Overall thoughts about 50/50 with a BPD parent

[sanemom]

The teens' counselor is considering 50/50 custody in hopes of stopping BPD mom's alienating behaviors.  I am just not sure I am sold on that--not sure that would work.  Any thoughts?  Experiences?

[Ishenuts]

What is the current custody arrangement? If it means you and DH have more time with the children, go for it. If less, no way!

[ForeverDad]

The teens' counselor is considering 50/50 custody in hopes of stopping BPD mom's alienating behaviors.

 That is precisely what I dealt with back in 2010 and into 2011.  My GAL was a lawyer focusing on children's rights (evidently not custody as much as delinquency) and was chosen for my case when the court ruled I did have a Change of Circumstances.  I had equal time in Shared Parenting (2-2-5-5 schedule) and was seeking custody and majority time due to my Ex's continued obstructions and games.  GAL's recommendation was that she supported me having custody but hoped my ex would be "more stable" if we kept equal time so Ex could get Child Support.  (In the divorce decree we had merged/offset CS into alimony and alimony had just ended.)  So (1) I would get custody and (2) Ex would resume getting money from me.  I didn't see how that would make my Ex behave better but I couldn't contradict the GAL since I knew the judge would accept GAL's recommendation anyway.

Well, as I knew would happen, things didn't improve.  Ex was still entitled and kept playing games with exchanges and other aspects of parenting.  The next year I was back in court - again.  It took about 17 months and more $$$ but the court accepted that me getting custody didn't stop my Ex's "continued disparagement of Father to the child".  As a result, I gained majority time during the school year, "however, after considerable thought, this magistrate is willing to give Mother one more try... .Mother shall have {equal} summer parenting time".  Yes, court lambasted her behaviors and still bent over backwards for her.  When we first got our temp orders, I had 22% time with no dings against me except for being a working father (and she had a DV case pending against her which domestic court clearly ignored).  Despite her poor behaviors in and out of court for 8 years, she has only been reduced to 25% during the school year.  It's a 33% annual average if I include the 11 weeks of summer equal time.

One factor I think that helped me is that my son is now older.  My Ex is very hyper-vigilant and so she MUST always know what's best for our son.  Him growing older and less dependent on her has helped.  (Only a little over 4 years to go until my emancipation from court orders.)

If the teens' mother is like my son's mother, entitled and perceiving herself as Mother of the Year, then I doubt pussyfooting around the issue and making baby step changes will change much if anything.

• One factor to consider depends on how much of an improvement this would be from the current order.  Would it short circuit some of the entitlement?



• Would Father get Decision Making or Tie Breaker status?  That would reduce the trips to court and for those issues that did end up in court then he wouldn't be delayed and obstructed while waiting months and months for court to get around to the case.  After all, he's the parent who is able to share, the current situation is that the parent who obstructs has too much control.  Time isn't the core issue, it's the misuse of Control.

Want me to talk to the counselor? 

[Nope]

The key to stopping alienating behaviors is understanding that the alienating behaviors will not stop. It's your ability to undo the damage and to get an opportunity to show the kids what kinds of behaviors are right and normal that needs to be protected. To that end, the more time in your household the better. I feel like 50/50 should be avoided if possible because it gives her exactly as much time to mess with their heads as it gives you to fix what she does. And it takes significantly longer to fix something than it does to break it.

My kids have seen their bio mom approximately three weeks in the last year and it's always the same story. We drop them off with her and everything is fine. We get them back and they act out, fall back into bad learned habits from the time they spent living with her, and won't talk to us and bairly even look at us. This goes on for weks until they settle down, settle back in to their lives, and see for themselves that we aren't the horrible people their mom spent a week telling them we are. Which is terrible because after living with us so long you would think they wouldn't lose sight of reality that quickly but they are still desperate to please their mother.

Another thing to consider is if the counselor may be testing you. If 50/50 means no child support perhaps if money is the bigger factor then you'll be fine with 50/50. Push for what you actually feel is in the kid's best interests and be ready to give concrete reasons for why.

[sanemom]

DH has primary now with the boys only seeing their BPD mom 2 weekends a month; the boys are older and crave more, but they quickly get sucked into her manipulations.  She is a classic BPD waif, and the kids see DH as villainizing her (although we rarely say a word about her).

Just recently she was able to manipulate the teens into collecting "evidence" against us for CPS, and then she called CPS.  The counselor sees that as their intense desire for their BPD mom (who has never been primary--DH has had primary for 14 years).

[ForeverDad]

Court should be reluctant to make major changes to the schedule that has worked for all these years.  And equalizing time with mother is not a 'fix'.

