Ugly Divorce/Custody 'Fight'

My third is spectrum, just like his dad but whatever. If you are right and your husband is the tree to your son's apple he will blindly call every bluff. Don't ask me why, but they do. He will, and it sounds like is, thinking the GAL is trying to trick him. There is not much you can do. We got lucky, our GAL had a daughter in school with our older daughter. Um, how do I nicely put this, private school, top in the city, most parents are pretty wealthy. Anyway because of this my ex saw the GAL as a peer and actually listened to him. If that hadn't been the case I probably would have killed him long before the divorce was final.

See his attorney knew he could just keep going, keep getting paid damn near forever so he encouraged my ex to fight where there was no fight. The GAL managed to shut his lawyer down so to speak and get through to my ex.

What was the GAL's parenting plan like that a judge would not order it? Also have you considered that if the GAL cannot sway a judge that their parenting plan is best they probably cannot sway a judge to give you full custody? Judges generally don't care if you cannot communicate. What the end up doing is spelling it all out and ordering all exchanges be done at the police station. That doesn't sound good for the kids either.

One of the hardest things to swallow during my divorce is that justice is not just blind, it is dumb too. The most shocking thing was I never lied, he always lied, yet the judge believed him. See judges don't know you any better than that psychologist will know your kids. Think about what superficial things your judge will base credibility on. Just saying this so you understand you quite possibly will do no better in court than him. Right or wrong, what is best for the kids or not, truth or lies, they mean nothing in court! What matters only is who the judge believes and you are just as well off flipping a coin.

Oh wow, they tried to push the one kid thing on me and I fought it and won that battle! We are a family you don't separate us! So sorry, I agree with your husband on that one!

At the time of our divorce my younger daughter was five, my son seven. Eight years later they are both thriving. Daughter grew just fine, son learned to control himself. I can assure you if we went tit for tat our boys have the same diagnosis. No one just has spectrum.

It is bad enough when you divorce, to split up the kids too, that is insanity. It may be easier on the parents but what is easier for the parents is unimportant.

My so is in the middle of a horrible custody battle, and his ex like yours, refuses to agree upon anything and makes life for the kids just horrible. I couldn't imagine putting my own children through something like that. As i tell my so, hang in there and never lose sight on what you are fighting for...the best interest of your children. Good luck with all your hearings and your future!

I know a woman whose ex husband is a divorce attorney and he hired the most cut-throat divorce attorney in the area to handle his divorce. Oh and...he was dating the chief judge of the probate and family court for the county. My friend was a paralegal and eventually went on to finish law school pass the bar. Anyway...their divorce took 7 years to finalize and her a-hole ex still fought her every step of the way after that until their sons were out of college. I think the youngest was 5 or 6 when she filed and she then had something like 16 or 17 years of strife dealing with her lunatic ex. Now that her sons are completely grown, neither one has a relationship with his father because they witnessed all of the harassment and craziness he put their mother through.

I was in court a few years ago for my SD's custody hearing and there was a case there where a woman had had a restraining order against her ex husband since 1996 (so, 15 years at that point) and the guy was still contesting the order after 15 years. He gave some long, drawn out sob story about how the order interfered with him being able to pick up his kids (teenagers who simply had to walk to the end of the driveway to be picked up by him) or volunteer at school (which is total BS) and that he hadn't done anything in years. The wife was calm in her rebuttal, which laid out the facts leading up to the restraining order and it's continued renewals year after year. The husband flipped out, started interrupting and swearing and threw his chair to the ground and walked out. Needless to say, the RO was continued indefinitely.

Sorry you're going through this. Just hold your head high, take it one day at a time, document all of the crazy, and know that a settlement will come eventually and that with every ridiculous move he makes, he's just building a case against himself.

Yes. It's a shame-but there are many parents out there who just are not very good parents. And many times the other parent has to compensate-which can be exhausting.
Without going into specifics about yhe HE'LL that my SOs EX gives ALL of us-I can say that all we can do is move forward. The courts are not nearly as helpful as they should be. I would venture to say that they deal with more nasty divorce/custody cases than cases where both adults act like adults.
It's sad. And goes to show just how much we need to do to ensure our kids don't end up in these situations!

I am unclear. It sounds like the GAL (do you mean woman or is this an abbreviation for something else?) spoke with teachers, paras and your son's therapist and they all agree that 50:50 parenting is in your son's best interests. The fact that a judge might not order it doesn't mean it is not in your child's best interest. It means the judge would likely feel that the two involved adults are not mature enough to make it work. Your ex wants to be a 50:50 parent, your child's teachers, special ed teachers and therapist feel this will be best for your son. Why not just agree to it?

Who care if your ex has a housemate? Would you rather sell the townhouse and have your son spend 1/2 his time in a smaller, not as nice home?

