Big Changes On The Way
My DH has retained an attorney and had BM served with a petition to change the primary custody of SD from BM to DH!!!!
SD13 has been asking to live with us for a few months now. DH told her she would need to tell her mom what she wanted and SD did obviously BM said no. DH then tried negotiating with BM offering to just let SD try it for one year and she refused to hear it. So, we contacted a lawyer and she was served this week! SD said that BM was mad because she thought "we settled this". In other words she thought she won and we would drop it. No such luck. SD has mature, valid reasons for wanting to live with us and we back her 100%. She will be 14 soon and we are hoping her wishes will weigh heavily with the judge ruling in our case.
Anyone else have a similar experience? We see SD regularly and there's nothing 'wrong' with either household. We aren't out to throw BM under the bus (even though I think she's a crappy parent she's not neglectful and the kids have their basic needs met at her house). I do think that SD would flourish living with us and I so hope this goes her way!!
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Yes I have experience with
Yes I have experience with this. By the time we had all the paperwork filled out to submit to the court we no longer had SD saying she wanted to live with us. We dropped it just before we submitted the petition since she changed her mind. We were so confused at the time and felt completely bewildered by the change in attitude.
(see me first blog)
We found out later (after I wrote that blog) that BM had blackmailed SD14 into staying. REALLY. We didn't want to give up our informant so we just let it go. The informant told us that BM told SD14 that if she moved in with us she would have to tell DH all the shady deeds that SD14 had been party to (all the ones that BM should have been telling DH all along but had been withholding because it also made her look like a bad parent) so that DH would know what he was up against. So basically BM was going to sell out her daughter if she decided to move, and that made SD change her mind because she didn't want DAD to know that she was a "bad girl" (which we already knew)
But I'm glad it didn't go thru, for selfish reasons. The whole thing was so middle school.
Sorry this doesn't help. But it's what happened to us.
(WifeVersion2.0, you have the
(WifeVersion2.0, you have the capability to delete all the spam, btw)
DH and I are in the middle of this, except we've got 1000 miles distance between us and BM. SD15 has been asking to live with us for 14 months now. SD15 tried asking BM, DH tried offering a temp try-out. (WHILE BM KEEPS CS AND COURT JURISDICTION!!!) SD15 got verbally slapped down "You better learn to like it here or you're going to have a shitty three years!" and DH got a bunch of creepy prayer-referencing "christian" platitudes that amounted to a child stomping her foot and saying "Because I said so!!"
We're probably going to file the paperwork, and let the courts toss it out, because 8 years and the changing needs of a child, the teenager's wishes, plus the other parent going from single and deployed all the time to living in the same house for 6 years and married "isn't really a change of circumstances" Otherwise, once it gets ugly, we're looking at $20k or so.
Thanks for the feedback. So
Thanks for the feedback. So far BM isn't saying much to SD other than "you don't get to decide where you want to live, I don't know why your dad gave you false hope about that". I honestly think that she's in denial about the fact that the judge has just as much reason to change custody as they do to keep it the same. The only drawback is SD would have to change schools but that's countered with the fact that we live in a better school district and the fact that SD wants to change schools as she's ready for a new start. She's not at all a typical 13 year old girl, she's kind of a book worm, artsy kind of girl and doesn't get into all the typical teen girl stuff. Almost to the point that I don't think it's completely healthy either.
We did make sure to check with SD several times since she first brought it up that it's still what she wants to do before we dropped thousands of dollars on it. Even after her mom tried to convince her that things would get better there she still wants to make the change. We have our first court date next week so we shall see what happens.