BPDFamily.com

Dose anyone here have sole custady ?

Anyone "won" in court for sole custody ?

Anyone dealing with a high functioning BPD and or Bipolar ex

I have a lawyer I'm looking for support . He threatens to take our son from me and claims he's a better because of his education and income but his mind and personal like is soo messed up.

I have sole custody.

My ex is bipolar/high functioning PD. A former trial lawyer.

You've been on the boards here learning and getting support for a while.

What are some of the things you've learned here that you have applied to your circumstances?

LnL

Lived n learned-

How did you get sole custody?  What are the circumstances that made that happen?  We currently have had 50/50 for the past year and a half.  Recently my husband and I moved out of state.  Things with the children as well as the children themselves have gotten worse (alienation, not wanting to talk to their father on the ex's time, acting out).  Now that we moved out of state we can try for full custody again.  We have a parental advocate that will completely bury her in court.  She is not getting paid and stays on for the safety of the children because his ex is such a severe case.  She recommended 1 weekend supervised visits with the ex wife with BPD at the last custody battle and will request it again since she has gotten out of control and the children are much worse.  She will be sent to the stands again and hopefully it will work!

I have sole custody, termed "Legal Guardian" in my order.  As usually happens in family courts, mother started out with all the default preferences.  This despite her initially arrested and facing a "Threat of DV" charge.  Yes, she got temp custody and majority parenting schedule.  That was 2005.

2006-08 - Then it lapsed and when I filed for divorce she got it again.  The divorce itself took nearly two years.  Thanks to a perceptive Custody Evaluator the court read his initial report that said, "Mother cannot share 'her' son but Father can... .Mother should immediately lose temporary custody {didn't happen}... .If Shared Parenting is attempted and fails then Father should have custody.  I walked out with equal time an Residential Parent in Shared Parenting in 2008's final decree.

2009-11 - Shared Parenting had problems within weeks.  I finally filed for Change of Circumstances due to her continued obstructions.  We got a Guardian ad Litem (GAL - lawyer for the children) and we had to settle for the GAL's middle of the road approach... .After 1.5 years I got full custody but not majority time, GAL expected her to behave better if she kept getting financial support from me.  Of course that didn't work.

2012-13 - Back to court again for another 1.5 years, this time to get the majority time I didn't get in 2011.  Finally court put on paper what everyone knew was happening all along.  I presented recording of her playing games with exchanges and more.  The order criticized her at least a half dozen times for her disparagement of me in son's presence.  But still court gave her "one more try" and so I got majority only during the school year, she kept equal time in summer vacation.

From my story you can see that my court was reluctant to make big changes to the existing arrangements.  I had to keep going back until the conflict and obstruction reduced.  It took 8 years in steps to go from my 22% time  to 75% time currently.  So strange that even with all the documented problems she demonstrated over the years, she currently has more time (25%) than I had at the start and that was only because I was a working father.  Well, court's a judicial system, not a justice system and not based on fairness either.

Odds are you as mother should be able to start out with temp majority time, perhaps even temp Decision Making.  The goal is to not let him chip away at it or intimidate you into gifting pieces away.  Remember, appeasement not only doesn't work, it will make him feel your boundaries are weak and incite him to press even more.  Odds are mediation, when attempted, will fail, at least early in the case, he will probably still have a sense of entitlement that early.  Odds are that you'll need a Custody Evaluation.  You lawyer may recommend a Psych Eval but that may not be enough if it's only testing, you need someone to test and interview multiple times so he's less likely to fool the professionals.  Besides, a test only reveals certain mental issues, not how they impact parenting and the children.  That's what a CE can do if you select a perceptive and respected CE.

I'm glad you have sole custady? Is visitation supervised or unsupervised?

Well I've learned not to take anything she says personally, and when he's emotionally abusive he most likely feels that way but himself ( if it's not the truth in s very rude way)

I've learned that there's a huge chance that the relationship started on very crappy foundation.

Besides the relationships that I've learned and did a lot of thinking and wholeheartedly agree that he cannot be a parent right now or anytime soon he cannot be the full-time patent and needs  supervision.

 I've also learned all the standard things as in bipolar disorder and how they minting friendships train of thought lack of empathy

You are so right, we weren't doing mediation but we were doing s depression agreement cause he believed I should have sole and now he has changed his mind. Hopefully I will get sole custody cause our son is just over a year old, he's only seen him a couple times for a total of 2 hours and he lives in another country.


Thank you for your advice and I'm glad you ended up gettting full custody