Not Your Dad's Divorce

THE REA

@bnmwilliams

You are the rare exception. Most "step" mothers are on here complaining about the women who use child support and will not let dad see the kids. In my case (since youa re using your case I will use mine) my ex dragged stuff from before we even met, stuff from when I was barely an adult (19 and 20 years old - I am now in my 40's). He abused me, he abused his first wife (proven in divorce records) and he abused his first child. His rights to thast child were terminated. But we have joint legal custody and it is a nightmare. I am in court on average 12 times a year. On average 11 of those times are at his request, with only 1 being me asking for the court's help. The last time we were in court I tried bringing in NEW abuse issues about him and the judge asked me if he was abusive pre-pregnancy. I stated yes since I have learned that his behavior pre-divorce and pre-birth was abuse. The judge told me that since I "knew" he was abusive and I "chose" to have a child with him anyway, that I now had to "deal with it".

This same judge also said he was going to start charging us rent for his court room. I myself cannot wait until my child is of age because heads will roll. The state refused to prosecute my ex for abuse, perjury, and other criminal acts regarding me and our child. The jduge refused to allow me to present witnesses to the abuse.

I am sorry that your husbands ex has abandoned the children. I am glad you are there to take up the slack. BUT!!!!! When there is already an loving caring mother in the picture, the step mother should not try to take over. That is not her job.

A man or a woman can suffer all indignities at work place, but when it comes to home, each one wants that his/her life is more important and hence they enter into splitville. This "me" and "my" attitude is not conducive to an orderly society especially when children are involved. The families are now wracked with such issues like "my children" and "your children" are now fighting with "our children". There should be severe penalties to be paid to the society when a couple with children split. And it is awfully bad to conceive children and then throw them at the society as if the society is always responsible for the byproduct of the sexual pleasure of a "he" and "she. The society is degrading itself day after day.

My ex-boyfriend and I have a 2 year old son and have joint physical and legal custody. The arrangement works the best for us and for our son. He loves his father and is a total daddy's boy, we do famil y dinners and at times we will stay and put him to bed at each other's house. We try very hard to get along because it is in the best interest of our child. Being a child of a nasty divorce myself where my parents used me as a pawn and my father had horrible things to say about my mother growing up and didn't pay support ( I learned when I was an adult), I decided when things didn't work out with my son's father that it wasn't going to be the same way for him. He is financially responsible and because he makes three times what I do offers to help in addition to child support when things are tight for me. I am not uneducated as I have my Master's Degree and I work full time, but that isn't always enough. I think that the idea of joint custody is the best for kids and if it requires that parents have mediation or counseling to better ensure that the custody arrangement is workable then they should do that. Everyone needs to get over themselves when they have a child and remember that this is about the child now how badly your feelings have been hurt.

About Time, The best chance for the kids to grow up well adjusted is equal time with both parents, after a lot of false accusations the courts are finally taking me serious, only took six years, my mistake, I should have married a real woman, my ex screamed abuse every rainny day, after her second divorce she went off the deep end, started using our daughter agaisnt me, taking her to thearpists every week for 18 months over abuse allegations, brainwashing the kid, benn a pretty tough on the little girl her first six years living with her mom, on a good note- The little girl LOVES her daddy, and I will continue to fight for her.

