I can't stand his child's mother

[theBrokenMuse]

I have two children by my husband but he had a child with another woman (from a one night stand no less) before we were together. Anyone else have to deal with impossible to blend families? I honestly, truthfully can not stand this woman. I have never met anyone so manipulative, vindictive, nasty and downright unclassy as this lady. We don't even have visitations with his other child right now because she is that big of a head case and plummets our entire family into chaos every chance she gets.

 

Everytime she doesn't get her way with something there is a sudden 'anonymous' tip some various agency like the IRS or DCF. Then there is the fact that she brings us back to court every couple of months (because she has more than one lawyer in her family and it's not costing her much I'm sure) accusing us of hiding funds, lying about wages, makes up stories that we are working under the table, that we abuse drugs, that we are mentally imbalanced and dangerous. In short, she is a nut.

 

I don't even know why she is so obsessed with this fictitious money when she has more of it then I'll ever see. By her own admission she's never had a job even though she's over 30 (because she doesn't have to). Her parents are stinking rich and she wasn't even able to produce a single bill in her name for the court. Yet this time when she brought us back to court for the billionth time, the judge hiked the CS. I was in shock because we were already paying as much we could possibly afford. I don't know how we'll make ends meet now.

 

I really hate the idea of having to deal with this woman for ten more years. It makes me sick to my stomach. How does anyone cope with these type of people long term without going insane?

[Eve]

My Husbands ex-wife is one of the biggest bitches to have ever walked Gods Earth. I dislike her so much that I rarely speak about her. Hubby and I see her as poison and so do not allow her even one inch in our thoughts or our lives. For example we block her phone number and she is not permitted to come to our home. BUT, we have not stopped my Husbands children from seeing her and have never got involved in any of her legal games... because we simply did not want the boys to have any attachment issues.. which usually follows if ones mother is a major **** up. We have taught them to honour her where they can but to stick up for reason and sanity at all other times... and they are fine! The legal professionals we dealt with could clearly see her plan anyway! Money grabbing, cheap, slutbaked, fakeclothed, uneducated, blonde, surrogate whore that she is.. I say sit it out. Eventually she will be gone. Focus on ensuring that the child is as well balanced as possible. Make sure that Child Support recognise all of your holiday entitlements. That should bring the payments down somewhat. Other than that, you may simply need to find other ways of generating money for the time being.. Dont let her destroy you. Make sure that you have solid boundaries, forgive her and be happy.Regards,Eve xx

[Seeking Neverland]

My husband read your post to me and I honestly felt chills go over my body. I was not a member on this forum, but signed up specifically to respond to you. Before hearing your post, I never believed that there was another living human who was enduring the hell that I have come to know over the past 5 years.

 

Like your situation, my husband has a son from a one night stand that occurred before we met. When I first learned of the situation, I was determined to make the tangled situation as happy as possible. After my husband and I married, I treated his son like my own. I encouraged my husband to see his son more often than he had been seeing him before we married. I read my step-son bedtime stories and after only a few months, he spontaneously started calling me “mom.”

 

For some reason, the child’s mother would not properly clothe him (he wore hand-me-downs from his 10 and 13 year old brothers -- this put a 3 year old in size 10 clothing), continued giving him a bottle at age 4, and refused to potty train him. Sadly the lack of potty training began exhibiting itself through bizarre psychological behaviors, such as pooping in the bath tub and screaming bloody murder if you tried to get him to use a potty. Determined to help, rather than simply criticize, I bought him clothing (in addition to the substantial child support we paid) and when we had him for 1 month in the summer I worked day and night to potty train him. Unfortunately, when he returned home to his mother, she put him back in diapers. It reached the point that he was being held back in pre-school because he was not potty trained and the day care brought the mom in to discuss the fact that she literally un-potty trained him after we did the potty training. Some time later, the day care called Child Protective Services because his mother brought him in covered in feces and bruised up. Child Protective Services did nothing. My step-son was finally potty trained around age 5.

 

Concurrent with all of these events, the mother, who is obsessed with my husband, was constantly emailing and calling my husband. This woman, who sadly makes Rosanne Barr look like a super model, became a borderline stalker. All the while, she was still married to the father of her 10 and 13 year old sons. Upon realizing that my husband would not suddenly discover the “error of his ways” and come sweep her off to fantasy island, she began the next best thing . . . legal torture. We have been in constant litigation for the past 4 years. Her demands have been as ridiculous as seeking my husband's travel schedule, unlimited access to my husband, and for me to be banned from being around at any time that my husband had possession of the child. We took the matter all the way to trial once, yet despite her criminal convictions (including drug possession) and all of the matters detailed above (unfortunately the CPS report had not occurred yet as of the date of the trial), the Judge ordered us to pay her the maximum allowable child support, going forward and retroactively, and her attorney's fees. The ordeal nearly bankrupted us. Since that time, the state has increased the maximum allowable child support, so we are now sued yearly for increases.

