Good Morning!
Thank you all so much for your encouragement and prayers, it means so much to me!
It went very well. This attorney is very well versed, and only works Child Custody cases. She also has a daughter that is my DD's age, so I felt it was a little closer to her heart even.
She feels I have a very strong case, and that my DD would not even have to testify at all, even to a GAL. That based on my older daughter's testimony, who is almost an adult, and their counselor, who has an excellent reputation in this area, that is enough without putting my younger DD through it.
What we are trying for is no overnights. She agrees that my DD should try that through letter to her father first, and that if he does not agree that we will go through the courts. The one downfall is that she said the attorney I know would represent my XAH (he is a family friend) takes everything to trial and pushes hard, so the expense would be big.
She also said that the judge it would go to (it goes back to the judge who made the judgement originally) is no nonsense and would not put up with my X doing this to my kids.
So now it's a waiting game a bit. I have to wait for my DD to write a letter to her dad, for her to gather the courage to give it to him, see how he responds. Then to go ahead and start doing no overnights for a while if he agrees, then petition the court to go ahead and modify based on our agreement. She thinks I need to get it into the parenting plan just b/c he could change his mind anytime, and we don't want that.
My fear has always been that he would enforce all the time he could once I try to modify, and she agrees w/me. She said we can request an emergency hearing regarding temporary changes during the time it takes to figure it out, but no guarantees. So it's still a roll of the dice so to speak.
So all in all, it was good news. The dread I feel about all of this is horrible. Dealing with them, and the horrible anxiety it brings to know all this conflict is coming up is huge. However, I know something has to change, we just cannot keep doing this year after year.
Again, thank you everyone for your kind support.