Keep My Time With Lily

Hi! My name is Britni and my daughter is Lily. She’s 6 years old. I never ask for money, so for me to set this up you must understand that it is very important. I am a single mother and I have had my daughter 4 nights per week and her father has had her 3 nights per week for the last 5 years. Lily’s dad took me to court in October trying to get more parenting time. He wants her half of the time. That may sound reasonable, but it’s not and I’ll tell you why. Her father works 60 hours a week and the additional parenting time he is asking for he will hardly be home. He has been smearing me and trying to make me out to be a bad parent and that’s simply not the truth. We had a child family investigator ordered by the court and she ruled in my favor to keep the parenting time the same as it is now. Over the past 5 years her father has had the option to take her one additional day per month and never once did he take advantage of that time. Why does he want more time? It’s simple. He’s not thinking of Lily. It’s because he recently got a huge promotion (he will be making 140% more money than me per year) and he wants to avoid the child support increase. He has Lily on both of the days he has off of work and an additional day when he gets off at 5. On my days he gets off at 8 pm and it would not make sense for her to go with her step mom instead of me so he can avoid increasing his child support amount. She would be in bed before he got home if he took her any additional days. Lily is happy and well-adjusted and she feels she already doesn’t have enough time with me. She often cries on Saturdays when she knows our time is almost over. I work three of the 4 days that I have her, so even a single day less per month would be devastating for both me and Lily. Today we went to mediation and we were unable to settle it there simply because I am not willing to hand over my time with my daughter for no good reason. We will be going to trial in a couple months and it’s going to cost around 5K. I am terrified but I could not give in today at mediation to something I do not believe in. I would have been letting Lily down. So I am continuing on. I’ve already spent around 7K and my credit cards are almost maxed out. I could really use some help to fight this in court and keep my time with Lily. I feel I have a very good chance. I am putting it out in the universe and I believe it will happen. Thank you for reading my story ♥️.