Urgent Child Custody Help - just found out my ex - the mom may have BPD

[kndogi]

Hello, I feel upset and hopeful that I can find support here.

I've been applying and doing my best to use the tools I'm finding to work with my ex. She is not co-operating.

She moved out about 3-4 weeks ago with our 6 month old daughter (now almost 7 months).

We were in therapy and it ended suddenly. Our therapist did not know that my partner may have BPD. She even ignored me when I would bring up her (occasional) death threats.

I want full custody of my daughter. My ex is making sudden decisions about where she will live and has found a man 20 years older then her who is offering to give her free housing in exchange for starting a business with him. She has told me she is taking up his offer and moving in this weekend. I tried to ask her to at least get a background check on the guy.

My ex does not know she may have BPD. I feel hopeless and helpless. I don't know what to do. Is there any way I can get custody of my daughter? Have my ex tested for BPD? If she has this our ex is at risk and the mother's judgments are at risk as well. As far as I know her BPD is caused by being raised in a mormon cult. SHe has severe psychological trauma around this. She recently came out about it and talked about it on Facebook and now her mother and father have cut her out of her life. She is in survival mode -- Flight.

What can I do? Is there anything? She is trying to use breast feeding as an excuse to have full access to our daughter.

[livednlearned]

Hi kndogi,

I'm sorry things have ended with your ex, and that she is moving so quickly into the arms of someone else, taking your daughter with her.

Have you consulted a lawyer about your situation? It's fairly common on these boards that the dads tend to get sidelined pretty quick, so you'll want to talk to a lawyer in your area as soon as you can, and find out how things work where you live. We are not lawyers here, and cannot give legal advice. However, there is a lot of collective wisdom on the boards about what you can expect and watch out for when going through a custody battle with a BPD ex.

You don't want your ex to establish status quo for too long, otherwise judges and family law court will assume this must be working. Instead, you want to establish a routine where you see your daughter as often as possible, and keep her overnight if possible. In some states, families will do graduated visitation schedules where you will spend more and more time with your infant until she is weaned.

It's not likely that you will get full custody of your daughter since most courts tend to default to shared custody. Every state has a slightly different way of describing how custody works -- usually there is primary physical custody, joint legal custody, and then sometimes the legal custody is carved into decision-making or tie-breaker status. Your state/county probably also has a preferred visitation schedule depending on the age of the child.

I encourage you to read Splitting by Bill Eddy. He discusses both BPD and the family law system in a way that will help you prepare for what's ahead.

More than anything, you have to be patient because courts move slowly. Unless your daughter is in immediate danger (and it sounds like she is not, even though it is not exactly preferable... .) prepare for what can feel like the glacial pace of family law court.

Talk to a lawyer about the best way to proceed. You may be in a position where you need to introduce formula -- it's something you want counsel on so that you increase the odds that things will go favorably for you.

[kndogi]

Hello livednlearned,

I appreciate the book reference. I have added it to my queue. It looks like it will be really useful for me. I feel thankful.

Unless your daughter is in immediate danger

  -> I consider that the mother, with BPD, can pass it on by teaching my daughter to suppress her emotions right now. While she is fragile and forming. To be completely in danger.

I'm hearing you to move quickly.

[livednlearned]

Hi kndogi,

Yes, I would move on this. I wouldn't call it urgent, though I would move on it soon and start consulting with lawyers. 

A very important part of family law is documentation, which can include many things. One of those things must include your protest over the current schedule (by protest, I mean filing with the court). Judges typically want the parents to decide what is best for the child. Wherever possible, judges often default to the status quo established by the parents.

To summarize: you want to have it documented that you protested the arrangement your pwBPD is enforcing, to show the court that there is no status quo, that you do not agree to the status quo. Meanwhile, keep any and all documentation that might help your case.

Something else to consider is a custody evaluation, which can include a forensic psychiatric evaluation for both parents. This often involves a home visit as well as an MMPI-2, which is the psych eval and can be used for diagnostic purposes. If your pwBPD does indeed have BPD, the eval may be able to show that. In which case, you would bring in an expert witness to testify that BPD left untreated can be detrimental to children.

[ForeverDad]

Understand that courts and professionals will not be very appalled if she is blocking your parenting.  It happens.  For them it's a part of their jobs and at the end of the day they go home to their families and lives.  But for you it's your family at stake.

