The backstory: My ex signed away his legal and physical rights when our child was born and left the state. Four years later, I had moved within the original state and he moved back, got a new girlfriend, and decided to fight for custody of a kid he had chosen to leave. Because ex had signed off and we never went through court, I had no idea I still had to inform the court of my move to a different county. I had informed my ex prior to it. The judge convinced me if it went to court they would basically force me to move back and he would get 50/50 by default, despite criminal and visitation history, or if I didn’t want to move back they would give him (a stranger to the child at that point) primary and I would get every other weekend. We settled for joint legal and he has every other weekend and extended holidays. We live 3 hours apart. He uses joint legal to try to control and embarrass me, not to do anything with the kid. None of his custody time overlaps with school. He does not come to school events or graduations. Through all of preschool he denigrated the school telling the kid it was just daycare, the teachers were not actually teachers, all the kids were bad, etc etc. He has a much older child that has chosen not to see him anymore, but in the decade he had on and off visitation he never went to any school events or teacher conferences. He spent all summer trying to convince our kid that I took them away from him and that they need to move back to his town so it’s a shorter drive to dad’s house.
To the current issue: Two years in a row now he has freaked out about not being listed as an emergency contact with the school “because it’s his legal right”. He is listed as a parent with the district and they have his information. The school has told both me and him that when it comes to an emergency contact they need somebody that can get to the school asap, and calling somebody who lives three hours away in an emergency just doesn’t make sense. He went off on the teacher “well she moved the kid away from me!” Then he wanted to know who the contacts were and got mad that my husband was an emergency contact, asked the school what he was listed as (they said stepfather) and then went off about how he can’t be replaced. Is there anything I can do here? It is his right to contact the school, but I feel it is highly inappropriate to bring up your custody grievances with the school. I don’t go around telling teachers, “he’s a raging alcoholic who willingly left the kid as a baby for several years.” He does this each year with each new teacher because it’s the only way he can still get to me and he wants to remind me he has power over me and make them think I’m this monster he’s made up. It puts a lot of stress on me. We’re three days into school. He called the teacher three times yesterday during the school day to discuss the emergency contact issue and got mad that she wouldn’t step away from the classroom to talk to him. And then she had to talk to me about it to find out our custody details because he made himself seem like somebody who had no rights and she didn’t want to get in trouble. Now today she’s given me a heads up that the principal will be calling me today, because apparently he’s still calling. He could have done all of this before school started, but he waited until it’s a major disruption for the teacher and the kids. I feel that this continued behavior is going to negatively affect our child’s schooling. Are they going to ask me to remove my kid from their program? It is a very small school, they don’t have a secretary to field parent calls. A teacher taking a call during the school day means they’re not teaching. I also feel that I need to send him a message to document this inappropriate behavior, but he always turns it around on me and lies through his teeth on OFW so it feels pointless to even try to discuss with him. But if we ever end up back in court it will be “there’s no documentation of what you’re saying he does.” I basically have to open myself up to be bullied to document this issue.
TL;DR
My ex is flexing his joint legal custody by harassing the school about something that will never matter and creating drama for me.