Just a couple of weeks ago, the court-ordered drug tests for Amber Portwood and Andrew Glennon came back.
Both were cleared, but that's only one small part of their ongoing custody war.
Amber has scored a recent victory in that struggle, albeit a small one.
Is this minor setback for Andrew a stepping stone for Amber to take more control over 3-year-old James' life?
The Sun reports that Amber Portwood filed a motion recently regarding her ex, Andrew Glennon.
The motion was requesting that Andrew be given less time to her "Interrogatories and Request for Production of Documents."
In other words, Amber is demanding that Andrew file his official response, including documents, by February 28.
That makes it less than three weeks after the date on which he was initially served the request for documents.
Amber's legal team argued that the "requested answers and documentation are necessary" to prepare for the upcoming custody trial.
In other words, this is the custody equivalent of filing discovery, and Amber wanted to move up the deadline on Andrew.
Andrew's team filed an objection to Amber's motion.
Their response to her original request will be used at trial, and they have a lot of things to go through.
Andrew's attorney made some solid points about how shady it was that Amber filed at the last minute like this.
“Respondent filed her discovery requests on February 7, 2022," Team Andrew noted.
The attorney detailed "which include 26 interrogatories and 20 requests for production of documents."
“Respondent has had years to conduct discovery," Andrew's team noted, "but has waited until the last minute to do so.”
Meanwhile, Andrew's legal team added that they had served Amber with discovery months ago, in October of 2021.
The attorney claimed that she has "yet to answer."
Andrew's team argued that granting her motion would “be rewarding [Amber] and counsel for [their] negligence to this matter to the detriment of [Andrew.]"
However, for whatever reason, the court sided with Amber.
Andrew has to turn over all 26 answers and produce all 20 documents by February 28.
That can be a lot of paperwork to sort through in a limited time ... which may have been the point.
Andrew replied with a filing of his own.
His team is asking the court to order Amber to "submit full, complete responses to discovery" that were sent last year.
“Respondent’s responses to discovery are necessary for adequate preparation for a final hearing in this matter on March 2 and March 3, 2022," he argued.
The judge granted Andrew's request.
Amber was assigned the deadline of February 14 -- how romantic?
However, court documents indicate that Amber provided the documents in time.
This, of course, is just a tug-of-war over discovery documents ahead of next month's custody trial.
The two have had previous legal scuffles, including Andrew's accusations that Amber was once again using drugs.
During a custody dropoff, he perceived alarming behavior that made him fear that Amber was high -- possibly, he speculated, on meth.
For some reason, it took months before the court ordered the two of them to submit to urine tests.
Both results came back clean ... though, of course, urine drug tests only show results from recent days (at the most).
We hope that Amber is well and remains sober.