Long story so I’ll try to keep it simple so bear with me.

My husband and I moved in together 7 years ago. My stepdaughter was 3 at the time and a few months after living with him, she started coming to stay with us (we lived an hour away from her mom) every other weekend and most holidays. Due to living circumstances and lack of transportation and whatever other reasons he comes up with, he hadn’t been around more than holidays and special occasions for about two years before this. As time went on, we started having her for extended times in the summer and had her for every major holiday/long weekend for 2-3 years. Once I graduated college, we moved to the town where the mom lives (also my hometown so we knew we’d end up there eventually. This was December of 2016. At this point, we started a schedule where we split time equally with mom. I’m December of 2017, we had twins born 17 weeks early and that was a gruesome hospital stay for months so we went back to every other weekend. Summer of 2018 we started splitting time equally again.

Fast forward to today: SD has spent a total of five nights with mom since the 1st of the year. Mom went through a rough time and SD was having behavioral issues and was failing the 4th grade. Mom went 8 hours away for 4 weeks to be a trainer and open a new restaurant for her work. Then Covid happened and everyone knows SD is all around better when she’s here. She’s excelling in school again and has only had one bad day behaviorally. It’s incredible the change it’s had on her. She’s been here for over a month since the Covid outbreak started and will remain here for the foreseeable future.

Here’s my dilemma. Mom has said for years that child support should be dropped because we are always involved and financially willing to support her as well. This is obviously great news for us. She tells us that she only did it out of spite when he moved to the other town and as long as he’s in her life, she doesn’t need the money. Now that we have her all the time, she told me today she wants to go forward with dropping child support but we gotta figure out how to do it. note: we’ve never asked her to do so but definitely don’t disagree when she brings it up Do we have to get a lawyer for this? Is there anything we can do to bring this forward even with courts closed? My husband was laid off and my hours are reduced but not enough for unemployment. Although we are okay right now with savings and stimulus, it would be nice to have the hundreds of dollars we are paying each month. We sought a lawyers opinion when discussing filing for split custody but it was a $2000 dollar retainer and a dragged out process with mediation. My worry is that she’s gonna change her mind if we do anything that slightly pisses her off. (Not the first time). Help! Any insight?