Until you have a specific written court order then parenting often ends up revolving around possession.  I didn't see my preschooler for over 3 months while preparing divorce papers and waiting for a court hearing.  I was surprised the court wasn't upset with my then-spouse.

My experience is likely to be the case in many areas to a greater or lesser extent... .Without a written court order in hand stating otherwise then both parents have equal but undefined and unspecified rights to the children.  What that means is that the parent in possession generally has massive control.  That parent can be guilted or pressured into making exchanges but not forced into it.  For example, that parent could hear the police officer plead that the children be exchanged to defuse the incident and feel pressured to let an exchange take place.  (That is the goal of police and other emergency responders, to defuse the current incident and encourage the parents to resolve it in court.)

A reasonably normal person would think, "I don't want to look bad to domestic/family court, decline an officer's request or appear a problem to others, so wouldn't I get credit for sharing?"  Well, a truism sometimes mentioned here:  The person behaving poorly seldom gets consequences and the person behaving well seldom gets credit.

My early story:

11/2005 - We separated and she filed for her and child to have protection from me by blocking all parental contact.  Son was promptly removed from the petition by the magistrate but I was relegated to non-primary alternate weekend parent in the temp order.

02/2006 - Temp order was dismissed and then-separated spouse promptly blocked all parental contact for 3 months, not even allowing my calls to our preschooler.  This time we went back to court for divorce I filed.  Mother wasn't admonished, Father didn't get any make up time and Father was reset again as non-primary alternate weekend parent in the divorce temp order.

[kndogi]

Well... ForeverDad, I decided to move forward and have taken my daughter on a family vacation without the mother's support. I asked her many times to provide breast milk or communicate with me cooperatively to support this trip and she refused.

At the moment she informed me she filed an ex parte that needs a response by tomorrow. She said she filed it requesting full and sole custody.

Do you or does anyone else here know what my best response could be or have any advice?

The mother refused to get a job since weeks after our baby was born. Always yelling or trying to argue and fight when I brought it up.

My father has moved to town to help me watch my daughter every day. The family trip includes my daughters grand parents and her Uncle, Aunt, and two cousins. It matters that she has time to bond with them.

I provided clear communication that our daughter would be back to the mother Tuesday morning.

Now that I took the risk, and made this decision. I feel hopeful to find the best option going forward to defend my rights as my daughter's father and to have equal presence and custody of her. I want 3.5 days per week. I have been present nearly every day for the first 6 months of her life and about half a week for the last 5 weeks. And that brings us to today. I have taken care of our daughter when shes sad, sick, crying, and happy. I have experience. I'm loving. I care about her. I want what is in her best interest. I am standing up to assert my rights as her father.

Any help will be gratefully received.

Sincerely.

Warm regards

[livednlearned]

Have you consulted a lawyer?

[kndogi]

I consulted several before making this decision as well as several today. I just retained one and am working with him. I still feel hopeful someone will have advice here that will be helpful as I want to protect my daughter from any potential consequences of being with an unaware BPD mother moving forward. I feel nervous that the lawyer I have at the moment will not be able to support me this regard but will at least be able to help for responding to the ex parte.

[livednlearned]

My experience raising a child who has a BPD parent is to learn everything you can about validation. BPD mothers/fathers have an above average need for validation and a very impoverished ability to validate others, and this can greatly impact a child. Lesson 5 on the Coparenting board has a lot of excellent material about how to raise a resilient child when one parent has BPD. You are starting early, and if you can build these safeguards into your parenting while simultaneously working to be (at a minimum) 50/50 parent, your D may learn some important life skills and be deft at dealing with difficult people.

I've read research on kids who have a parent with a PD, and it certainly does have an impact. Mind you, genetics play a part. My son seems to have the same sensitive genotype as his dad, so having a mentally ill dad is compounded by divorce and his own genetic challenges. There is very little research, however, on kids who were raised by a non-disordered parent with great intention. I had to actually learn how to do that for myself. Re-parent myself, so to speak, since my own family of origin was quite dysfunctional. And model those qualities for my son.

