Replies to 'Co-Parenting'

For those of you who don't know my story, let me catch you up.  My husband shares an 8 month old son with his ex-girlfriend who left the relationship when she found out she was pregnant.  My husband and I met about a month-and-a-half after she left him, been together for a little over a year, and just got married a couple of months ago.  The mother has been great about wanting to have both my husband and I to be involved in this child's life.  However, the three of us have had some issues over her controlling behavior.  When the baby was born, the two of them did not go to court to establish visitation rights; they were just going to work it out themselves.  She allows us to visit the baby, but she refuses to allow my husband and I to have time alone with the child.  All of our visits involve her supervision.  As I said, the baby is now 8 months old and perfectly capable of spending some time away from his mother.  She won't even leave the baby for a few hours so that we can spend some one-on-one time with him.  There have been a lot of heated discussions and arguments between her and us, and she has told a number of lies on us.  And about a month ago it got so bad that she wanted my husband to sign away his rights, and for the sake of peace in our lives, we had seriously considered doing this.  Then yesterday we ran into her and the baby at my mother-in-law's house and she wanted us to stay and visit with the baby.  At the time, we hadn't seen him in over a month!  She acts like she is no longer angry with us and wants us to still be a part of the child's life.  However, she's made no mention of allowing us to have unsupervised visitations.  And  there's really no point in even bringing it up because we know she isn't going to do this.  The only way to have our visitation rights without her presence is to take her to court, which will cause more problems between her and us.  I would like for everyone to be able to get along, but I believe she is being very unfair!  My husband pays child support and is legally entitled to have unsupervised visitations with this child.  I understand that she's overprotective, so to ease her mind I even suggested that she let my mother-in-law baby-sit the child and my husband and I could have our visitations with him then.  That way she would be reassured that the baby was in good hands.  But she won't budge on the issue.  My  husband has put up with most of this because he's very nonconfrontational and allows her to walk all over him!  But he deserves the right to have time alone with the child.  Furthermore, as the stepmother of this child, I would love the opportunity to have a relationship with this baby and to spend time with him alongside my husband, and this is very awkward to do while the mother of the child is always there watching your every move...especially given our rocky history with this woman and the things she's done to us and the lies she's told on us.  I wish my husband, for his own rights and for the sake of my relationship with the child, would take this woman to court and establish his visitation rights.  But I know he's not going to do this, especially now that she's no longer angry with us, because he's afraid of stirring things up again.  And I admit that I would like for things to be smooth between everybody.  But is it worth sacrificing your rights over?

I just really need some advice on what to do.  Should I talk to my husband and convince him to take her to court, even though it would cause turmoil with her again?  Or should I let him continue to allow her to violate both his rights and a chance for me to form a relationship with my stepson?  I know that I'm just a stepmother and therefore have no dogs in the fight, but it still hurts because I care about this child and my husband, and I want us all to live in harmony.  But it seems that we must choose to live in either injustice or turmoil.  Of course there's always a chance that if we did legally obtain our rights, the mother would come to terms with it.  But there's no gurantee of that happening.  Please give me some advice.  Do I step back and continue to let things happen this way, or do I talk to my husband about establishing his rights?