On the other hand once the boys get licenses and cars it may be hard to stop them from voting with their feet.

It's worse than I thought.  We have a webcam in our room, and just saw footage of the boys taking medicine bottles out and replacing them... .they were helping BPD mom set us up.  In her affidavit she is claiming that we were taking DSS's prescribed pain meds (we weren't, and there is plenty left).

I think this definitely needs to be highlighted in court, that she got the children to FRAME their father for something that they unethically did.  (Of course, it was a security camera, not a spy camera as she is likely to claim.)  So how is she keeping the boys?  Is there an emergency "ex parte" order in place letting her keep the boys?  She must be claiming the boys - now half grown - are "endangered".  Is there any way to document any collusion between boys and mother?

I would hope the court gets very, very peeved at mother and boys for doing this and calls them out on the carpet for it.  Sadly, courts often have an abnormally muted response to the most outrageous things.

Worse, the court and other professionals' solution may be to reward mother with more time to accommodate the boys' manipulated wishes in this contrived incident.

[whirlpoollife]

Someone like her would not stop at 50/50.

[bravhart1]

Our CE a year ago clearly stated that BPDm was in all out "alienation " mode and that she needed to be seeing a court appointed therapist  for not understanding what damage she was doing to SD. They gave her time back, to show good faith and to see if she would settle down. The result?

We are back in court for another hearing, she did not make any of the benchmarks required of her and the alienation is worse than ever. The child's T is worried SD is in danger of self harm and or a mental break and the judge still set the hearing for three months out. ( judge would not talk to therapist unless mom got to be present and therapist felt mom would use what was told to him against SD)

So I would say they do not get better, any concession by the court to try to calm the waters is seen as a WIN by pwBPD and they should have to do the work before getting the reward. My two cents.

[sanemom]

SHe is claiming they were endangered, and, unfortunately, we were not able to present any of our evidence to prove otherwise because BPD mom opened a CPS case right before.

And now she has managed to get the boys all mad at dad; they were not mad before they left.  It's just frustrating... .

[Nope]

So... .Rewarding her for causing problems looks like a solution?  That doesn't sound like any kind of plan. If anything she'll just learn that if she makes everybody miserable enough and crazy enough she'll get more time. At least once CPS is involved once and sees this for what it is she'll learn that she won't have help from them. Not sure if the judge can see the video of the evidence planting but pretty sure CPS can. That by itself should make a big impact in your favor.

Still, they are getting old enough to start getting a vote about how much time they spend with each parent. Ultimately the best thing you can hope for is that with enough time they'll start to figure things out. Right now they are in fight mode but on a day to day basis kids want to be selfish and primarily concern themselves with their own lives outside of parents and it sounds like she'll suffocate them and they'll get sick of it.

[ForeverDad]

Will the court allow consideration of the past alienation and allegations of DSD determined to be unsubstantiated?  She has since aged out of the system, off to college as I recall, so I'm figuring BioMom's now refocusing in court on the boys since they're still minors for another couple years.  If only you could include the long history as evidence of a pattern of actively obstructing father.

Yes, since there is a risk that a judge could say, "Well, why not let the teens have more time with their mother?" then I like that potential strategy to phrase it from a different perspective to the court, "Mother obstructs, postures and makes unsubstantiated and evidently even framed allegations, gets sons involved in it and the result could be she gets rewarded?"

[Panda39]

Still, they are getting old enough to start getting a vote about how much time they spend with each parent. Ultimately the best thing you can hope for is that with enough time they'll start to figure things out. Right now they are in fight mode but on a day to day basis kids want to be selfish and primarily concern themselves with their own lives outside of parents and it sounds like she'll suffocate them and they'll get sick of it.

I have seen this with my SO's daughter's.  Once the divorce (the fight) was over my SO began to disengage so much so that today he has very little contact with his ex. My SO was awarded primary custody and began to spend more time with his kids and that helped.  The longer my SO and his uBPDxw were apart the more they went to their baseline selves.  Dad gaining control of his life acting responsibly and mom spiraling down out of control.  The girls began to see who was the parent and who wasn't.  Eventually, with dad more and more out of the picture with is uBPDxw her crazy and distructive behavior was directed elsewhere. She has 2 court cases against her currently one civil, one criminal and both about money.  But even worse her behaviors have been directed at her children and she has done some horrendious things to both daughters in the last year.  Both daughters have "voted with their feet" and live with dad full-time.  D19 is very very low contact and D14 is low contact with mom.  They unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it, have had to learn some difficult truths about their mom the hard way and they get it now.  Hopefully, your boys will catch on too. 

Take Care,

Panda39