It's been a while

[Beware of Junk Psychology...]

Hello everyone. It's been quite a while since I've posted on the forum, but I do look in from time to time. I've been doing fairly well since I split with my ex-g/f with uBPD about 3-1/2 years ago. I'm still dating the woman that I met nearly 2-1/2 years ago. Our relationship has its ups and downs like most do, but this time I actually feel loved and respected.

My ex-g/f still visits her parents next door to me, but I have not run into her in about a year. Oddly enough, my mother has run into her 2-3 times in the last year, and my ex sought my mother out and approached her for brief conversations. She is apparently married now. Based on what I was told by a mutual friend, she quit probably the best job she ever had (a full-time position) and is working part-time for minimum wage at a retail store. Her new husband is now stuck with all of his own expenses and her $60k in student loan debt. He also bought her the car of her dreams earlier this year. This was the type of car that she told me she wanted most while we were together. As far as her status with me, she's a distant memory and has been for quite some time. I feel lucky that I dodged a bullet and that her personal issues are no longer my problem or concern. I know in my heart that it would have been a disaster if we would have married. At least I had the wherewithal at the time before, during, and after the breakup to know that this utimately was not a healthy situation.

My current situation actually involves my ex-wife who was diagnosed with BPD and a whole other host of mental health issues. We have a child together who happens to be in junior high school. I have had primary custody of our child since she was 1 year old, which happened to be the time period when I left my ex well over 10 years ago. Her mental health status was out of control at the time, and she was deemed to be a threat to herself and our child. The court ruled in my favor and my ex was given supervised visitation, which continued for the next 4 years at least. We had a multitude of court hearings and non-stop drama during that time period and a final hearing on the matter in 2016.  The court ruled in my favor once again at that hearing, and I retained primary custody If memory serves me right, my ex received roughly 30 days per year to my 335. My ex-wife did not like the outcome, and promptly fired her second set of attorneys. She hired a new attorney who filed a petition for the court of appeals. About a year after that process was started, the court of appeals agreed with the trial court and found no issue with the trial court's decision. A year later in 2019, my ex came at me with another petition asking for 50/50 custody and had yet another new attorney. She had show better mental stability but was still having some issues. The court granted her 140 days of parenting time. During the hearing, she had mental health experts there singing the praises of her progress, so the court had no choice but to grant her more time. Roughly a year and a half after the court hearing and being granted more parenting time, my ex had another melt down and ended up at an inpatient hospital roughy a 5-6 hour drive from here for 9-10 weeks then had to do several weeks of intensive outpatient. afterwards. We had no court hearings or motions from 2019 to present, except for the typical BPD drama and manipulation.

I was served with a court petition at my home a week ago by my ex-wife's attorney. She is asking for 50/50 custody again but is also asking to be named the primary residential parent. She is also labeling  me in the court petition as an uncooperative parent who doesn't keep her informed of our child's medical and and educational needs. She claims that the child can only thrive if she was named primary residential parent, and is questioning my ability to parent. Our child is a straight A student, is in the Junior Beta Club, is involved in other activities at school and at church. She has been labeled as a healthy and well adjusted child by her teachers and by a licensed clinical psychologist that did a forensic evaluation of my ex, our child, and myself. My ex-wife also has alleged in her petition that she would be better suited to raise our child because she is a female and I am a male. I take exception that as did my attorney, because we feel that is discrimination.

Probably the biggest untruthful statement my ex-wife and her attorney made in this new petition is that she has been "perfectly stable" since our last court appearance in 2019. They left out the fact that she was hospitalized inpatient in late 2020 into 2021 for several weeks. We can easily refute this claim with emails that I received from my ex saying that she had to go inpatient at the recommendation of her treatment providers. My attorney and I have 30 days to respond to their petition. I can't imagine that the court would name her primary residential parent since I have held that role all of these years and also taking my ex-wife's mental health history into account.

It really upsets me, however, when she makes untruthful statements and claims about herself and me as well to the court.  Once again, I hope the court will see through all of this nonsense like they have in the past. Since she and I have a child together, I don't have the option of going NC with her to avoid the toxic behavior, and that really makes it hard. When I do have to interact with her, I use the less (few words and straight to the point) is best policy to avoid as little drama as possible. Most things you say to her are twisted by her and brought up later in court by her attorneys. They usually come to court with a binder full of text messages and emails to try and use against you. My ex is the type that if you don't do exactly what she wants you to do or give her exactly what she wants, she labels you as uncooperative, an abuser, etc. I follow the parenting plan, which is what my attorney advised me to do, and I'm still labeled as uncooperative if I don't give her what she wants outside of what the parenting plan calls for.

