Keep My Son In Pittsburgh

My name is Braiden. I’m a single father with 50/50 shared custody of my five-year-old son. For the past year, I’ve been involved in a legal dispute with my son’s mother to prevent her from relocating him to Maine and making it his primary residence. While I’ve been able to independently fund the legal fees up to this point, the next step in the process is prohibitively expensive. To go to court, the next installment for the retainer will cost $9000 (which will cover getting us through the trial date). 

Here’s the backstory.

For the past three years, my son’s mother and I have shared custody, with the tacit agreement of equal time. Since then, he and I make the most of our time together each week. We love to be outside, read together, make crafts, play pinball, conduct experiments, explore new and familiar parks, cook supper, talk, laugh and build (amongst other things). I’ve dedicated many hours to teaching him to read, helping him through emotional moments, developing good habits, and focusing on being his best self. It has not always been easy, but it has always been worth it.

This past May, my son’s mother returned from a two-week vacation to Maine, and told me she was engaged, and planning to relocate my son to Maine, effectively making it his primary residence. Of course, I was broadsided. As stated before, I have cared for my son fifty percent of the time, and frequently more. Our bond is tight. 

We’re very well established in Pittsburgh, We bought a project house on a hill, and began renovating it to fit our needs. We’ve gone from a father and son sharing one bedroom to him having his own room, with a large built-in play table. In fact, I’m currently installing his custom loft bed with a built-in study center underneath.

I have a career with a creative, and inspiring design/build firm in Pittsburgh. It’s a unique, unreplicable opportunity, which offers many benefits - including a flexible schedule to accommodate his school schedule, sick days, and unexpected changes to our child care schedule. That’s a rare allowance in my field.

This year, he began Kindergarten our area, is making friends, and thriving in his language and social skills. It’s a deeply emotional experience for me to watch him develop as a person.

As a native of the region, all of my family (and therefore, his extended family) reside in and around the city. All of his mother's immediate family also reside in Pittsburgh. We’ve been building a life here, and I believe he deserves that continued stability. He and I have a strong bond and I believe it would be detrimental to my son’s emotional and developmental well-being to be suddenly pulled away from me and his familiar surroundings to move over 700 miles away, with only a phone to connect us during the school year. 

It’s not easy to uproot a well-established life. My son deserves to be close to both of his parents without the drudgery and uncertainty of long-distance travel and separate seasons in different states. While I would do anything to be close to him, it would be financially impossible, and emotionally debilitating to be forced to move to Maine because his mother’s fiancé resides there. 

I’m asking for help to cover the legal fees to fight to keep my son in a consistent and stable environment and for me to continue to play an active role in his daily life. Anything you can give means so much to me.

Thanks for listening. This was hard to write. 

Much love.