met with new parent coordinator

[momtara]

So I met with our new parent coordinator.  I told her the whole story from the beginning, about my exH raging all night long toward the end of our marriage, putting the babies in different beds all night just to scare me, moving them to the edge of the bed to scare me, putting the baby on the floor then I got a TRO... .and how he didn't like our last PC.  And how he got put on supervised visitation because he went off his meds, we let him go back on unsupervised, but one of the things we agreed to is that he has to keep taking his doctors' recommendations.  (But he only has to notify us about that once a year.)  Also he had to agree with me to see a new PC, but she can't talk about his medication or talk to his doctors.

So I told her the whole story (to the tune of $350 for the hour and a half appointment).  Next, the exH goes to talk to her.  Then, hopefully, we meet together and decide if we are going to work with her.

This is all so expensive.  Just to have someone keeping an eye on exH, have her as a resource, and help us make decisions that I should be making anyway.

Anyway, she seemed on the ball.  She knows about personality disorders.  She's a social worker, not a psychiatrist, but I'm sure she's seen a lot.  I mentioned that even though she can't talk to his docs, she can recommend that he submit something saying he's seeing them regularly... .

I am concerned we'll pay all this money and not get anything out of it.  Unless there's a crisis, we won't see her together that often.  It's not that she has to do anything right now -  I guess she'll be there to help monitor the situation.  I do feel a little better having a PC than having no one.  Still, sometimes I wonder if, considering the money spent, it'd be better to go to court and maybe modify one or two things - have him give more notice of staying in treatment, maybe 2x a year instead of once.  Court would just trigger ex, though.  I guess I'll see what happens.

She asked me a few times if exH held down a job.  I said he did.  I think she was just gauging how bad his mental illness is.  She also seemed surprised that I agreed to let him have overnights at all, way back when... .but at the time I didn't know how mentally ill he was.  I did that in mediation and it seemed a fair trade since he had filed for primary physical custody.  (This was a tactic, but still, it's kinda scary... .giving him 1 overnight every other weekend seemed preferable.)

The last few visits, he hasn't done anything too crazy, except show up late one time.  A week earlier, he kept texting me asking for info on the kids that he didn't really need.  He does seem to know how far to go without getting in trouble. 

[david]

Did you explain why you agreed to overnights and that you now think that was a mistake ?  Your explanation could make a big difference in how someone would view that.

[momtara]

I think I did say that I thought it was the best I could get and at the time I didn't know what I know now.  There was so much background I had to stuff into our meeting, that I don't know what she took away from it, but I think she at least gets the sense that he's mentally ill and that I want her to kind of monitor the situation.

[livednlearned]

Mental health professionals try to figure out how healthy we are. When I first talked to my L and told her what was going on, she said that a judge would hear my story and think, If N/BPDx was such a big alcoholic for that many years, why did I stay so long and expose S13 to that behavior?

That's why it's critically important to not give more time with your ex than what the court order says. You don't want to give court any reason to doubt your judgment.

What do you think about tweaking your story going forward? Maybe frame it that you believed your ex took out what was marital distress on the kids, and that you believed it would get better once the two of you lived separately, but that has not been the case. Most family courts expect the divorce + custody period to be a little turbulent. But if things stay high-conflict or get worse after the split, that sends a message that something is wrong.

One of the things that disturbed my judge about N/BPDx is that he continued to call me names in emails 3 years after the divorce. My name has an "s" in it and N/BPDx always uses the dollar sign instead of the "s", and the judge actually wanted that included in the order. For the most part, court doesn't seem to care about adult behaviors but in my case, the persistent degradation really bothered the judge. There were many other issues that led to full custody/terminated visitation, but sometimes the small things send a loud message.

[momtara]

Very interesting.  Those are all good points.  She did ask why I dropped supervised visitation.  I said because of the recommendations of his therapists, our PC kind of dropping out (her 6 months were up), and the fact that he seemed agitated by our parent coordinator and maybe we could try a new one and see how things went.  I said I thought things would get better... .but they didn't entirely.

I stressed that we should get more notification that he sees his therapists regularly.  She said she's going to meet with him and send us both an email.  I don't know if it will have any recommendations or thoughts, especially this early in the game.  

She has a retainer agreement that goes against some things in our consent order, so we'd have to modify her retainer agreement, or maybe exH could give in on some things.  That's up to her to see what she can get out of him.

I really hope this doesn't just suck all my money and then I never have things I need for the kids (or for court if need be), but it's hard to know.  At least this person will be a resource.

That's interesting about the ex still calling you name$.  Maybe he wants you to be like Ke$ha.  Mine seems to be able to maintain control of himself USUALLY.  Not always. 

[livednlearned]

 She has a retainer agreement that goes against some things in our consent order, so we'd have to modify her retainer agreement, or maybe exH could give in on some things.  That's up to her to see what she can get out of him.

That's a good idea to just let the PC and your ex deal with that -- you'll want to see any modified agreement before you sign, but stay out of that discussion as much as you can. My ex, despite being a lawyer, hardly read anything he signed as far as I can tell. I made major modifications to the PC order because in my state, PCs have quite a bit of power so I tried to strip the order of those powers as much as I could. I didn't want her having more say over custody than a judge, so ours was essentially about communication, at least according to the order. Back then, I was worried about giving someone so much power over custody who wasn't a judge.

Right before I could sign it, though, N/BPDx had his big psychotic episode and that triggered an emergency hearing. So we ended up having something added about how the PC could make recommendations about custody. I wasn't as worried because the episode was entirely documented in email and figured it was going to be fairly clear that something was going on with N/BPDx.

[momtara]

I feared that at first about custody changes, esp. if exH acted like a nice guy who wanted more time, Wednesday dinners, etc.  Now I have the recommendations from the previous PC, as well as documentation that ex is mentally ill, so I don't think any professional would feel safe recommending more time unless they were handling the situation for a long period of time.  Slowly I am getting more confident in what I am doing. 

One next step has been achieved - my exH has made an appointment to talk with the PC next week.  Then we both see her together. 

[david]

The confidence did start slowly for me. It builds on itself especially when you start doing things out of your comfort zone. In your case, I think not worrying about triggering exh. That was something that concerned me years ago. I was always afraid ex would do something to our kids if I did something I thought could/would trigger her. My T helped me realize things would not change unless I changed in that area. I was hesitant but understood the T was right. It felt very uncomfortable at first but when I saw that ex wasn't doing anything major towards the kids I got better at just doing what I thought best regardless of what I thought ex was going to do. Ex adjusted to my "new" way of doing things.

What I have learned from going through two custody evals, a co parent coordinator, and currently a co parent counselor is that I let ex do the talking at the first few joint meetings. Ex has a limited range of behaviors with me. It usually starts with her in some kind of victim role portraying me as the problem. I try to find solutions that make sense to reasonable people. Ex says I am verbally abusive. My solution is email only communication so I can't be verbally abusive and if I am she has an email to prove it. I don't say I am not verbally abusive. That is negative engagement and just "fighting" between us. Ex says I assaulted her. In that circumstance I say it is not true and then my solution is to not be physically near her and I find ways to do that and still see our kids. Ex never has solutions so there is never a discussion between us about another solution. Doing this several times usually leads the psychologist to change the direction in a more favorable way for me. I try mot to trigger ex in these meetings and let the psychologist find the trigger points. The good psychologists find it within the first or second joint meeting.

I don't know how well I am explaining this but it did take a different viewpoint from me. I stopped being afraid. When I stopped being afraid I stopped reacting and I think that was the key for me. 

[momtara]

Well said, especially the last line.  Thank you.