Sorry that my post went on for so long. I just needed to get some of this out to a group of people who I know will understand where I'm coming from. I try not to let all of this get to me like it did years ago, but some days are difficult. It's hard to get ahead in life when I keep having to pay attorneys to defend myself against this nonsense. I have the normal household expenses like we all do, and I'm trying to get myself in a better position to put money away for my child's college expenses. It's difficult to do in times like this. Have any of you been named a primary residential parent of your child or children and have had your ex-spouse drag you into court repeatedly?

[brighter future]

Hello everyone. It's been quite a while since I've posted on the forum, but I do look in from time to time. I've been doing fairly well since I split with my ex-g/f with uBPD about 3-1/2 years ago. I'm still dating the woman that I met nearly 2-1/2 years ago. Our relationship has its ups and downs like most do, but this time I actually feel loved and respected.

My ex-g/f still visits her parents next door to me, but I have not run into her in about a year. Oddly enough, my mother has run into her 2-3 times in the last year, and my ex sought my mother out and approached her for brief conversations. She is apparently married now. Based on what I was told by a mutual friend, she quit probably the best job she ever had (a full-time position) and is working part-time for minimum wage at a retail store. Her new husband is now stuck with all of his own expenses and her $60k in student loan debt. He also bought her the car of her dreams earlier this year. This was the type of car that she told me she wanted most while we were together. As far as her status with me, she's a distant memory and has been for quite some time. I feel lucky that I dodged a bullet and that her personal issues are no longer my problem or concern. I know in my heart that it would have been a disaster if we would have married. At least I had the wherewithal at the time before, during, and after the breakup to know that this utimately was not a healthy situation.

My current situation actually involves my ex-wife who was diagnosed with BPD and a whole other host of mental health issues. We have a child together who happens to be in junior high school. I have had primary custody of our child since she was 1 year old, which happened to be the time period when I left my ex well over 10 years ago. Her mental health status was out of control at the time, and she was deemed to be a threat to herself and our child. The court ruled in my favor and my ex was given supervised visitation, which continued for the next 4 years at least. We had a multitude of court hearings and non-stop drama during that time period and a final hearing on the matter in 2016.  The court ruled in my favor once again at that hearing, and I retained primary custody If memory serves me right, my ex received roughly 30 days per year to my 335. My ex-wife did not like the outcome, and promptly fired her second set of attorneys. She hired a new attorney who filed a petition for the court of appeals. About a year after that process was started, the court of appeals agreed with the trial court and found no issue with the trial court's decision. A year later in 2019, my ex came at me with another petition asking for 50/50 custody and had yet another new attorney. She had show better mental stability but was still having some issues. The court granted her 140 days of parenting time. During the hearing, she had mental health experts there singing the praises of her progress, so the court had no choice but to grant her more time. Roughly a year and a half after the court hearing and being granted more parenting time, my ex had another melt down and ended up at an inpatient hospital roughy a 5-6 hour drive from here for 9-10 weeks then had to do several weeks of intensive outpatient. afterwards. We had no court hearings or motions from 2019 to present, except for the typical BPD drama and manipulation.

I was served with a court petition at my home a week ago by my ex-wife's attorney. She is asking for 50/50 custody again but is also asking to be named the primary residential parent. She is also labeling  me in the court petition as an uncooperative parent who doesn't keep her informed of our child's medical and and educational needs. She claims that the child can only thrive if she was named primary residential parent, and is questioning my ability to parent. Our child is a straight A student, is in the Junior Beta Club, is involved in other activities at school and at church. She has been labeled as a healthy and well adjusted child by her teachers and by a licensed clinical psychologist that did a forensic evaluation of my ex, our child, and myself. My ex-wife also has alleged in her petition that she would be better suited to raise our child because she is a female and I am a male. I take exception that as did my attorney, because we feel that is discrimination.

Probably the biggest untruthful statement my ex-wife and her attorney made in this new petition is that she has been "perfectly stable" since our last court appearance in 2019. They left out the fact that she was hospitalized inpatient in late 2020 into 2021 for several weeks. We can easily refute this claim with emails that I received from my ex saying that she had to go inpatient at the recommendation of her treatment providers. My attorney and I have 30 days to respond to their petition. I can't imagine that the court would name her primary residential parent since I have held that role all of these years and also taking my ex-wife's mental health history into account.

It really upsets me, however, when she makes untruthful statements and claims about herself and me as well to the court.  Once again, I hope the court will see through all of this nonsense like they have in the past. Since she and I have a child together, I don't have the option of going NC with her to avoid the toxic behavior, and that really makes it hard. When I do have to interact with her, I use the less (few words and straight to the point) is best policy to avoid as little drama as possible. Most things you say to her are twisted by her and brought up later in court by her attorneys. They usually come to court with a binder full of text messages and emails to try and use against you. My ex is the type that if you don't do exactly what she wants you to do or give her exactly what she wants, she labels you as uncooperative, an abuser, etc. I follow the parenting plan, which is what my attorney advised me to do, and I'm still labeled as uncooperative if I don't give her what she wants outside of what the parenting plan calls for.

