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I do not have proof. We were living together. Others heard him shout that he wanted to kill me and witnessed him throw things at me. He was not very physically violent. Once he bit my arm. Once he pulled my face very hard. Once he punched me in the arm. He told my mother while I was pregnant that if I had not been pregnant he would have beaten me up. He held his hand up to me as if he was going to hit me very often, and was doing it more before I left. He threatened to throw coffee in my face, etc. No I do not have proof of most of this. People heard him scream at me and were worried. Everyone in my family's neighborhood thinks he's sketchy as heck and probably even dangerous.
He was not alone with my son much. Once he left my son alone on a table. He fell off and scratched his face. (I forgot to mention that he said he fell and scratched his face but there were suspicions that he could actually have hurt him intentionally.) There were instances that my mother witnessed. Our old apartment had a door leading to a steep staircase. It was on the second floor. He would leave that door open and say our son was too smart to fall down. My mother bought a gate and he screamed at her that he did not want to put a gate up. It seemed that he almost wanted to see our son fall down. Sometimes he would say things like he would like to hurt our son and see him cry. He called our son an idiot and a dirty animal. These are all before he was 2 years old. But let me say again he was not alone with our son much. And he was not very physically violent but I do believe that's where it was heading. He bit my mother hard while my son and I were with him. My son witnessed it. She had a large bruise and still has pain in her hand so it was not like a joke bite.
This is seriously not a case where I am bitter and just holding it against my ex. If I thought he was halfway capable of dealing with our son, and had our son's best interest at heart, I would never object to him taking our son, even if my ex is a philanderer, etc. I don't think things like adultery etc. should affect the parent-child relationship. But this is a different case. Sure, I left him in Philadelphia but we had not been there long and he could have moved back if he had wanted to. He also told me for months that I could move to NC so it's not like a sudden surprise. He is only mad now that I am moving because he does not want me to move forward in my life and not gain from it somehow. Believe me or not, that is his personality.
Apparently I should pay for my ex to visit our son, after he stole my savings? Maybe I should just go back and live with him? We are on totally different planes. I am thinking of my son, and he is thinking about himself. My son does not even seem like he wants to see his father. They did not have a connection when we lived together and if I had to leave him alone with his father he would cry.
Have you noticed he does not pay child support? I pay for everything for our son. So I don't think I am being so extremely selfish by making him drive (from a place where he chooses to live) to see our son. He does not even have a home set up but rents a room in some guy's house. He could pick up and move tomorrow if he wanted to.
His family gave him $7000 as a present for our son. He used it to buy a car for himself. My last birthday when we were together my mom bought me some presents. My ex returned those presents and exchanged them for things for himself. This is his personality. And I am supposed to be considerate? Do you think he has been considerate towards me? I actually wanted to leave him before my son was born but gave him hundreds of chances for MY SON'S SAKE, thinking he should have a father. Ultimately I realized he would be better off without him. By the way, when I did live with my ex, all he would do (literally every day) is rant and rave how he hated being married and his life was ruined by it. He made his bed.
Here's my point. You seem to repeatedly be rambling on about a lot of irreverent problems that have happened in your marriage that a Judge isn't going to want to hear or give a cr@p about. All he's going to care about is what's in the best interest of the child NOW at that particular moment in court into the future. The judge will have cases before and after you. He would have heard it all before. He's not going to sit there and want to here hearsay accusations thrown back and forth. He'll probably will cut you of before you start.
Being that I've been through what you're going through, and I know other men and women who have gone through it also, I'm going to take all of your accusations with a grain of salt.
If he bit your parents and was violent toward you, why wasn't he arrested? Police are required by law to make an arrest. They have no leeway in domestic violence cases. If you thought and still think that your life and your son's life is in danger because of this man, then who in their right mind as a parent, if this man is everything you stated he is, would be okay with him having any visitation? You claim you fear for your life in one post, and then in the next say you have been okay with him staying in your home during his visitations, and/or you're STILL open to him having vitiation with your son, just as long as you're around, BUT, to quote germaine2626, you're afraid that he would kill you and your son...
You basically have stated that this man is the devil and you fear for your life. Because of that, you think you should be able to use that as an excuse to move and keep the exact same vitiation schedule that's setup now where the guy that you fear is going to kill your son gets the opportunity to do so once every month... Sorry, to me it just sounds like a case of the usual divorce mud slinging. It does not sound like you or dad has your son's best interest at heart...
