I am new to this site and it is wonderful! I am both a Biomom and Stepmom. My story is similar to many on here yet a little different...I married a wonderful man about a year ago. I have a BD who is 13(no ex to deal with, no custody exchanges). My DH has 2 BD's (5 & 9) and has primary custody so SDs primarily live w/us. Yes - I am a Newlywed (never married before), Stepmom and Biomom and had to get used to living with DH, SDs and blending in BD. Hard work!

Biomom gets SDs every other weekend extended (Thurs-Mon). Problem is the BM is very manipulative and abusive. Within the first 3 months of marriage the nasty voicemails were all about me, my daughter...meanwhile children suffer and so on (granted I tried the nice approach first then had to totally remove myself from the situation like many of you here). I can't take them for a "haircut, bowling etc..." that's her thing...Told SDs not to kiss me because every kiss they give me is giving one of hers away. Calls DH constantly yet never calls to talk to her kids. NEVER...DH went back to court, established boundaries, but it's still unpredictable with her. BM even has a scheduled time to call yet only calls DH and NOT during any scheduled time. He's finally stopped taking the calls so she texts and she leaves voicemails...(I begged him for all this because it was tearing us apart...she has a scheduled time to call her kids and doesn't...why call DH??)

My experience with married life began with SDs having to sleep in the same bed with their dad on the floor until they fell asleep, never sleeping through the night, wetting the bed, making themselves sick as excuses to not go with BM, constantly throwing up at BMs....Now everything in our house is so much better in terms of sleeping in own room, independence and overall enjoyment of being a kid. Granted we took SDs to extensive therapy visits and we went ourselves for guidance.

The only exception to all of this is "transitioning" when they come back from BM's and the abuse there. When visiting BM, SDs had to sleep in 1 bed with BM every night she had them for the past year(she wanted to live downtown close to bars...quite the "partier" in a 1 bedroom apt.) BM works! BM has money, all the best trendy clothes, drives expensive car but couldn't buy them a bed! Finally just this month BM moved - she's got a 2nd bedroom and SDs have a bedroom to share but there's a roommate, men sleepover, boy teenagers babysit them...BUT the biggest problem I'm noticing now is physical abuse. SDs never wash their hair when with BM. This can range from 4 nights to a 1 week summer visit etc. Also bruising... fingerprints on the arms where she grabs them. MAJOR BRUISING where you can see her fingerprints. She spanks hard, we don't at all & use time-out...Not sure what or how to document all of this and whether or not the court would do anything since I feel DH is lucky to have primary custody in the first place (BM didn't fight for it). BM abused DH (eventually physically when we got engaged) and is still verbally abusive to us but it's usually triggered - a holiday, 4 weeks of nothing then an explosion over something meaningless. BUT I'M WORRIED ABOUT SDs!!! How many bruises does it take? Do you document dates and pictures? How likely is a court to give her less visitation or supervised visitation?? PLEASE HELP!! I've never dealt with this kind of situation before...