i am one of those fathers that HAD to walk away. my x-wife and i divorced over six years ago and were still battling over parenting plans. unfortunatly IT is NOT by far a mature mother. it all started out with ITS first accuzation of being an alcoholic, the countless test that never were proven to be sufficient. The counselors and urine tests that i had to take to prove that i was not an alcoholic. Then came the mediations which are mandatory in west virginia, what a joke. Then the protctive orders that are such a waste of paper and attorney fees from ITS false allegations. Now that i proved all that false and IT thought of other ways to start messing with me and my parenting. I heard a knock on the door and i answered it and low and behold there stood the child protective agent. I complied with every thing once again and proved her allegations to be false, but of course they never tell you who filed the complaint but i did not have to look far being that ITS sister works for the child protective services. i decided to move to ohio and sure enough once again IT kept me away from my kids and filed a child neglect case on me and investigated agian by child protective services. So i went to court and proved that wrong costing me more attorney fees that the judge refused to make her pay me back. Then i forgot to tell you about the time before i moved to ohio that i ran into her sugar daddy in a parking lot and he pretty much told me off and my kids to. So after i went to court for tearing up his car trying to get to the low life i decided to hurt him where it really hurts. I started talking VERY nice to IT behind his back and was sweet talking to IT to get her to think that i wanted to get back with IT. Well it worked and that is all i can pretty much say about that for now because when i moved to ohio ITS claws came out again and again and IT threatened to scream sexual assault when i told IT that i was going to tell sugar daddy if IT did not give me a fair parenting plan. Im still waiting for that and that has been over a year and half now since she treatened that and i hope she does being that i have three witnesses. Well christmas of last year was it when i was tired of my children being hurt since they are in the middle of this, i told IT that i wanted the kids in the am being that i had to work in the pm, well my kids were not there in the am pick up and i went to work and my daughter text me in the pm and asked where i was at. IT knew everything and exactly what IT was doing so there goes another christmas without my kids and here the whole time they were thinking that they were going to dad's for christmas presents and such. Of course all of her wrong doings and legal trouble are being paid by her parents while mine are coming out of my pocket, never mind the huge amound of child support, and all the bills and and and and. if you have any suggestions ill contact you.!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mr. Goldstein:

Bravo! well put. I have been fighting an abusive ex spouse who is also a convicted felon--child molest no less. He keeps going back to court to punish me for blowing the whistle on his behavior. Since 1995 the longest we have been out of court is 93 days. Such a waste of time, energy and money. So hard on the children. He does not care about them ,only about control and staying front and center in MY life. Too bad the courts just don't see it that way., Every time he goes back to court he gets a little bit more. The abuse continues, not only of me, but of the children. The courts don't even care that he molested a member of his household. Kids are treated as property, and nothing more. My boys cannot wait until they are 18 and old enough to tell him to get lost. Such a shame for them.

joint custody if fine if both parents agree on it. But in most case with the men it all show at first. Once they move on and find a girlfriend the kids mean nonthing. I believe you made them together, as parents we should support our children together. My son once asked me when do we divorce dad. I told him you never divorce your father. He will always be your dad. Well his dad remarried and guess what the new wife won. My children have gone without a dad for 15yrs. He has missed a big part of their lives. It has only hurt and confussed them. We should be adults when it comes to divorce. Its only the children that get hurt. Some parents fail to see that and that's what hurt me the most to see my children hurt. So for the women and men who bail after divorce. You lose the greatest moments in life. Remember you can NEVER get them back.

About Time, the best chance for the kids ito grow up well adjusted is equal time with both parents, after a certain age, custody is a mute argument, after alot of false accusations the courts are finally ltaking me serious, only took six years.

Our children have been shared 50% for the last 6 years. We started with a week and a week, which the kids didn't like because they couldn't keep track of which parent to ask to go to a friends house on the next weekend. Too much ping pong! We then settled on every 3 weeks, with the middle weekend going to the other parent. This has worked fairly well for us and the kids in general. The downfall for me at this point ( Kids being 12 and 15 now) is the difficulty in parenting them. I may need to discipline one of them...but they are going to be at dad's for the weekend or leaving for 3 weeks. Very difficult for dad to follow through with my discipline if he had something special planned and hard for me to do it 3 weeks later! There are differences with rules and differences with chores. As much as I believe that the kids need equal access, the downfalls really need to be thought out and you have to have a pretty reasonable relationship with your ex.

I agree with akpinwheel, hats off to you for being the stable one.

There are many articles available with such stats in support of shared custody being in the best interests of children. Dr. Holstein is quoted as mentioning such studies in this article aqs well. I also personally know some very well adjusted and successful children who grew up in these arrangements. Their parents spoke to child psychiatrists who assured them there would be no damage to a child that would directly result from a shared custody situation as opposed to a primary custody situation and that the child would benefit from the contstant contact from both parents.

If your a guy and you go to court in the state of CT with your soon to be ex just give her whatever she wants. It is not worth the fight you will just flush 10's of thousands of dollars down the toilet. The legal system in CT is all about the mother no matter how screwed up she is she will win. My judge just said the entire breakdown of our marriage was my fault so I had to pay for my sins. I was found 100% at fault so the usual standard rules did not apply. Now she was found to be mentally ill with many confirmed problems but she did nothing wrong she was an absolute saint while I was married to her according to our judge. Well after about four years now she has been found abusive and neglectful of our son with (SUBSTANTIATED) abuse charges by CT DCF. So I guess my judge was wrong OH I forgot judges never make mistakes. So where going back to court again anyway against my own advice because I really don???t have a choice what good father would let his child suffer even when the odds are stacked against him.

