Knowing everything I know about my situation, how do I protect myself and my kids, both mentally and physically.

1) SS17 Can Only Spend Very Limited Time in the Main Rooms with DS5 and DD2 and Only When Adults Are Present.

2) SS No Longer Lives With Us in 1.5 Years Or Less.

3) SS Does Not Get Money For College.

4) I Get Ready to Return to a Career.

5) I Take Control of My Finances.

6) I Prepare to Move to a New City Close to Family.

7) I Prepare to Fight for Primary Physical Custody of My Children.

SS cannot be allowed to influence my kids. SS’s contact with them has to be limited until he no longer lives in my home. DH does not parent him (I certainly will not) and I cannot have my kids see a much older sibling who isn’t parented at all much less the way we parent all the others. I do not want my children to grow up seeing excessive entitlement, selfishness, laziness, lying, stealing, horrible hygiene habits, and possible aggression.

Additionally, SS is a person that I’d NEVER spend any time with if he wasn’t family. Even if DH was decently parenting him, he'd still be him. SS is just so naturally self-serving to an extreme that I don’t think better parenting would have made a difference to this part of his personality. So in every aspect of life with him, he is interrupting to talk about himself, he doesn’t help out when everyone around is busy, and he’s just always trying to get something with every interaction. He is not disrespectful to me (he is for some reason scared of little me) but he’s disrespectful to both his parents.

College money on him will not be spent well. Currently, I cannot see if he could sustain any decent grades himself because DH and his ex oversees too much and won’t let go. Plus, it doesn’t matter if he miraculously makes improvements on his own a year from now, it’s too late for me to know if he could sustain it long-term. Seriously, my 5 year old is more independently doing and handing in assignments than SS. SS is just a lost cause to me.

I have been at odds with DH for a long time over SS. I believe DH needs to take much harder stances with SS. He needs to make it so SS does not want to live with us. He is doing SS ZERO favors by being pleasant and fake when in reality he can’t stand SS’s behaviors either. But, he won’t. He practices avoidance instead to not deal with hard conversations, yet he helicopters when it comes to school. He gives SS what he wants so he doesn't have to deal with SS and BM's whining, instead of teaching SS the hard realities of life (and to me, that includes allowing him to fail on his own and experience ALL the consequences that go with it).

If DH does not go through with numbers 2 and 3, I would not get over the resentment of him and I wouldn’t be able to get over what I’ve been willing to take for the sake of this relationship and an intact family for my kids. I already feel like I’m a weak person for putting up with this. For my own health, I must leave, even if it means that my kids will grow up in a divorced household.