Bill Eddy's ":)on't Alienate the Kids" is good, so is the Lundy's book, "You Don't Have to Make Everything All Better" about validation. Both books make you realize that a large part of the pain we experience is from unprocessed grief. When we try to appease or make our kids feel better, they are deprived of the opportunity to experience negative emotions, self soothe (with your coaching), and learn the satisfaction that comes from their own emotional resilience. This doesn't mean leaving them in the cold, it means validating that the negative emotions they feel are part of the human condition. It means coaching them in life, instead of rescuing and enabling. And it means, when necessary, protecting them from the actions their BPD parent takes that are beyond detrimental.

My T likes to say it only takes one sympathetic witness to make things ok for a child. They will encounter many more difficult people in their lives, and they will have one heck of a training ground if you can pass along the skills it takes to deal with someone who suffers from BPD.

Learning the skills here can help, and focusing on your own healing can help even more.

LnL

[ForeverDad]

Well, she may have filed ex parte but likely nothing will happen until you get served?  Or maybe until your lawyer gets served?  Do follow your lawyer's advice and instructions.  And save all communications with your Ex, especially the ones where you're informing her of your vacation schedule.  One the one hand, typical orders require advance notice, usually at least 30 days or more in advance but, on the other hand, you don't have any orders so your good intentions ought to make this vacation okay with the court even if a lot of advance notice wasn't given.  After all, you're not fleeing or kidnapping your child.

If you don't have any court orders yet then you both should have equal but undefined parenting rights.  When we first separated and when we didn't have orders it was all up for grabs, it was 99% about possession.  And my Ex was quite possessive of 'her' child.   Police wouldn't help me to see my preschooler, they said come back when you have an order in hand.  (Yet they confirmed that they would rush right out if she called 911.  So I played it safe and waited for the court order, in all about 3 months.)

Here's one of my posts describing my first post-separation vacation.

So in mediation you can set boundaries for how much time you're willing to 'gift' your ex before saying, "mediation isn't working, we'll have to let a judge decide".

When you do settle or get an order, be sure not to feel compelled to be overly fair or overly nice.  Set your limits for what you will accept and stick to them unless you have basis to deviate.  A standard order with appropriate tweaks is the most you should accept.  Do not fool yourself into hoping that being generous with a schedule will cause him to reciprocate similarly, it won't.  While "reasonable" telephone contact and "mutually agreed" exchange locations may be okay for most orders, when there are confrontations, conflict, boundary pushing and obstruction it is best to tighten those normal vague clauses.  Anything left to interpretation is likely to be reinterpreted by the ex, of course to the ex's benefit.

Also, it is good to not schedule your departure flights too close to exchanges so that ex has leverage.  For example, if you tell ex, "I have to pick up the children at the regular 6 pm exchange because then we have to go right to the airport and fly at 9 pm" then you gift ex leverage to scheme sabotaging the exchange and hence the start of your vacation.  That's why I tried to start my vacations on my weekends back in the early days of my separation and divorce.  In 2006 I scheduled a vacation, my first without her, to start on my weekend.  She treated it like a request, saying, No.  Well, it's a notice, not a request.  But I left on my weekend and she was stuck with allowing me my normal weekend.  Of course on Monday when I was almost to my destination in the mountains a few states away and it was the normal exchange time she tried to get the local sheriff to declare an Amber Alert.  Fortunately she was told it didn't meet the criteria of an Amber Alert but she did manage to get an investigation started, their investigator contacted my lawyer and they worked out a solution for the duration of my vacation.

Try to be seen as the problem solver, not the problem. Of course, court and many of the professionals may start off assuming you're the problem or that you both are the problem, but over time they ought to see a difference between you two.

Be aware court may want to issue a standard default parenting schedule.  Even with the temp order, do your best to avoid starting off with the 'usual' alternate weekends assigned to dads.  You've been getting 50/50 equal time until now, then try your best to keep that.  Don't settle for your lawyer whispering, "Shh.  We'll fix it later."  Too often very little gets done 'later' to 'fix' the temp order.  In my case I didn't move up from alternate weekends to recommended equal time until the end of the divorce.  My "temporary" order lasted untouched throughout my 23.5 month divorce case. :'(  Basically this is a good time to (politely) stand up for yourself as Father, this is not a time to be timid and appeasing.  Cooperative, yes.  Timid, no.  My lawyer had initially estimated my case to be 7-9 months, a third of what it actually took.  Clearly, he underestimated her entitlement, obstructions and delays.