is going to court wise if you are behind on cs to a BPD ex?

[How to communicate after a contentious divorce...]

I haven't been on the site for awhile and I'm a little lost again so I thought I'd check back in.  My life has been very challenging since my uexBPDw asked me for a divorce.  Here is a short recap of what happened and then I'll expand and ask my question:

1. ex wife asks me for divorce and then convinces everyone that it was my decision. 

2. I pay child support while living with her during the separation instead of getting a lawyer and finding out my rights.

3. I don't tell my older kids that she asked me for the divorce because I was trying to be the healthy parent and protect them.(meanwhile she tells them all kinds of distortions to alienate them from me)

4. I don't tell my older kids that she aborted our pregnancy of our unborn child 17 months before she asked me for divorce.

5. I let her use an attorney legal service through work to write our divorce papers which was weighted in her favor.

6.  she goes into a mental hospital for suicidal thoughts 1 week after our divorce and I agreed not to use that against her.

7.  Economy is bad, i lose my job and didn't go back to court while on unemployment because i believed her when she said, "np we'll work it out and when you get a job just send me money".   

8.  now she is threatening to take me back to court of back child support for that time period and other periods where money was tight and she would tell me it was okay.

Summary,  I have allowed myself to be manipulated by being "polyannish" and trying to believe that there was still good in her.  However, now i have come to a cross road.  I can't pay the full Child support and she is making me out to be the deadbeat dad with my older children.  I'm sort of convinced that the courts will look at me that way too now.  I'm upset that I allowed myself to be manipulated and again my susceptibility lies in my "achilles heal" of wanting to believe that she wouldn't hurt me and conversely not wanting to hurt her or take the children from her when i could have.

Now, i'm broke, way behind on CS (according to divorce decree) and I'm afraid if i go to court that they will ask me to pay more then i can afford and if I can't meet that - throw me in jail. 

If anyone has been down this road and has any advise, perspectives etc. please chime in.  I feel scared to make a decision and that has kept me locked in sort of a hiding from the problem mode for way too long.

My inclination is to go to court and stand before a judge and take my lumps.  I don't know what to do but I'm tired of her telling me we'll work things out but when she can't pay a bill or something she threatens me.  She still continues to distort the truth to my older kids and I can only image whoelse.  She continues to alienate the kids from me.

There's so much more to tell but I'll stop here and wait for a response.

[truthbeknown]

I haven't been on the site for awhile and I'm a little lost again so I thought I'd check back in.  My life has been very challenging since my uexBPDw asked me for a divorce.  Here is a short recap of what happened and then I'll expand and ask my question:

1. ex wife asks me for divorce and then convinces everyone that it was my decision. 

2. I pay child support while living with her during the separation instead of getting a lawyer and finding out my rights.

3. I don't tell my older kids that she asked me for the divorce because I was trying to be the healthy parent and protect them.(meanwhile she tells them all kinds of distortions to alienate them from me)

4. I don't tell my older kids that she aborted our pregnancy of our unborn child 17 months before she asked me for divorce.

5. I let her use an attorney legal service through work to write our divorce papers which was weighted in her favor.

6.  she goes into a mental hospital for suicidal thoughts 1 week after our divorce and I agreed not to use that against her.

7.  Economy is bad, i lose my job and didn't go back to court while on unemployment because i believed her when she said, "np we'll work it out and when you get a job just send me money".   

8.  now she is threatening to take me back to court of back child support for that time period and other periods where money was tight and she would tell me it was okay.

Summary,  I have allowed myself to be manipulated by being "polyannish" and trying to believe that there was still good in her.  However, now i have come to a cross road.  I can't pay the full Child support and she is making me out to be the deadbeat dad with my older children.  I'm sort of convinced that the courts will look at me that way too now.  I'm upset that I allowed myself to be manipulated and again my susceptibility lies in my "achilles heal" of wanting to believe that she wouldn't hurt me and conversely not wanting to hurt her or take the children from her when i could have.

Now, i'm broke, way behind on CS (according to divorce decree) and I'm afraid if i go to court that they will ask me to pay more then i can afford and if I can't meet that - throw me in jail. 

