How do people like her even get to keep their kids?

Might depend on the state. My ex and his roommate were both chain smokers. When he’d pick our daughter up for visitation she would be at the house from Saturday morning till Sunday around 6 p.m. In cold or rainy weather especially they’d be inside all the time. My daughter was coming home every time with either an ear, nose or throat infection. This was every 2 weeks. She got allergic to 2 different antibiotics too. Her coat would smell so bad I’d have to wash it every time. She was also developing autoimmune conditions, lupus, thyroid disorder (undiagnosed then) and a seizure disorder. Her grandfather had died and her father wasn’t going around his mother any more, likely because he didn’t want to be asked to do anything for her. She didn’t drive and had to depend on others to take her to town for groceries etc. about once a week. So he wasn’t dumping her off on her for his visitation weekend like he did before his father died. One day I picked her up from school to take her to her neurologist appointment. As I was driving she pulled out a piece of notebook paper with a list all the reasons she didn’t want to have visitation with him any more. Part of it was smoking but about a dozen other things like making her clean up the kitchen (about 2 weeks worth of dishes before he would fix her lunch) and made her clean the living room too. And how he would wake up and go over to the nearby country store and buy about 3 coffees and drink then, and a couple hours later buy beer and drink it till about mid-afternoon and then start drinking whiskey and cokes. She would tell him she had a headache and he wouldn’t spend a dollar on her to buy Tylenol on it.That sort of selfishness. She had started bringing Tylenol and other OTC meds with her every time she visited him and I had asked her why and she said she might need them but didn’t tell me the whole story. I got a lawyer that week and we talked to her about getting supervised visitation. She told me what all we’d have to do and that she would send him a letter so he would come in and talk to her. He did and the next time he came over he puts on an act saying he wouldn’t force her to go with him but he was going to stop paying child support. (Seemed like he was being mean deliberately so he could end the child support payments, or so he thought). It came to a head that weekend when he got pulled over by the police and arrested for drunk driving. I knew he drank but she told me he wasn’t getting drunk around her and didn’t drink and drive. I called my lawyer and told her what happened and she said I had the legal right to not let him go with him because of the arrest and if I did and he was drinking later on and had an accident with her in the vehicle and she was injured I would be held responsible letting her go with him.

My lawyer told me that judges in Oklahoma didn’t want to rule against smoker parents having child visitation because it would set a new precedent and probably effect those smokers who were more responsible than he was and be used as a reason for a custody dispute. And that the judge assigned to my case was a heavy smoker. We were both sent to parenting classes at different times from each other. He showed his butt in the first class by insisting that he needed to smoke. He typically smoked a cigarette every 20 minutes. Held the class up and made everyone in his class late going home from the 2 hour class. I don’t know if. His class was in the afternoon and mine was in the evening so it got talked about and all the parents were warned if the insisted on a cigarette break it would affect everyone in the class making us late going home. Anyway he was also sent to a sober parenting class and counseling after those classes ended and he did neither one. The group that held the classes suggested that he get supervised visitation. When the judge heard that he didn’t go. To the other classes she went along with their recommendation. We would both be charged for the visitations about $15 each. He even refused to visit her one time due to having to pay that money, not. Even on the holidays or her birthday. So she didn’t see or speak to him since then.