Hello takingandsending,
We wouldn't be at the house since he wants to go with us to the toy store that I promised I would take my son too. To be honest, I don't think he's going to come. Anything that requires effort for us he usually forgoes.
Is there someone you can trust in your family to support you during the visit? Given past abuse and overall turbulence on your son, have you set out the limitations around your husband's visits - duration, quantity and so forth? What is it that you believe is best for your son? You have full custody, but do you want your husband to have no access based on his past behavior to your son? Would you consider putting a condition of him being in regular therapy as a boundary?
Besides everything that happened when he was an infant even though we live together he's had very minimal contact with our son, mostly because he's ignored him. I never let him alone with him because he never showed himself trustworthy, except a couple times when we went to the store and I had to use the restroom. My son is afraid of the hand dryer, so he opted to stay with his dad. Usually in public he behaves himself, mostly. So, he's technically always been supervised and he knows I wouldn't let him be alone with our son already.
Technically we both have full custody, his rights were never revoked during the case. I don't mind my son having contact with him, since he treats him better at a distance. My son loves him and thinks that he's gone for work and regularly asks for him to come home.
I don't know about the therapy, though he does need it. Is that a condition you can put on someone legally? I've asked him to go to therapy and he said he would when we were still trying to work things out, but I don't know now since he's given up.
Thank you for asking these questions, I didn't think of all of this.
My main concern is, given his history, is there any trick or anything he could try to pull to gain more access to our son even though he doesn't want it? He would never be able to take care of him and already said he would let his family take care of him if something ever happened to me. They aren't even his biological family and from his own mouth he said they're rednecks, harsh, crass and wouldn't know how to handle him. I hope nothing happens to me, but if it did, wouldn't my family, the people he's lived with, get priority? This scares me more than anything, I don't want my son to automatically go to his dad, it would completely flip him out.