If anyone has been down this road and has any advise, perspectives etc. please chime in.  I feel scared to make a decision and that has kept me locked in sort of a hiding from the problem mode for way too long.

My inclination is to go to court and stand before a judge and take my lumps.  I don't know what to do but I'm tired of her telling me we'll work things out but when she can't pay a bill or something she threatens me.  She still continues to distort the truth to my older kids and I can only image whoelse.  She continues to alienate the kids from me.

There's so much more to tell but I'll stop here and wait for a response.

[ForeverDad]

Two books you need:

Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder by Bill Eddy and Randi Kreger.  This helps you deal with the sabotage, traps, misinformation, distortion, blaming and blame-shifting for the professionals in court, mediation, evaluations, etc.

Another excellent book you should get is Divorce Poison by Richard Warshak.  On the very first page, in his introduction, he explains that "taking the high road" is ineffective, counterproductive and enables the misbehaving parent.

Divorce Poison,  starting with page 1, paragraph 1... .  (emphasis added)

Your ex-spouse is bad-mouthing you to the children, often or constantly portraying you in a negative light, perhaps even trying to turn the children against you.  What should you do? ... .

The conventional advice is to do nothing.  Psychologists caution parents to avoid criticizing the other parent in front of the children... .  After years of consulting on cases where parents had heeded advice to be passive and had no success, I am convinced that the standard approach is wrong.  It does not work.  Often it makes things worse.  As relationships with their children progressively deteriorate, parents usually try desperately to reason with them.  Such efforts inevitably meet with failure and leave parents feeling helpless and hopeless.

This book explains why the common approaches are impotent, why doing nothing will accomplish nothing, and why relying primarily on reasoning is an unreasonable approach to the problem.  It offers a blueprint for an effective response grounded in a solid understanding of the techniques and dynamics of parents who poison their children's relationships with loved ones.

After reading this book you will be able to distinguish different types of criticism, ranging from occasional mild bad-mouthing to severe and systematic brainwashing.  You will know why and how parents manipulate their children.  You will know how to detect subtle psychological maneuvers in various guises.  You will learn how these practices - even those that seem innocuous - damage children.  And you will discover powerful strategies to preserve or rebuild loving relationships with your children... .

Divorce Poison was written primarily on behalf of children... .  The failure of their parents' marriage is a chilling lesson that we cannot always count on love.  At such a vulnerable time in their lives, children especially need and deserve as much love as they can get.  Those who close off avenues of love and support detour children from their pursuit of emotional security.  And when they manipulate children into erecting the barriers themselves, when they enlist them as agents in their own deprivation, they violate their children's trust in a most cruel manner.  It is a form of kidnapping; stealing the soul.

I wrote this book to help lost souls find their way back to the hearts that await them.  I wish them a successful journey.

You do need to speak with your children about age-appropriate topics.  As noted above, staying silent while the other parent bad-mouths us is effectively enabling the alienation.  However, I would be cautious about mentioning the abortion, besides the appropriateness of it, for all you know she may claim you made her do it.

Court will not order you to pay more than you can afford.  However, that's a generalization, not a legal certainty, we're peer support not lawyers.  They generally use income as a major factor of child support.  However, you should seek some legal consultations concerning all these various issues, especially the past child support.  Would your past reduced income be admissible to adjust your past child support?  Do you have any documentation where she sent texts or emails telling you not to worry about the child support?

The past is done, no way to undo it all, though you may be able to minimize some of the impact going forward.  Do try to get the unpaid child support adjusted to match your past, though I don't know if the court will do that.  And try to see if you can get a payment plan.  As much as the courts have been characterized as more than willing to send dads to jail, if they know you want to fix the past, they ought to work with you.

[livednlearned]

Do you have $100 or $200 to go and consult with a lawyer and ask questions? You don't have to retain the lawyer, just use that 30 or 60 min, whatever is typical for your area, to get a clear picture about how things work where you live.

It could be that where you live, if you are unemployed, the state garnishes wages from your next job at a higher rate until you have caught up with past payments. It's possible that if you show up in court and have a plan, and explain that you have been out of work, the judge will see you're trying to do the right thing. One of the first questions that gets asked in court when it comes to being able to pay is employment status.

