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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/featherfriendfollowr on 2024-01-26 20:01:05.

Ex (38f, who is my kids mom) really wanted right of first refusal in divorce agreement so she could get extra time with kids if I (39m) couldn’t watch them. Which is reasonable. But she also wanted it specified that only grandparents and aunt’s and uncles could watch the kids if she passed on the right of first refusal. She wouldn’t admit it, but my lawyer suspected the reason she wanted to only allow those specific people was to exclude any romantic partner of mine from babysitting ever. The kids’ parents would always get first dibs, though, so there was no good reason for that bit of it and honestly a long term partner is probably going to be better for the kids as a babysitter than my family who is hours away and some of them aren’t the most trustworthy. I agreed to it in the final agreement under the condition that I get a make up date any time she uses the right of first refusal (to avoid giving her the incentive to just say no to every date swap).

So fast forward to this weekend and I ask if she wants the kids under right of first refusal and she says yes, but that she -won’t- give me a make up overnight. Because the right of first refusal requires a make-up, I tell her that this counts as rejecting her right of first refusal. She gets mad and says I should give her the kids anyway. So I say I need to follow the -exact- wording of the divorce agreement, and it says only grandparents and aunts and uncles can watch the kids (she didn’t put parents in there), so I’m not even legally allowed to let her watch the kids if she’s not going to follow the right of first refusal agreement. Oh that felt sweet to use that stupid rule she created against her attempt to break the agreement. She was mad, but she finally agreed to a make up overnight in the end, which is the way it should have been in the first place.

Edit: I think it’s worth adding that I do believe the end state here was best for the kids, which is the goal. Keeping the placement days 50/50 let’s the kids keep seeing each parent as much as they can, and they want to see both parents as much as they can. It promotes parental equality from everyone’s view. She’s generally a good mom to the kids, I’m a good dad, no real concerns there. But she’s willing to try to break the divorce agreement so that she can get more time with the kids by taking time away that I was supposed to be able to spend with the kids, and that’s not fair to the kids or to me. And I am happy I stopped her from doing that.