anyone have "right of first refusal in custody case?

I've known people who have had it. It just means that if a parent needs someone to watch the child, the other parent should be asked first. If the other parent can't, they are free to find someone else.


Why do you think it would be a nightmare? Is it a contentious situation?

My brother has it in his custody agreement. It’s worked very well for him due to his ex-wife’s work demands.

I think Id always have someone else ready if that were the case. That is a fucking terrible thing to do to a child (bailing when they are supposed to watch them)

Everyone is mentioning that it could be a nightmare, but that's in already nightmare situations. That's going to be with everything, right? In and of itself, it is simply a tool. My ex and I had it - we simply called each other first. We were very amicable though. My friend is in a situation where it works, but does add a layer. She and her ex use a co-parenting app because he goes on crazy binges, and talking, texting and emailing all went haywire because of him. He asks her at last minute and responds to her at the last minute - just to be difficult. So, she always has a back up plan. But other than the last minute thing, it works for them and she doesn't call it a nightmare. (I asked. LOL)

Just curious - I'm assuming you made your child/children available to him on his expected days.  If so, and he chose not to pick them up, I wouldn't expect the child support to go down.  What you outlined seems like pretty typical non-custodial parent custody.  He still should pay child support to help offset expenses for that child.  Is that not the case?

Here is my experience with the "right of first refusal" clause in my divorce documents:

The original language stated that if either parent was going to need childcare longer than 4 hours, the other parents was to be contacted first and has the "right to first refusal" to either take the kids or not. During negotiations, my ex-husband amended the line to 6 hours, and stated "except for childcare coverage during working hours". I accepted those changes.

I am glad the 6 hours minimum was changed. 4 hours is not a lot of time and having to chat with my ex-husband every time I wanted to go out for 3-4 hours would have been a pain.

HOWEVER, I 100% regret the line about childcare during working hours. I was a substitute teacher for 4.5 years and for the first two years, I had the kids during the summer. During my ex's weeks, he would drop them off and pick them up from me. I think he gave me an extra $100 for the summer to have them. That covered almost nothing extra, but my kids weren't in daycare.

Before summer #3, I asked for a little more money (I was a substitute teacher making $8.25/hour and not working during the summer = no income) and he refused, preferring to pay hundreds of dollars per week per child for them to go to daycare or summer camp rather than give me slightly more money to have them. I was devastated and my kids hated going to daycare/summer camp when they could have been at my house and having fun at the community pool or with their friends. Due to the language in the divorce document, there was nothing I could do about it. Even now, it's very upsetting that I missed out on time with my kids because he would rather pay more money for strangers to watch our kids than contribute a small amount to me to do fun things with our kids during the summer. I think I asked for $300 for the summer vs. $100 total. It was a small amount, but he wouldn't budge.

If summers off aren't an issue, then you might have different outcomes for what "right of first refusal" looks like. I wanted to share my experience.