wife abducted my 2 kids 8 months ago

[misterniceguy]

I knew she had issues from the start, but I fell in love with her anyway.

Right now, I feel devistated. It's such a complicated situation. I've been with her for over 10 years, we have 2 kids together. I only learned last month what borderline personality disorder is, she fits almost every personality trait, minus self harm and suicidal tendencies. It's too bad we've been separated for over 8 months before I learned about this disorder.

She took my kids and went over 2000 miles away (to her home town), and got into a relationship with another man almost immediately.

Basically, we dated (with many ups and downs) from 2003-2007. Between 2007-2008, we bought a house together, got married, bought a new car and had our first kid(all within 12 months). We were just starting to have financial difficulties when I lost my job because of the economic recession. We lived in a town that I didn't really like; high cost of living  and low wages for my occupation. We were far away from any family or friends. That's when I started telling her we should sell the house and move to my home town because the cost of living is about 30% less, and the wages were about 30% more. She had her mind set though, "let's just make it work here" was always her reply.

I felt like a single dad, I did almost everything for my family; cooking, cleaning, I did all the laundry, I bathed our daughter every night or two, changed diapers, fed our baby her bottles at night and put her to bed. I made sure my wife's car was full of gas and I charged her cell phone (because she rarely thought to). I could write a few paragraphs about all the things I did to keep things together while she watched all the seasons of her favorite TV shows.

I worked longer and longer days at ___ty jobs to try to pay our bills. Things got progressively worse over the last 6 years. I always thought that if I kept it up, if I just did a little more, eventually something would give, and we'd get a break. Things would eventually get easier. My last job, I drove for over an hour each way just to get there and back. I worked 6-7 days per week, 12-16 hour shifts. I still managed to do most of the chores around the house and looked after, and spent time with the kids (we had our second one last year). I was getting no more than 20-25 hours of sleep per week in the last few months we were together. Over the last few years I had been suffering from depression and anxiety attacks which were both getting progressively worse. I was abusing substances  (mostly marijuana and alcohol) more and more over the last few years. I didn't get messed up around the kids or anything. I smoked a joint at night to help me sleep most nights, and maybe drank a 6 pack half a dozen times per month after the wife and kids were all in bed.

There are many wonderful things about her which I didn't mention. It's  not like she's a completely horrible  person. And it's not like I'm a saint. I'm just venting out the way I feel a lot of the time.

Anyways, at the end of March this year, I had enough. I told her how I wanted to fix everything. I felt that most of our problems, in our relationship, our financial situation, my substance abuse, and our unhappiness in general was all because of our house. We had 2 mortgages on it, a huge pile of debt, we've been at least 2-3 months behind on most of our bills for years. Our bills and expenses each month was more than we made.

I basically asked her to just look after our girls at either her mother's  house or my mom's place while I sold the house and fixed our financial state. I estimated it would take 2-3 months. She agreed and within a week she flew across the country to stay with her mom. As soon as she made up her mind to go, she drastically reduced her contact with me. I made many repairs and upgrades to the house and was able to sell it in about 2 months and pay off both mortgages. I quit drinking and smoking pot in about 6 weeks. I started exercising and I got counselling and got rid of my depression and anxiety disorder. I got a house that was twice the size for half the price and in really good condition. I got a job that pays 30% more than I was making, with better benefits.

I fixed 95% of our problems and one day before June, she called me and told me that she wasn't coming back. Basically, while she was there, her step-dad bought her a car, and a house for her to rent off him. She found a decent job. She got into a relationship with a childhood friend... .she was moving on with her life, and I wasn't included in her plans. I spent the next few months trying to do everything in my power to convince her to come back, with no success. I have now contacted a lawyer to try to have her and my children brought back by court order,  but it doesn't look very promising.

I feel like I had a huge investment stolen from me. I worked so hard for so long in a place I didn't even want to be, just to make her happy. Right when everything was going to get so much better, she took everything and left me in a hole.

She took everything we owned, and left all the debt(I now have enough money to pay it off,  but think it's completely unfair that she has taken no accountability for what she left behind). I've been sending her $1000 a month for the kids so she can't say I didn't pay her any child support.

I have even looking into moving there myself, but jobs in my occupation over there pay about 50% less and are way more unstable.

I feel crazy that part of me wants to fix our marriage. I don't want my kids to grow up in a broken home.

I am so happy to find this site, and to find I am not alone.

Sorry for the long read. There are many details I left out, I could've written a book with all the things that I want to say. I should stop here for now. This is my first time posting anything significant on the internet. I needed to vent some frustration. I really need a miracle. Thank you for reading.

[ForeverDad]

Yes, I feel I could have written a book too - and probably did considering all my posts over the years.

Here are a few priority points to get the responses started... .

Federal law forces all states to have uniform residency requirements.  In cases involving custody it takes 6 months to establish residency.  Legally, if she's been residing in the other state for over 6 months you may not be able to force her or the children back.  That is the problem we all faced, waiting and spinning which sadly that time delay didn't fix anything and actually weakened our parenting situation.