 

So the question is how do you cope? I don't know if I could ever claim to have an adequate answer for that question. I have tried many approaches, including befriending her (which did not work). Here are the few things that did seem to help:

 

1) We have been seeing a psychologist for 4 years now. We began this after I had an unfortunate miscarriage, but have continued therapy because of the torment from this woman. She actually used the miscarriage to make digs at me during our trial.

 

2) I printed out the emails that she had been sending to my husband, highlighted the most damning portions and gave them to her husband. The emails stopped.

 

3) We ultimately had to discontinue visitations with the child and demand that she cease all communications with us. We still get the sporadic letters and yearly suits, but we do not respond to the letters and hire counsel to appear on our behalf and negotiate the child support without our having to appear in person.

 

This last step was the hardest and I'm sure many would be critical of it. It was actually the recommendation of our psychologist. My own mother abandoned me when I was 4 years old and before this experience I would have sworn that anyone who would stop visiting their child was selfish and heartless. I would have sworn that there was no circumstance under which ceasing visitation was justified. Now I see the other side of a very nasty coin. My husband and I were trying to forge a family with our new marriage. I have a daughter from a prior marriage who lives with us (that side of things is very cordial). The daily and constant torment was destroying our marriage, pushing us each to the brink of insanity, and robbing my daughter of the benefit of a nurturing family and environment. I often cry and always pray for my step-son. I pray that God will watch over him while we cannot. Ultimately we had to come to terms with the fact that it simply was not the "right thing" to sacrifice the lives of 3 people (my husband, myself, and my daughter) in effort to try to continue visitation in the hopes that our influence would somehow shield my step-son from the horrors that his insane fatal attraction mother had created.

 

Some who read this may doubt the truthfulness of what I've written . . . it seems implausible that a Judge would allow such an atrocity to go on. There are a few things to consider there . . . I am actually an attorney myself. I do not handle family law, although I did at one time. I stopped because I could not stomach the terrible decisions that I saw Judges making for these small children every day. I am in Texas. I do not know what motivates family law judges in Texas (they typically are not the same judges that hear civil cases), but in most cases I can attest that it is not justice. Nonetheless, in fairness to our Judge, the attorney that my husband had hired developed cancer just before our trial. Unbeknownst to us, she was in no condition to try a lawsuit. She did a terrible job and much of the evidence that I had obtained for her was not admitted because she had failed to produce it in discovery. In truth, her failures amounted to legal malpractice, but we did not have the heart to turn our attack on this very ill woman. She has now passed away.

 

So, these are my answers, they are all that I know. I wonder every day if there is a better way to deal with this. I've tried so many ways of reaching out to this woman to form a healthy relationship on behalf of my step-son, but it seems the more that I try, the more tangled the web becomes. My final answer had to be to walk away from the visitations with my step-son and cease communications with his mother . . . for now at least.

 

May God Bless you and guide you in bearing your own cross.

[whichwayisup]

Hire a PI, gather information on her and then next time she causes problems and you all end up in court, show the evidence of her messing around and playing games.

 

You and your husband have nothing to worry about, she is the one with some serious issues..

 

It's sad, what she doesn't realize is, all this game playing is only hurting her child!

[OneTwo]

Hire a PI, gather information on her and then next time she causes problems and you all end up in court, show the evidence of her messing around and playing games.

 

You and your husband have nothing to worry about, she is the one with some serious issues..

 

It's sad, what she doesn't realize is, all this game playing is only hurting her child!

 

 

You are missing the point: she (the biological mom) doesn't care that this is hurting her child. She will do anything to get to the husband and destroy the marriage. Petty things are not typically admissible in court, and it is almost impossible to catch someone doing something that would be significant enough to warrant a change of custody. Having a PI follow someone around 24 hours a day and properly documenting items so that they are significant enough to warrant a court's interaction would cost into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. How far do you go and what cost do you expend to try to have sense of normalcy? And then, a judge's bad decision just puts you right back where you started (minus the couple hundred grand spent on evidence and court and lawyer's fees).

 

In the state of Texas, it is presumed that the child is better off with the biological mother. If there is no significant proof of the contrary with expert testimony from family study psychologists (at the man's expense) and eyewitnesses, then the judge just simply is not going to do anything about it. Unless you can prove that the mother is dealing drugs or is into some type of criminal enterprise, nothing short of broken bones and severe child abuse is going to reverse a judges decision. And even then, the judge will sometimes just put the mother in counseling and make sure that the father is paying the maximum allowable amount of child support so that the mother can get help under the auspices that the money is to be used to provide for the child. But, they never check into how the money is spent. The mother can use that money to buy herself a new wardrobe, or go on vacation, or buy stuff for her other kids, or do whatever she wants. The courts don't even ask -- not even during trial.

 

The system sucks beyond belief and is especially is slanted against someone of significant means, as the judge will usually order that person to cover all costs, no matter what the outcome.