Sorry that my post went on for so long. I just needed to get some of this out to a group of people who I know will understand where I'm coming from. I try not to let all of this get to me like it did years ago, but some days are difficult. It's hard to get ahead in life when I keep having to pay attorneys to defend myself against this nonsense. I have the normal household expenses like we all do, and I'm trying to get myself in a better position to put money away for my child's college expenses. It's difficult to do in times like this. Have any of you been named a primary residential parent of your child or children and have had your ex-spouse drag you into court repeatedly?

[Pook075]

Hello and thanks for sharing.  My brother in law went through something very similar with his ex and they were in and out of court for almost a decade.  Unfortunately, they still have 50/50 custody but the mom has brainwashed the kids that their father has never loved them, never had their best interests at heart, etc.  My brother hasn't seen his daughters in over five years because of it and if they try to reach out, they're punished severely by the mom.  To me, it's just plain evil.

Both my brother and his ex-wife have gone on to remarry, and they're both mostly happy in their marriages.  I feel so bad for my brother in law and his whole family though because they miss those girls so much.  My mother in law finally got to see the oldest daughter a few Sundays ago and she cried for hours afterwards.  I genuinely hope that something works out.

I don't have any advice here other than to share why it would be a very bad idea to give your ex additional custody.  Whether she's a great mom or not, if the toxicity is still there then it's going to spill out and make it much harder on your kid.  As much as it stinks going to court over and over again, it is a necessary game you have to play.

I remember my mom and dad telling me that after his divorce to his 1st wife, a similar pattern happened.  His ex would lie about everything- she never got child support, my dad never did anything for the kids, etc.  Meanwhile, he was sending extra money for kid's braces, etc and the wicked woman was spending the money on herself. 

They went to court over and over again to defend her delusions until a judge finally said, "Maam, I have a payment history here of child support and you have cashed the checks on the first of the month, every single time, for the past 7 years.  That means not only did you get the checks on time, but your ex husband always sent them early.  He has done nothing wrong and if you ever bring another frivolous motion before this court, I will end the child support and give your ex husband full custody on the spot.  Furthermore, I will consider criminal prosecution for wasting the court's time and resources."

In my dad's case, there was never another court complaint or motion filed.  Hopefully you reach that point as well someday since the judges are not stupid, they truly despise that stuff.

[kells76]

Hi brighter future! It's good to hear that you stop by now and then. The door is always open 

Not sure if you've checked out the divorce/custody/family law board yet -- you'd be more than welcome to post there as well as here. Many of us have more than one pwBPD in our lives in different roles.

Quick thought is I'm wondering if you can put together a pretty assertive response with your L, basically saying -- sure, she can bring whatever motions she wants, but every time it's found in your favor, she pays 100% of the fees, and if she doesn't, there are consequences written into the response.

And/or, ask your L about a "gatekeeping motion" -- from what I've heard, what that means is that again, she can bring whatever motions she wants, but each and every one gets reviewed first before getting an OK to proceed (often, the motions are not given the go-ahead). This can decrease the time and money you've had to spend to basically keep status quo.

So far you've been trying to mind your own business, only responding if/when she brings something up. Could it be time to make one big assertive move, that puts the responsibility for her motions in someone else's lap?

Food for thought--

kells76

[SinisterComplex]

Hey BF, just checking in to. Nice to hear from you.

We are always here and mi amigo that is what you are supposed to do here...vent and get that weight off your chest. We got you fam. ;-) 

Cheers and Best Wishes!

-SC-

[brighter future]

Thanks everyone for taking the time to respond to my post. I appreciate the support as always.

Kells76, I've never heard of the gatekeeping motion before. That is very interesting, and I plan to speak to my attorney about this when I speak with him the next time. When we spoke on the phone late last week, his plan was to first file a motion to dismiss and follow that up with a response to their petition for 50/50 custody. He doesn't plan on filing the response until day 28 (we have 30 days to respond). My attorney feels like their petition lacks merit, discriminates against me, and also that it's full of inaccuracies. That's why he wants to file the motion to dismiss first.

Back to the gatekeeping motion idea. That would have been helpful during this time period: Roughly in 2014-2016, my ex's two attorneys stalled and stalled on a trial date for the 2016 hearing because her mental health was really off the rails, more so than normal. They didn't want to come to court for a final trial with her in that condition, however, they continued to file motion after motion.  The judge got so fed up with ex's attorneys in a motion hearing that the judge said, "Unless you have a date for the final disposition on this matter, do not file anymore motions in my court at all. I will not hear them, and they will be denied. I'm tired of you wasting this court's time."

