Looks Like She Moved But Won't Tell Us

[Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits.]

Background: Because BPDm lives three states away and DH has physical custody. According to the order BPDm is supposed to have quite a bit of parenting time in our state and every other major holiday in her state. The order does not grant her any summer parenting time and simply States that she can have extra time by agreement of the parties. She is also by order supposed to be in counseling. She has not used her parenting time in our state at all and has refused to go to counseling. SS11's T says that being away from her for months at a time is causing SS11 guilt, depression, and anxiety and would prefer BPDm come to our state, but says we need to send SS11 for at least some time during the summer if she won't come down. To do the right thing for the kids DH is giving BPDm two weeks in August. He's given her until April 15th to pick which two weeks.

Problem: SS11 told me yesterday that he is pretty sure BPDm and her boyfriend have moved. Of course, she hasn't told us and has a history of not telling DH when she would move with the kids when they lived with her. We strongly suspect she plans for us to not find out about the move until after the kids come back and tell us. This would mean DH would not know where the kids are for two weeks. He is, understandably, not ok with that. How would you proceed? Send her an email requesting she confirm the address where the children will be staying on her time? Something else?

[Nope]

Background: Because BPDm lives three states away and DH has physical custody. According to the order BPDm is supposed to have quite a bit of parenting time in our state and every other major holiday in her state. The order does not grant her any summer parenting time and simply States that she can have extra time by agreement of the parties. She is also by order supposed to be in counseling. She has not used her parenting time in our state at all and has refused to go to counseling. SS11's T says that being away from her for months at a time is causing SS11 guilt, depression, and anxiety and would prefer BPDm come to our state, but says we need to send SS11 for at least some time during the summer if she won't come down. To do the right thing for the kids DH is giving BPDm two weeks in August. He's given her until April 15th to pick which two weeks.

Problem: SS11 told me yesterday that he is pretty sure BPDm and her boyfriend have moved. Of course, she hasn't told us and has a history of not telling DH when she would move with the kids when they lived with her. We strongly suspect she plans for us to not find out about the move until after the kids come back and tell us. This would mean DH would not know where the kids are for two weeks. He is, understandably, not ok with that. How would you proceed? Send her an email requesting she confirm the address where the children will be staying on her time? Something else?

[Thunderstruck]

I wouldn't feel comfortable with that either. :/

I know it's a hike, but can you be the ones to drop the kids off? Then she'd have to provide her address so you know where to take the kids. Plus you'd get to scope the place and neighborhood out a little bit.

[Catsmother]

Or could you send something by registered mail, so she will have to sign for it? That way you can keep a track of the where and the when it was collected, just in case there is a mail redirection in place.

[Nope]

Thunder - Even when it hasn't been at issue, the has still never let DH do an exchange at her place. When we've gone up to her state in the past she has screamed at DH to not even drive by her place to get somewhere. "It's my serenity! "  So I'm pretty sure she'd rather not even have the kids for her two weeks rather than have DH anywhere near where she lives. Though depending on exactly where it is, I may have a friend or two up there that'd be willing to drive by and check it out.

CM - That is an excellent idea provided the mail can even find her. She doesn't really take care of things so it's possible it'll return undeliverable. But it's worth a shot. I was just going to make a call to the apartment office and at least find out for 100% sure that she moved. Armed with that information we can at least say something directly to her.

Absolute worst case, we are planning to take her back to court and out state sends out the summons via certified mail. If that comes back undeliverable then there is court involvement. But at the very least an email saying that, for the sake of clarity, we'll need the address for where the kids will be staying while with her should at least put it into her mind that we aren't totally unaware that she's going to try to pull something. She may get bored of the game without the element of surprise.

[ForeverDad]

I don't know about your state but mine requires a Notice of Intention to Move.  Not that anyone will get more than a  stare from the magistrate, but it's a technical problem, the court ought to know where the parents reside until they age out of the system.

[Thunderstruck]

Whose name do the utilities/cable/etc go under?

Background check websites (Intellius and others) are actually pretty decent at finding out addresses. You could look up BPDmom's name and the BF's name too.

