Back to court
BM now is petitioning full custody of the boys. I've posted the whole story in the family court forum..but now I'm having anxiety about it and need some support 
I'm having a REALLY bad feeling about all this. Not that we'll lose custody, but that the judge isn't going to change a thing and keep it 50/50. All of our documentation, while still usable is over a year old. She's deliberately behaved herself, and that's going to really help her case. We have this 3 inch binder, overflowing with documents, videos, audios, timeline of events etc showing how bad her alienation got. We affectionately call it "The bible".
I think she's still doing it, she's just being more careful to make sure the boys are terrified to tell anyone what she says to them. DH can't hug his SS8 good night without getting a weird look from him (BM accused DH of touching them inappropriately) and while it could just be that he's getting older, she's certainly planted the paranoia that she's still saying awful shit to them.
Basically, we go to trial, use all this documentation, and the judge sees that she's now behaving, he's going to say "I'm not changing anything" only this time, we lose our bible. It represents countless hours of work organizing and pulling things together. We're still documenting, but the current things we have a flimsy at best. She forgot to pick up SS11 from school, and called us 15 minutes after the fact to go get him, while he waited for her outside the entire time in the pouring rain. She also signed up SS11 to join SS8 in gymnastics 2 months ago, and never informed DH about it...not that DH would have said no. BM is insisting on paying for it (probably to establish a need for child support, when since the divorce she quit her job expecting DH to support her forever, despite the fact that she's remarried with another child).
Family therapist believes she possibly has borderline personality disorder, and other problems mixed in there too. But with the stupid forensic evaluator who's $1700 report is about to be thrown in the garbage saying there's nothing wrong with her, it's going to be difficult to get her assessed.
I think basically what will happen is the judge will say "Well, you're getting along now, so keep up the good work. Anything changes come back and see me." And after we spend $13000 more for nothing, except losing hundreds of pages of documented crazy, we'll have to spend thousands more to go through this again, and document again.
There's no way the boys are going to go into their teenage years and be able to live with her. Pretty much, it's a guarantee that they'll want to not live with her anymore. When she was a teenager, she used to get into fist fights with her mother. SS11 is very similar to her personality wise, and I see a whole lot of volatility bubbling in both boys...mixed in with pity, so they'll never say anything about what really goes on over there.
I've heard many cancer patients choose not to fight a second time because they don't have it in them to go through chemo again. That's how I feel about court.
P.S. We still paying off the
P.S. We still paying off the last times we've had hearings that were negotiated down on our part, costing us around $20,000 so far...and we get to keep adding to it. I really hate this. We're not going to be able to retire...ever, pay off our house, help the kids with school. We can't afford to keep doing this.
Make another few copies of
Make another few copies of your "Bible" just in case.
And if you really cant afford to do this anymore....then dont. 50/50 is better than nothing. Yeah it still sucks and yeah its not in the best interest of the kids and....You'll just have to wait and watch. Eventually maybe the kids will be able to see what she is doing to them.
Putting yourselves into the poor house sure as hell wont get those kids back, in fact, it may even make Dad resent that he did all this for his kids...and got nothing.
The deal with losing the
The deal with losing the bible is that once it's been brought in and officially made evidence, you can't use it again in future proceedings. We've always negotiated out of court, with the stipulation we would still be allowed to use it if it ever came to it. Bad decision, we should have just gone for trial when all of it was fresh.
We decided once she calmed down to stop. We can't control when she chooses to decide she wants full custody so she can sit on her lazy ass all day and not work because she expects full CS.
I think the kids still are aware that there's something off about their mom, and that only gets stronger as time goes on. We're in trial because BM is pushing for it, and we're not about to show up unrepresented. We've asked the lawyer to have her pay our legal fees when nothing comes of this, just to send her the message that frivolous petitions are not in her best interests either. He hasn't responded with that one, probably because her income is so much lower than ours, it'd never fly. She's on her 7th attorney in 4 years of this nonsense. I don't know how she thinks she can keep affording this. We certainly can't.
Sounds like she simply isnt
Sounds like she simply isnt paying them.
That actually makes a lot of
That actually makes a lot of sense. She stole $4000 from DH to pay for one of her lawyers, we never got that $4K back. She walked right into a bank, said she was still married to him, withdrew the money and that was that. The bank claimed they thought they were still on the account together (despite the fact that she hadn't contributed or withdrew from it for over 3 years) and DH in his organized glory lost the paperwork to remove her from the account...assuming the bank would still have it. argh!!! We're thinking this lawyer she has now she paid for with her tax return from having another kid last year. Wait'll she gets the bill from trial. Maybe she will go in unrepresented.
Time goes on and you're
Time goes on and you're absolutely right in my opinion. You're getting along for a year now (she's learned her lesson the judge will think), the lawyer is expensive, and you'll be lucky to maintain fifty fifty.
The only thing left is to put the kids through Hell - I mean on the witness stand - and see if they'll tell the truth.
The kids have a law guardian,
The kids have a law guardian, who has said time and time again to keep things 50/50. So their grades will suffer, dropping out of school is a definite possibility, and they'll never have any sense of stability, or develop any sense of responsibility because of the inconsistency and lack of communication between our houses. I don't think any of this is grounds of changing custody. They'll be screwed up, they'll need therapy forever...that's about it. Not enough to remove them from either home.
Sorry you are going through
Sorry you are going through this - my DH and I just talked about this yesterday, trying to decide what we are going to file for in court because we know it's going to be a long road ahead. Our BM doesn't work either and just went for CS mod and if we did numbers right it'll be around $900/mo. on top of trying to play attorney fees. We want a mental eval on her which we were told would be $4500 alone. I know that feeling of defeat and not wanting to keep doing this. This would be our third time in court with her and our lawyer even said, she'll just sit in there and roll her eyes and run her mouth but yet still come out squeaky clean. We are very much like you guys - I document EVERYTHING! You always feel so good knowing you have everything on paper, in front of the judge and lawyers only to have them "skim" over it and eventually say, learn to get along, you have kids and they need both parents. Especially when the other shows their crazy side so often but it gets brushed under the table.
I truly hope things go your way for once! Good Luck!
Scan every page of your
Scan every page of your "Bible" so you can print it whenever necessary. Why would you lose all of your records anyway? The court can't take them. They are your property.
Relax, documented facts do not expire. Give her time. She will hang herself again. The toxic blended family opposition always does.
Take care of yourself.
Sincerely,
the issue is that once you
the issue is that once you use it, you can't use it against her again. She came in our house, assaulted both of us in front of the kids, and proceeded to play victim to the cops. Once we used that in court (which btw did not affect her custody AT ALL) we can't use it again.
And if that episode doesn't change custody, there's no way in hell he'll change it now.
I gotta tell you, fighting
I gotta tell you, fighting this is sometimes futile and expensive. In the end, it will depend on one guy deciding. We fought BM for custody of Sd and spent a fortune only to have our lawyer tell us we won't win. We conceded the night before court after spending 10K.
Sometimes, you just have to hope Karma gets them and the kids will want to be with you one day. My SS did and he lives with us now.
That's pretty much where we
That's pretty much where we were at as of August of last year when we got the ripoff report from the quack assigned to our case. We're only going back because BM is taking us now...for what? DH continuing to bring the boys to court ordered therapy!