Did you have the incident recorded?
I'm past the majority of the conflict, so I was caught off guard when my ex raged at me on a phone call yesterday. I have three old voice recorders I used from 2005 to 2013, both for documentation and self-protection. I bought a newer, better model a couple months ago but guess what? Yes, she caught me off guard and I didn't have any of them with me when she raged yesterday. Argh!
When facing court or other action that will expose poor behaviors, many acting-out disordered people will make Denials and counterattack with Allegations
to make you look worse than them. So my question is whether you have documentation or witnesses for court of what she did? Too often a court could retreat into claiming "I don't know what really happened so... ." The fact you have a police report may help you get past the expected back and forth bickering perception in front of the judge.
Also, many courts give more weight to the parenting behaviors (and misbehaviors) than to the adult behaviors (how she interacts with you). So even if her ranting and raging against you is acted upon, how much impact will it have on the parenting schedule or custody?
I separated and then divorced nearly 10 years ago. Mother started out with the court's default preference despite her initially facing a Threat of DV charge. Because the temp order was so favorable to her she delayed the divorce as much as she could. In steps that took 2 to 3 years each, I went from (1) temp non-custodial alternate weekends to (2) shared custody and equal time to (3) full custody and equal time to (4) full custody and majority time during the school year. The last change is where the court finally wrote in the decision what had been happening all along, "mother was
disparaging the father in the presence of the child".
Though it was clear my ex was uncooperative, obstructive, oppositional and not sharing the child, every improvement had at least some, if not primary, focus on her parenting behaviors. I believe you would do well to list all the issues with appropriate documentation
but do give emphasis to how the children were exposed and impacted. In general courts give the most attention to the children and too often couldn't care less about us. Maybe it's different in your area or in this particular incident, so do report everything but also try to show how each incident can or did impact the children. So often it is the 'children' that are the hot buttons for court, not very much us.
Also, the court may be inclined to let a single incident skate by with little more than a brief lecture or finger wagging. Include other incidents too but be aware it will likely want to ignore older incidents as being 'stale' or too old to include. But if you can present multiple incidents with the purpose of documenting a clear
pattern of behaviors, that will be more
actionable.
Do you have a log, diary or journal? It's probably okay for you to refer to your documentation so you can make your incidents more
credible. Claims of "he always... ." or she always... ." without specifics of date, time, location, witnesses, etc are often viewed as exaggerated he-said, she-said and largely ignore. So do include details, as time allows, it makes your account more credible.
Court may only schedule your hearing for a half hour or an hour so make your portion of the time count. Start with the most important issues and incidents in case you run out of time to cover the various issues you want included.