Have you read the book "Splitting" by Bill Eddy and Randi Kreger? I think it might be helpful to you. It sounds like this is going to be a series of battles in a very long war for you. I'm so sorry you're going through this. I'm going through a divorce myself. The only advice I can give you is to let your attorney fight the battles for you and try to minimize contact with your husband. He will try to bait you into arguments. Don't go there.

I have no words of wisdom wrt the the divorce/custody battle issue other than I'm sorry that you're having to deal with all of that.

However, what jumped out at me is that you say the townhome is a 2 br.
Assuming he sleeps in one, and your kids share the other, where are this "roommate" and her child supposed to sleep? Keep in mind also, that since your kids are boy and girl, they won't be able to share a room forever.

So - not only sketchy for using craigslist, but might even violate occupancy limits in your city/county. Your lawyer should know about this, especially if she actually moves in.

ETA
I see by rereading that this was last year and your lawyer already drafted a letter, which inspired his subsequent retaliation. However, you don't mention whether this point was actually part of your objection. Whatever method he uses to find a roommate, I would think getting a roommate would work against him.

Now, to me that's just logical though, and I have no experience with the court system to back it up. Good luck!

Just one thing to address--I hope you and your attorney and the GAL and anyone else are working out a very clear part of the agreement where it's in writing that you and your spouse cannot badmouth each other in front of the children, ever. I've read here and elsewhere that this can be part of some custody agreements, so that where things are contentious and negative, a parent (supposedly) cannot spend his or her custody time filling kids' heads with lies about the other parent. Of course it can happen anyway -- but with such a provision in place you can at least take your ex to court for violating the agreement if your find out he's badmouthing you to the kids on his time.

Aside from that, I would ask my attorney if there's any merit to the idea that your spouse has extremely poor judgment in the way he found a roommate--? Unfortunately, a judge might say that unless something negative actually happens with this roommate that affects your kids, and you can show it's because his Craiglist hunt turned up someone criminal or sick....there's nothing that can be done. But I'd be going bonkers at the thought of my ex bringing in a total stranger. From what you write I wish you could get sole custody since dad sounds off balance, frankly.

I cannot stress enough that moving every few days from one home to another is horrible for kids. They get to the point where they finally just give up and decide they don't have a home. It's horrible for them.

If kiddo is so needy then one parent needs to take him on and let the other child go. That might be best but it will still come out in her mind that he got picked over her. Plus if dad had him he could change his therapy, stop it all together, take him out of every program, and more.

I'd say let it go to court and do not even try for 50/50. The kids deserve to have a home somewhere. A place they know is theirs until the graduate high school and some day move out of. They need that stability. Seriously.

My friend that has 50/50 with her ex has such a messed up child. This child starts crying when she wakes up at mom's and starts begging her to please not make her go to her dad's house. She wants to stay home and play with her toys, she wants to go to her friends house. She doesn't want to go to dad's house and hates him. She cries all day until dad shows up to get her. She acts horrible at her dads then as soon as she wakes up the next day starts in about wanting to go home.

She can't go before a judge for a couple of years but she's going to ask the judge to allow her to never see her father again. She hates him.

My friends father was in the hospital dying. She talked to the ex about going to see him before he passed. Ex said "fine with me, who's going to babysit kid while you're gone, I am not paying a babysitter to watch kid for days at your house while you're gone". She had to have her adult daughter come to her house from college and stay there so she could take care of kid if she got sick at school and she had to basically take her on mom's visitation. Dad refuses to let kid go on vacation with mom too. He has that right with 50/50. He refused to allow kid to go to the Y after school program so mom could work. He said a mom's place is at home with kids and she should not work. He doesn't have to pay child support since it's 50/50 and mom is on her own to pay rent, buy food, pay for her vehicle and all that goes with that.

So mom got an overnight job and kids stays with a neighbor when mom goes to work. He isn't stopping her from that.

50/50 custody is just bad for kids. Unless both parents bend over backwards to do what's best for their child. Parent's fight over silly stuff. Family reunions, vacations out of state, holiday's, and more. Having a defined visitation schedule on the paperwork when ex is a hiney like this is going to be your peace, your saving grace.

Well, since his only "compromise" is none at all since he wants you to agree to 0% contact and essentially abandon your children to him while you're willing to go 50/50 even without mediation it's just not going to look good for him in court. The judge won't take kindly to it at all. You have an officer of the court, the GAL, as a witness to this, as well as any other number of witnesses. He won't have any proof of his allegations other than, "She pissed me off" and it will completely look like his behavior is simply payback.

Honestly? I'd let him hang himself. You don't owe him a single thing. You don't owe it to him to make sure he's a good father or ex-husband. It's up to him to be a good father to do the right thing. He owes it to the children. If he can't figure that out, and figure out that revenge for being called out on making a poor parenting choice in the past is bad, that's not your failing.

I see this too often with my friends' former spouses.