TL DR: I have a 1 year old daughter in Southern California. We have split custody but I only have 20%. I pay child support. The mom is a jerk and makes the custody exchanges very difficult: harassing, derogatory language, she sends harassing emails and text messages. She says slanderous things to my friends and clients. 3 times she has kept our daughter away from me during time I was supposed to have her. I have already been to court and the judge completely ignored my declaration and my lawyer didn't speak up at all. Should I try again with another lawyer and spend a fortune or should I just try to go through mediation?

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Ok, the details (Sorry, long!):

Southern California

I was with this girl for a year, moved in together. She was a nightmare and I moved out. A month later she says she's pregnant. I move back in. Turns out that in that 1 month she was with 2 other guys, didn't even know if that child was mine. I stayed with her all through the pregnancy and birth and 4 months after. I did a DNA test and the girl is mine. I decided that just because we have a kid together doesn't mean I have to be in a relationship with her and I move out. For the next 3 months, even though I don't live there, I am trying to provide best I can and avoid the court system. I pay for her rent and bills and everything. She is also trying to be on her best behavior to get me back. Too little too late though. I tell her that I will not continue to pay as much as I was and that she needs to figure her own shit out. At this time, the mom started to be a mega bitch and was not letting me see our daughter or was making it very difficult to. In the times I did get to see her, the mom would spew the worst verbal diarrhea the entire time.

I decide to go to court to file for custody rights. They schedule a mediation for 3 months away. My daughter was only 4 months old at the time and I couldn't wait 3 months to see her again and couldn't deal with the mom's harassment for that long either. So I get a lawyer.

The lawyer says we need a thing called an ex-parte, basically an emergency hearing. The problem is that these days, it's not as easy as it used to be to get one. It used to be that if one of the parents was being difficult, you could just get one, but now you need to prove endangerment or something. I didn't really want to go down this road, but the mom smokes pot and was still breastfeeding at the time. So I plan a visit with the mom to see the baby and out of luck, our daughter was sleeping still when I got there and the mom decided to sleep with her. So I'm alone in the house and her bong is out. I take pictures. This gets us the ex-parte.

Instead of waiting 3 months for mediation, we are in court in 2 weeks. The judge is pissed about her smoking weed and still breastfeeding. He gets us into mediation in 2 days.

The mediator sucked! After the judge sounding pissed about her weed smoking, the mediator did not care at all. The mediator recommended a custody plan that gave me a few hours in the morning Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and a few more hours on Saturday. She implemented a step-up plan that gave me 1 additional hour on the weekends a month for the next 6 months and then I would get 1 overnight visit a week on Saturdays. Basically it a step-up plan that would eventually give me 20% custody.

I wanted our daughter to have equal time with both of us. I also wanted the mom to take parenting classes, co-parenting classes, and anger management classes. I already volunteered and was taking co-parenting and parenting classes. I also requested that both her and I be randomly drug tested.

The mediator threw the drug testing out the window. She only made the mom take co-parenting classes and dropped the parenting and anger management. I too had to take the co-parenting but I still took the parenting classes anyways.

I did not take the mediators recommendation and so we had to go in front of the judge. The judge took the mediators recommendation, but sped up the step-up plan by a couple of months in my favor. He gave us both a lecture on not putting the baby in the middle of our fight. I'm also the one responsible for doing all of the driving.

Fine. I'll wait for the step-ups and then sign up for mediation and try again. What else can I do?

In the meantime, the mom is saying the worst things to me in front of our daughter at the exchanges, is posting slanderous things about me on facebook and is sending personal messages to my friends, family, and clients. At one of the exchanges she opens my car door as I am driving away and won't let me leave. I tell her to get away from my car so I can close the door and drive away and she wont. She falsely claims that I pushed her and she calls the police. She doesn't press charges so I don't have to fight it. But the police officer I talked to said that I should do the exchanges at a public location so that there are witnesses to protect me. My lawyer and everyone else agrees.

I tell the mom that I want all exchanges to take place at the sheriffs lobby, she agrees because "she wan't to be protected too".