[Nope]

I don't know about your state but mine requires a Notice of Intention to Move.  Not that anyone will get more than a  stare from the magistrate, but it's a technical problem, the court ought to know where the parents reside until they age out of the system.

The last time she moved she filed that a month after she moved when she saw we filed one. Before she got ours I highly doubt she even thought about it. I think the only reason she filed on at all at that point was because she got nervous because we could have filed another motion to keep the GAL on at that point. I'm working on finding out now if our state requires it. I agree that it would be ridiculous if it didn't but we may need to at least tell BPDm if it does, and she may or may not care. It's not as if she wouldn't lie if she thought she could get away with it.

Whose name do the utilities/cable/etc go under?

Background check websites (Intellius and others) are actually pretty decent at finding out addresses. You could look up BPDmom's name and the BF's name too.

All utilities would be under his name. Her credit is completely shot. I know this because creditors keep looking for her in mail to our place and phone calls to DH's mom's land line. She would also have a hard time getting cable because she was brought up on charges for stealing cable a few years ago. But I do have his name and I'm not afraid to run a background check if it comes to that. Thanks for bringing that up as I hadn't gotten to the point where I was thinking of that sort of thing yet. I'm still mentally working out the email in which we flat out ask her for her address.

[bravhart1]

What if you simply just hit her between the eyes? Send an email that states "kids want to send you something for Mother's Day, do we have your correct address or have you moved?"

Then if she lies you can use that to enforce the "obviously we need to know where you live, we have your children in our care" reason. And not make it about anything else but her need to be reached in an emergency.

I would not even entertain idea of summer visits until she is willing (without background checks) to tell you where she lives and how she and the kids can be reached during their visit.

Otherwise she will use the excuse she was trying to protect her privacy. Moms don't get privacy, welcome to the club.

[Nope]

What if you simply just hit her between the eyes? Send an email that states "kids want to send you something for Mother's Day, do we have your correct address or have you moved?"

Then if she lies you can use that to enforce the "obviously we need to know where you live, we have your children in our care" reason. And not make it about anything else but her need to be reached in an emergency.

I would not even entertain idea of summer visits until she is willing (without background checks) to tell you where she lives and how she and the kids can be reached during their visit.

Otherwise she will use the excuse she was trying to protect her privacy. Moms don't get privacy, welcome to the club.

It's going to go down quicker than that, unfortunately. We gave her until next week to tell us exactly what dates she wants in the summer. DH is going to have to actually agree to her request for parenting time or not. If he agrees he can't very well back out, as the question should have been asked before the agreement was reached. So... .We're thinking something along the lines of simply saying that in order to reach the agreement he will need her address where the kids will be staying while in her care. I have a feeling that no matter what she says we'll be doing a ton of digging to verify. If we find out she lied then we can figure out what we want to do from there. Probably nothing, since as long as we can get her real address we can have her served for court there prior to the kid's visit and she can find out that we know that way.   

[Nope]

Update:

We heard back from the kid's uBPDm about dates for their visit. DH wrote her back saying that since this is a one time agreement for time that isn't in the court order he would be send a signed letter through certified mail sometime before the visit so he would need to have her updated address for that purpose and also in case of any emergency.

Her response was that "obviously" she would inform him of a new address when she moves because doing so is in the court order and that she intends to inform him through the form she can get at the court just like she did last time when she was supposed to.

So it appears she hasn't moved yet. We'll be sending plenty of certified mail to keep tabs on that. But right now it looks like all is well. DH won't respond because it's not in the court order that she has to tell us. She just thinks it is because when the order was originally in her state she had to tell us due to state statute. Her wont look at the actual order. It simply must say what she thinks it says. Her old state will send us the change of address so as long as she thinks she has to do it we are in much better shape.

Her snotty response to this actually did a lot to make me feel better. A) It was a reminder of just how low functioning she is (therefore more of a long term danger to herself rather than to anyone else). It is a great reminder that she is not actually sitting there thinking up ways to mess with DH. She is honestly just mentally ill and really believes her own story. And B) That she actually does believe she must comply, which is a good place to start from.

[Nope]

UPDATE:

It worked! This morning she sent DH notice of her move as of the middle of the month as well as notice of her name change back to her maiden name.