Messy family court battle (Australia, Queensland)

[coxphoecox]

Hi everyone,

My husband (46 Male) has a 8 year old son who he shares with his BPD ex partner (36 Female). She was diagnosed in 2012 with BPD and at the beginning of this relationship, he told me she was suicidal and made several attempts on her life. My husband and his ex moved out of state to my husbands home state as requested by his ex, she did not want to raise their son around her own family and wanted to move away which they did. They separated just after the child was 1 years old and had shared parenting (50/50) my husband was the primary caregiver of their son. 8 year old child has asthma and constipation problems which he had from birth. She has struggled his whole life to medicate the child appropriately and believes he doesn’t need medication at all, my husband and his mother and cousin all supported her best they could to help her manage his medication and help manage caring for the child in his best interests.July 2024 she took full custody of their son and has a protection order against my husband and is accusing him of domestic violence. The past year has been a long standing battle with her and she has not let my husband have unsupervised time with the child. A family report was written up stating she was held in state against her will and that she wants to move back where she is from, my husbands lawyer has replied that we are willing to move and now she is self repenting herself for court and family dispute resolution. Ex partners mother has undiagnosed BPD and viscously controls her daughters life. My husband has supervised visits every fortnight for 2 hours at a family centre which are horrible, the supervisors hover over child and parent, tell him what to say, yell at him in front of child- horrible centre in my opinion. Anyway, my husband is concerned for child as he comes in very pale, almost out of breath and her has soiled himself in the centre a few times. Child has told my husband he is scared to use the toilet or ask to go as “it hurts” ( mother not medicating child for constipation or asthma) He told my husband that mummy does not give him puffers or Ventolin which we are extremely concerned about. His ex is attacking my husbands ADHD and masked bipolar disorder and saying he is unfit to parent. My husband has completed every court ordered programme and has done hair follicle testing every 3 months to show her he is clean, he is trying his best to get supervised time lifted. Some advice would be great please

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[ForeverDad]

Although I'm in another country, I and many others here have had ex-spouses claim DV or child abuse and have for a short time been limited to supervised visits until the professionals could determine what was real and what was not.

A risk I see here is that the professionals could assume that the present limited parenting is "working" simply because the status quo of supervision has gone on so long.  We have a saying here, "Get the best temp order you can from the very start because temporary orders tend to morph by default into orders."

In my case, I filed for protection based on recorded Threat of DV.  In response, my newly separated then-spouse rushed to family court to file for her own protection... and included our preschooler.  Fortunately, the Children's Protective Services (CPS) investigator stood up in court and stated they had "no concerns" about me and son was removed from her protection allegations.

What was weird was that though my stbEx was charged with Threat of DV, when in family court she was granted temp custody and I was left with alternate weekends.

I think it is important to accept that the court typically sees the adult relationship as separate from the parenting relationship.  The point I'm trying to make is that whatever claims she makes about herself needing protection - which not are being negotiated away? - doesn't necessarily apply to his parenting.

It seems a deal is being worked out where she's stepping back a bit?  If so, then the lengthy supervised status needs to be undone.*  As I wrote above, the longer it continues, the harder it will be for officialdom to acknowledge it is no longer appropriate.

* This is similar to the advice that we should never admit guilt (such as in a plea deal).  Even if we are found guilty, at least we can still claim innocence.

What is being lost in this mess is the best interests of the child.  The core question: Is the child endangered or at risk of abuse or neglect by his father?  If not, then his supervision is inappropriate.

In the future, your husband should make every attempt to equalize the court's scrutiny.  What has happened thus far it is only one parent being accused as the "perp" while the other is considered the "victim".  Try to challenge the perp/victim scenario and - for the child's bests interests - scrutinize both parents equally.  In the USA we call such investigations Custody Evaluations which include (1) both parents taking tests and interviews and (2) seeing each parent separately with the child.