Even at the sheriffs lobby, she is harassing me and follows me out to the car. Multiple ties I had to have a sheriff escort me out to my car. This goes on for like 2 months and she is continuing to post messages publicly and to my friends.

One day she decides that she no longer wants to meet at the sheriffs lobby and wants to go back to the court orders of the exchanges happening at her house. My lawyer says that me and her already made an agreement and that I should keep doing the exchanges at the lobby. All of my friends and family tell me that I would be an idiot to go back to her house. Of course, if I want to get our daughter I have to go to her house, but to drop her back off, I can go to the lobby and wait for the mom.

So that's what I did. I told the mom I would be at the sheriffs lobby to give her our daughter back at the right time. The mom says she wont be there, she would be at my house. I waited for 30 minutes at the lobby and she didn't show up. So I went back home with our daughter based off my lawyers recommendation. I actually went to my mom's house in the next town over. It is starting to get late and eventually I hear from the mom that she is coming to my house with the police to get our daughter. Ok, I wait.

It's not until after 9:30pm that I get a phone call from the police that they are at my house. But I was at my mom's. The police say that I should return our daughter to the mom. I say that our daughter is sleeping, it doesn't seem right to wake her up and drive her to anther city to do a custody exchange. Also, my lawyer told me that the mom basically gave her her visitation rights and that I technically would not have to return our daughter until the next scheduled exchange (which wasn't for a couple days, Saturday to Monday) [I have been told by another lawyer that this was bad advice]. So I told the officer over the phone this information and I said that I would do the exchange Sunday morning at the sheriffs lobby or if the mom doesn't agree, then she can wait until Monday. The cop said ok, I will tell her, have a good night. Victory!

The mom was pissed. She retaliated by not letting me see my daughter Monday or Wednesday. My lawyer set up another ex-parte emergency hearing.

The judge thought that this wasn't an emergency and rescheduled us to come back in 2 weeks. When we came back. My lawyer filed a declaration pointing out all of the mom's bad behavior: keeping our daughter against court orders, making the exchanges poor, talking trash, posting messages publicly, slanderous messages, etc. One of the issues was that the mom said she couldn't do the exchanges at the sheriffs lobby any more because of her work schedule, but she would not provide her work schedule to us. Also, in the mom's declaration to the judge, which me and my lawyer did not get to see until literally 2 minutes before we were in front of the judge, the mom put down that she actually wanted to give our daughter to me 50%.

In our declaration, we did not press charges, all we wanted was 50% custody and for the exchanges to happen at the sheriffs lobby. Also that the judge ask her to stop posting crazy messages.

This is how court went: The judge asks the mom "what is your work schedule" mom says "I don't know it changes all the time". The judge then asks "what is this about 50% custody you sent in, you still want to do that?" the mom says "No, I change my mind." Then the judge says, "well that's it, everything stays as is" (meaning no improved custody, no exchanges at the lobby, nothing). My lawyer doesn't make a peep. I'm like what just happened?!

I fired my lawyer.

As of right now, I have no court date set. My step-ups have ended. I have 20% custody. All the exchanges are happening at the moms house. Now the mom is making me pick up our daughter at her work. She is continuing to make the exchanges miserable and she still posts crazy things and harasses my friends although it has slowed down. On one more occasion, the mom withheld our daughter from me again.

I have a new lawyer. This lawyer had me put together 10 contempt charges against the mom. She then wrote a letter to the moms lawyer basically saying "we want 50% custody, we want the harassing to stop, we want the exchanges to happen at the sheriffs lobby or we are going to charge contempt in court". We gave them a week to reply. They didn't even have the courtesy to reply at all.

Now my problem is that to have this lawyer draft the motion, the reply, and to be there in court is going to cost sooo much money. I am worried that things are going to go nowhere in court. That if I'm lucky they will give me another step-up plan (probably not even to 50%) and that they will give the mom a slap on the wrist.

My alternative is I can schedule a mediation for 3 months from now and probably do just as good. Do you guys think that the lawyer can get anything accomplished? Is it worth the money?

Thank you all for your time. This has been hard.