hi Vicki,

It is so stressful to sort this stuff out!  It does structure and confine you in a way that most parents aren't, so it is worth being very careful and spelling it out very clearly.  You WILL be held to it, as Mattie said, if he decides to be argumentative.

I just went through this in December.  We worked it out through mediation, although my ex AH has not followed it at ALL.  And, even though he has not followed it, I have to follow it until it is changed through the courts.  I have primary custody, and he has visitation with our 13 year old son every other weekend, from Thursday evening through Sunday evening. Our 15 year old gets to choose if he wants to visit his dad or not.  In the summer, dad has every other week.  He asked for the situation to flip in the summer, so he would have the kids all the time except for every other weekend, and it was the only thing in mediation that I said absolutely no to. 

He is "required" to be alcohol free for 6 hours before picking the kids up, and to blow the breathalyzer when he picks them up.  It is true that he can still drink after that, but they are older, and I live 1.5 miles away, so I was not too worried about that aspect.  Our draft agreement originally required him to be alcohol free for 24 hours before seeing them, and he negotiated it down to 6 hours, because he argued that he might want to have "a beer the night before" and it would still show up in the breathalyzer. (Roll eyes.)  I agreed to that.  He also has to be alcohol-free during his parenting time.  I am allowed to ask him to blow, during his parenting time, IF I have clear reasons to believe he has been drinking. (i.e., the kids call me and tell me they are concerned, someone in our small town sees him at the liquor store, etc.) There was more language put in there to prevent someone in my situation from abusing it... i.e., coming up and demanding he blow whenever I felt like it, etc. He also asked for a "sunset clause" that, if he successfully passed the breathalyzer test for one year, it would go away.  I thought that might be an incentive so I agreed. It still stated that, if he ever blew a test that showed greater than 0 percent BAC, the year would start over again. I was pretty sure that would happen, so I agreed. 

What I didn't realize, is that it would become his major driver.  He is obsessed with that requirement ending; he told our son that "I will play Mom's little game for now, but it will go away in a year" - not realizing the kids also get relief from his breathalyzer test showing that he is not drinking.  So, since we got divorced in December, he has passed every breathalyzer test, BUT he hardly ever sees the kids. He will blow them off to avoid a negative test, surprise surprise.  He has cancelled a few times by saying that he has had something to drink, and he can't be around the kids. So, it has protected the kids from being around a non-sober parent, but it has led to him being pretty absent from their lives... he has his priorities, sadly.

So, since December, he had the kids over the holiday break for one week. On Jan 2, they came back to me. Since then, he had them for 2 nights in Feb when I had to work and they were off school.  And never again, until last week, when our younger son stayed with him for 2 nights.  Pretty sad, when you consider we live 1.5 miles from each other... and he drives past my house multiple times a day, to go to his drinking establishment, the grocery store, etc.

However, during all this time, despite him not showing up, not letting me know ahead of time (I had asked him to let me know by Monday if he was not going to exercise parenting time), and me basically being a 24/7 parent with no ability to plan any breaks - my attorney has still advised me that I need to be ready, every single Thursday at 6 pm, for him to come and take our son, whether it is for one night or the whole 3-night weekend.  The court takes parenting time very seriously, and if that his his assigned time, I need to do nothing to stand in the way of it, even if he is so not-together and rude as to never show up... I basically have to play the game on my end until we can modify it in court. (Which we are finally doing now, after 7 months of him being a non- parent, I am asking for full-time custody and that he and I will just plan parenting time between ourselves, which gives him the ability to email me and ask for it. Which he apparently will not do, as he cannot plan ahead and resists all rules and structures, even to his children's detriment.) 

If I did it again, in my effort to have more ability to plan ahead, I would insert language into the agreement that he has to let me know by Monday if he is planning on time with the kids, And that our older son also would need to let him know by Monday if he was joining.

However, this still would not prevent a lot of the inability to communicate, follow through, and plan, that comes with his non-sober behavior.

I am happy to provide more information/details if it is of help... just PM me.

Good luck to you!  It seems these things take patience, and make things very difficult for the responsible parent, because the court wants to protect the rights of the other parent, unless and until it is clearly, over time, proven that they are not going to show up in that way.