She is likely to claim you are a drug addict or drunkard (or worse).  Yes, be prepared for horrid allegations of all sorts.  She is very likely to try to make you look worse than her and there is no level too low to sink to for a disordered acting-out person.  The good thing is that's you've straightened out your life.  You can take a drug test or whatever and probably pass the tests.  Be aware that family court often only scrutinizes specific incidents in the past 6 months or so, the older stuff is ignored as "stale" or not actionable.  However, older incidents may be used to establish patterns of behaviors.

Be aware that family court typically pays far more attention to parenting behaviors and less attention to adult behaviors such her relationship with you.  So while you should document and list all her poor behaviors, give primary focus to the children and the parenting they do or don't receive.  Remember, this should be all about the children and your parenting being obstructed.  Court will not make her return to you.  If you tried then she could try to claim you are a controller and pose as a victim who escaped.

In most cases like this you will need a qualified expert or professional to do a Custody Evaluation. They're $5K-$10K and take at least a few months.  Don't pick just anyone or the cheapest, so much depends on a good evaluation so you need to get one who is experienced and known to be reputable, not gullible, not easily conned, not always defaulting to Mother, etc.

A good rule of thumb is to get the case started in court ASAP, time is your enemy, she currently has de facto possession and that puts her in control and delays would only be in her favor.  (My ex got a favorable temporary order and so she had every incentive to drag out our divorce as long as she could.  Mine was a 23.5 month divorce and the court had several opportunities to improve the temp order but ignored them.)

Child support is generally an order of the court.  Understand that sending her some money now is the right thing to do but court will likely view any money sent outside a CS court order as 'Gifts'.  Still, do your best to categorize it as child support and not gifts, identify all checks and remittances as "child support", it sure can't hurt!

• Fortunately... .If CS is ordered then most courts only order retroactive CS back to the date of filing.  So once one of you files, try to estimate the calculated support amount and send just the guideline amount and properly labeled and hope the court accepts it as child support.



• Sadly... .your good deeds may be ignored, partly because in custody cases the judges try to avoid making one parent the clear winner and the other parent the clear loser.  We have a saying around here:
  
  The person behaving badly seldom gets consequences and the person behaving well seldom gets credit.

Sadly, us Nice Guys and Nice Gals found out that being nice doesn't get you much traction in family court.  For that reason we have to be proactive problem-solvers.  Present court not only with the problems but also solutions.  Even if you don't get a good initial temp order, it likely can be improved over the years.  (My ex got a temp order in 30 minutes and court ignored changing it until two years later we settled on Trial Morning and it was put into the Final Decree.  It took me 3 more years to get custody and almost another 3 years to get majority time.  Eight years to undo 30 minutes.  It is what it is.)

So if you're still married, has either one of you filed for divorce yet?

[livednlearned]

I feel crazy that part of me wants to fix our marriage. I don't want my kids to grow up in a broken home.

I'm 4 years out of my marriage and looking back, I realize now that even when we were living together and raising our son, it was a broken home.

Both parents living in the home together means nothing when one is BPD.

[ForeverDad]

I feel crazy that part of me wants to fix our marriage. I don't want my kids to grow up in a broken home.

I'm 4 years out of my marriage and looking back, I realize now that even when we were living together and raising our son, it was a broken home.

Both parents living in the home together means nothing when one is BPD.

Ponder this... .Your example trying to hold a dysfunctional and unhealthy marriage together with little more than spit, glue and determination was not a good example for the children.  Why?  The conflict was repeated and never resolved.  Even if you tried to find peace by appeasing, compliant and a muddy doormat, that was a bad example.  When your children grow up they will be inclined, whether consciously or unconsciously, to marry someone like dad or like mom.  Do you want them to marry, on one extreme, a dictatorial control freak or on the other extreme, an abject downtrodden appeaser?  Obviously not.  So separation, as bad as it seems, would likely be a positive for the children, they would see you setting reasonable but firm boundaries of proper behavior and expectations, they would see a good example, they would spend at least some of their youth in a stable home filled with love and peace rather than screaming and discord.

Now, it doesn't have to be that way.  Your spouse could stop Denial of her issues, seek a good therapist, diligently apply the counsel in her thinking, actions and life.  Sadly, many choose not to do that.  That was the experience for many of us here.  So what do you do if your spouse won't change for the better?  Then it is up to us to make our own changes, typically that path means accepting the marriage has failed but on the other hand we can then succeed at parenting.

Ponder this too... .  Sometimes, you just can't keep the family together, not when the other parent is opposing you and sabotaging you.  The book Solomon's Children - Exploding the Myths of Divorce, published 1986, was written to shed light on the decades-long misguided policies that presumed that the mother was always the better parent.  Page 195 had an interesting observation by one participant, As the saying goes, "I'd rather come from a broken home than live in one."