I had two attorneys representing me the entire way through this matter. One of them retired about 4 years ago but keeps in touch with me periodically to see how things are going. The second is still with me and gladly accepted to come back onboard when I contacted him after being served with the petition last week. I'm thankful of that because I didn't want to have to start over fresh with a new attorney that knew nothing about the case. He still had a lot of the files saved on his computer luckily.

As I said in my prior post, it would be so much easier if we didn't have a child together and I could go full NC with her. I'd fall off the face of the earth with her just like I did with the ex-g/f 3-1/2 years ago. In some ways I wish the ex-wife would find another man to date. When she's dated guys in the past, I heard very little from her, as they seem to occupy her mind to some extent. When she's single, however, she seems to pick on me a lot more frequently. If memory serves me right, she has been through 4-5 guys since we divorced several years ago.

As I said in my first post, she has many other disorders besides BPD and was described as co-morbid by many treatment providers. It was explained that since she is co-morbid, her mental illness as a whole is difficult to treat and can become treatment resistant when all of those disorders are lumped in together. In their most recent petition it said that she'd been fully stable since 2019, which is false as I also mentioned earlier. It also went on to say that she no longer had issues with post-partum but failed to mention all of the other disorders that linger and don't go away (like BPD). I find it hilarious and ridiculous that her attorney is still bringing up post-partum as an excuse to shade the truth when our child is almost 12 years old!

As I said earlier, thanks again for the support.  I will come back with an update when my attorney finishes drafting the motion to dismiss. Hopefully that will happen no later than the first of next week. He had me forward my responses to their petition on Monday, so he could use them to formulate his motion to dismiss and the response to the petition. He tells me that it will be very easy to make the other party silly in the eyes of the court.

[SaltyDawg]

Sounds like you have a good attorney.

Here is an excellent book on the topic, it is also available in Audiobook format it might give you a few more ideas on what to do, and what not to do.

Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline Or Narcissistic Personality Disorder

by Bill Eddy and Randi Kreger

[brighter future]

@Salty,

Thanks very much for the book suggestion. I will definitely check that out. I also have a copy of Stop Walking on Eggshells somewhere at home. It's been quite some time since I've read it. I purchased it shortly after my ex-wife and I separated several years ago.

My attorney sent me a text message last evening telling me that he was working on the motion to dismiss and would have it ready in the next day or two so I could review it before he files it with the court. As I stated in a prior post, he plans on filing the response to their petition on day 28 of 30. So, we have a little less than two weeks to go on that.

[brighter future]

My attorney decided to change the strategy up a bit and will be filing a motion to dismiss this afternoon. He wanted to wait until day 29 of 30 to respond because he said he wants to prolong our current custody arrangement as long as possible.  If the motion to dismiss is granted, then there is no reason to file a response to their petition to modify the parenting plan. My attorney is filing the motion to dismiss on the grounds that my ex-wife and her attorney did not follow the order of the court in the parenting plan. It states that we are ordered to take part in mediation prior to filing any pleadings for hearings with the court. They disregarded the order for mediation and filed their petition. Hopefully our motion it will be granted, and the court will order them to follow proper procedure.

In the meantime, my ex-wife has been very standoffish to me and the rest of my family since her attorney filed this petition. She is only cordial if there are other people around like my girlfriend, friends of our child, or other aquaintances. 

[SaltyDawg]

brighter future,

   Thank you for updating with the reasoning behind it.

   I am sure this is stressful for you, please be sure to do self-care in all of this to keep your energy up for you and your children.

   Take care with self-care.

SD

[brighter future]

My attorney called me on Friday afternoon to tell me that he was contacted by my ex-wife's attorney earlier that morning. Supposedly, my ex's attorney wants to mediate and was asking my attorney for suggestions as far as a mediator goes. I literally laughed out loud when he told me this, and I asked my attorney why her attorney didn't request mediation in the beginning since it was ordered by the court in the parenting plan. Instead, they ignored court orders and filed a petition to modify instead.

I told my attorney that I am not inclined to entertain anything that the ex's attorney suggests until our motion to dismiss is heard by the court. He told me that course of action is fine and that no further response is required at this time by us. If the other party would have sent a request to mediate in the beginning, I would have gladly complied. Since they want to play games, I guess we will have to let the court sort this out. Included in our motion to dismiss is a request for reasonable attorney's fees for me having to pay my attorney to draft this motion to dismiss. Hopefully it is granted to help prevent other nonsense like this from happening again. My prior attorney is retired now, but she is still acting as an advisor. She has advised me to let this ride and let the court settle the matter as opposed to letting the other party slide as far as their disregard of court orders goes. And the saga continues....10 years and counting.