By the way I was the one that filed for the divorce but she claimed in court that I said ???IF YOU EVER TRY TO LEAVE ME I WIL KILL YOU??? So think about this what makes sense about this. All I could think of while we were married was how to get the hell away from her. This is just one example of the farce of our trial.

I am a mother of 7 y/o boy, divorced for almost 3yrs. When my ex-husband and I split, it's about hurting each others feelings, I want my son, he wants his son. It was a battle for almost a year. I gave him all the property, just give me my son. But he fought for all, material things and our son. He knew that our son is the only one I got in this country, I don't have a relatives lives closed by me, I came from different country. He told me to give up my rights to my son, but I didn't. I don't want my son to grow up without a father, so I offered him everything, including half rights to our son. I think he got a pretty good deal with the result of our divorce, property, boat, truck and small assets that we accumulate during marriage of 6 years. I only got half of my son, but to me, that is better than material things. I think that nowadays, that the law should be half on everything if the couple divorce, if you don't want to contest with material things, just go after half of your kid(s). Men has the rights as much as women. I don't see anything wrong being a law like that, that way, the kids still grow up having a closer relationship between their parents. I think its fair for everybody if they make this as a law. If men can pay child support, so as women. If men messed up the relationship, likewise with women. Neither one party is innocent, it's both. Both should take responsibility with their own action, whether you are male or female. There is a lot of men than can be a good parent if the ex-wife is messed up, and vise versa. No one is perfect, and "It takes 2 to tango" most of the time, not a one way street. Respecting the other party in front of your kid(s) played a good role to them. We can't bad mouth or ex-spouse to our kids, and they can't to us. That way, the kid(s) will grow up with a lot of respect, to their parents, and to other people in their lives. Child support is not everything, a relationship with your kid(s) is far worthy than money itself. I am getting $93.00 a month for child support, that's the difference from what we are making, and at some point, I even gave it back to him, when he lost his job. The LAW should be looking for the welfare of everybody that is involved that came from a broken family, of course the kid is the main thing, but the parents as well. We are having a fair share with our son, sometimes I pay more, but then again, that is my son too. Who else is going to do that to him except me, his mom. If his dad wants to pay some of it, I will appreciate it, if he don't, I just suck it up and move on. The important is, he is there for our son, cuz money is not always the answer for everything.

Show us the EVIDENCE AND RELIABLE STATS...the presumption here is that joint custody is ideal....for the Mom and Dad it might seem that way, but several studies have also shown that children do better with one PRIMARY place of residence with access to both parents. Kids should have one secure home they can count on, not be shuffled back and forth like possessions.

I commend the author for putting her children before her own feelings and working out a shared custody arrangement with her ex but sadly, so many mothers are not so mature or insightful. Fathers rarely get shared custody unless the mother agrees to it. It's not logical or in children's best interest to let one parent have so much power over the situation due to their gender, when this power is so easily abused. As mentioned, shared custody is hard, but it is a much better than the alternative of a child not getting to see the non custodial parent adequately. I agree with Dr. Holstein that it should be assumed shared custody unless one of the parents is deemed unfit. The current family court situation pits parents against each with a "winner" and a "loser". There are bound to be bad feelings from that outcome. If there is a huge discrepency in salaries between the parents, the high salaried parent will end up paying practically the same amount of child maintenance and the majority of the child care and any extraordinary expenses anyways, in the current system so a low income women would barely be penalized. That being said, women need to take the responsibilty of getting education and job skills so they can be adequate providers themselves and not rely on a man's income. I feel an immense sadness for all the good father's out there who have been prevented from having equal parenting input and punished for being good providers. I feel even sadder for the children who are robbed of an adequate amount of time with a good father.

P.S. The situation for unmarried fathers is even worse. They have even less parenting rights than divorced fathers. I'd like to see more stats and articles about this as it is a growing phenomenom these days. Children of unmarried fathers deserve equality as well.

-Dissapointed equalitarian feminist in Canada