In my court, N/BPDx was told to pay my legal fees. He got two extensions. The third time in court is when the judge asked the bailiff to put hand cuffs on. N/BPDx didn't seem to like that, so he wrote a check. But he also told the judge that the ruling was wrong (to the same judge who made the ruling), so they locked horns and the judge won.

If you go in and plead your case, it might be very different.

[truthbeknown]

Forever dad,

thanks for the book recomendations.  I will definitely look into those resources.  One of the reasons I want to get this straightened out is so she can't hold it over my head any more and also she neglects the kids even though she has custodial care of them.  I'm hoping that once i can get in good graces with the court then I could be ready to present my case about neglect.  I've heard it's very hard to change custody orders and frankly i'm not ready since i had to take a job out of state.  However, things are getting worse over at her house and i believe this is the first step to taking some buttons away from her and taking more control of the situation. 

Livednlearned:

thanks for your input too.  My financial situation is very bad.  I have student loan debt that is enormous and growing at 45.00 per day interest, and i'm living with a friend because money is so tight.  I don't know if the courts will take into account expenses? if not then its a big misrepresentation of what my status is financially.  That's been my biggest fear of going to court- afraid they won't look at the reality of the situation.  And unlike your ex,  extensions won't help me if i don't physically have the financial resources.  This whole thing feels like a constant PTSD for me. 

[rarsweet]

I think the courts automatically take into account student loans? Take them away from your income?

[livednlearned]

My financial situation is very bad.  I have student loan debt that is enormous and growing at 45.00 per day interest, and i'm living with a friend because money is so tight.  I don't know if the courts will take into account expenses? if not then its a big misrepresentation of what my status is financially.  That's been my biggest fear of going to court- afraid they won't look at the reality of the situation.  And unlike your ex,  extensions won't help me if i don't physically have the financial resources.  This whole thing feels like a constant PTSD for me.  

I think there are two things you can do. One is to look into refinancing your student loans. A lot of people are in the exact same position, and there is a whole system set up to address it. They want you to pay something, but if you are unemployed, and have been for a while, and your circumstances have changed (ie. child support), then they will work with you. If it's a federal loan, you can read online before talking to someone so you have a sense of what your options are. No one involved in student loans wants to see you declare bankruptcy, so they may work with you within what the laws allow.

The second thing is to call legal aid (free or pro bono legal advice) and ask them what to expect based on your situation. Losing your job happens to many people and there will be very clear rules about how things work.

It can feel very despairing to be in this kind of situation. Sometimes just getting answers from professionals will help you feel a little less distraught. More often than not, they show you paths that are a lot more reasonable and accommodating than anything your xBPDw will say. Her thinking is disordered, so try to get in the habit of looking for solutions and answers elsewhere.

My ex is a former trial attorney, very high functioning. I thought he was going to crush me in court, but the opposite happened. His thinking was so disordered and bizarre -- even though he sounded articulate -- that he lost both custody and visitation of S13. The secret to staying out of despair is to look for solutions. When you feel beaten down like you do right now, post here. People who have been through this have had to develop a reflex for being problem solvers because that's what court wants to see. They don't want to put parents in jail, and they don't want to separate kids from their parents. So your job is to figure out what the rules are, and come up with a reasonable solution. You're not alone in this, and there are people here willing to share what worked for them.

[truthbeknown]

heard back from one attorney today.  he said if my income is 20% less then that of when i divorced then we have a chance for modifying.

I searched my tax records and i was self employed and my net income was at poverty level (12k) .  I should have never signed those papers and I can't even imagine where my mind was back 4 years ago.  All i know, is i dug myself into a hole that seems insurmountable to get out of.  Also, illinois is not very nice to NON custodial parents.  If i lived in MN they would calculate her income plus mine to come up with a formula.  That seems much of a Fair system.

I will tell him what I discovered and see if there is any other path.  I take responsibility for my ignorance back then but i'm really just besides myself that i was such a "polyanna" about it that i thought it would all be okay. 

Anyway, thanks for the support and I'll keep you posted.  I don't know if people on this forum send out prayers or positive energy but I would be open to that if that resonates with you.