody.
Does any of that make sense? I'm going to check out your other thread, but if you and your dh pay for your dss to get a lawyer, and pay his court fee's, it will appear that you support him in going to court, and he will likely see it that way as well - as a pp said it would look like if you don't like a person's say so then just go to court and get rid of them.
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