Sorry, but I've been here and done this before.
Last edited by DoniDanko; 08-01-2014 at 03:52 PM..
I guess I will restate how the previous visitation worked out:
my ex said he was going to come. Several times he came by bus. Some of the time I paid for a ticket and picked him up (1.5 hours away). Any time he was behaving in a normal way, I let him stay at my house. That involved giving him food to eat and etc. After new year he started to come by car. I still let him sleep over when he was behaving. The sleeping over thing was not great because he was not willing to 1. be normal acting 2. not try to sleep with me etc. As others have said, it's weird to *know* that someone is abusive and not trustworthy, and let them sleep at your house. On the other hand, my "decent" side felt guilty (as you pointed out I should) that he lived far away and had to make this effort to see his son. During all of this time he has not paid child support and let me add that before I left him he drained our shared account, that contained money I (and only I) had earned. More than enough money to pay for his trips to see our son over the past year).
In this thread I initially stated that I was willing to meet him once a month in Richmond, and once a month (one weekend) let him sleep over in NC to see our son. That would more than double his visitation time. Lots of people said it was a bad idea because I can't say he's abusive on the one hand, and let him sleep over on the other. It's not totally black and white of course. As I said in my post from a year ago, and in this thread, sometimes he's ok and everything is fine. If he will just keep his cool I have no problem going out to eat as a group, watching a movie together (I mean with our son) and engaging in other activities that let my son feel his father's presence. At the same time, this all goes against my gut feeling that my ex is a bad guy and undeserving, yet I know it's not up to me to judge, until he has done something really blatantly dangerous to our son.
My father was divorced from his ex wife. My half-brother stayed with us a lot of the time. The ex wife and her husband stayed over to visit us. There were never scenes, nothing nasty, nothing dangerous. I know that exes can remain civil for the sake of the child and I try to do so. But my ex is really hard to deal with, unpredictable, and I think he could potentially be dangerous. He is sometimes just in the moment and his fits of rage make no sense and are scary.
My lawyer says that he wants to create a situation in which my ex has limited visitation or perhaps just drops out of the picture. Is it wrong of me to want that? I don't know. Obviously I want my son to have a dad but the one he has is not even trying to be a decent dad. He literally hasn't done anything to show that he is putting our son first and wants to remain civil for our son's sake. When he sees our son he is hardly affectionate with him and only plays with him for 5 minutes.
Guess what? I'm not your ex wife or whatever, you are not my ex husband. It is not that cut and dry. Do I feel comfortable with him at my house? no. Would I rather let him come over if it would prevent him from doing something crazy? yes. You can take what I said with a grain of salt but it's the truth. He was not arrested for biting my mother because my old lawyer told us not to press charges. His mistake, and ours.
I already said in this thread that I KNOW a lot of this will not hold up in court and I probably will not even tell my side. I also know even worse guys who have regular visitation. The fact that he bit my mother and charges were not pressed does not mean it didn't happen. The fact that I really felt threatened by him does not mean it didn't happen.
And as has been pointed out, a lot of this has been action out of fear. Do I want to go to court and be accused of not giving him access to our son? No. That's why I let him come over. It's not like he has anywhere to stay. Would I rather have him at my house than alone with my son somewhere? Yes. Could I just tell him I refuse to see him until there's a court order saying he has definite visitation? Maybe that's what I should do. A lot of the stress of the past year was partly due to the lack of a custody order and my fear that he could just put my son in his car and drive away.
How many people do you know in abusive relationships? Why are they in abusive relationships? Because the abuser is manipulative and sometimes nice. You are not going to be with someone who is nasty 100% of the time. And in my case, it's not like I am totally immune to his manipulation, threats, etc.
Sometimes my thought was I would rather have him stay at my house one weekend a month than live in the same town as me. Even if it meant putting him up. And he was ok with that situation, as long as I put him up. If I made him stay at a hotel every time I don't know what would happen.
You know, there are people who kill and hurt others. They don't kill and hurt people every second of every day. Maybe they do it once in their life, or once a year, or who knows. There is something weird in my husband. Like his eyes change and it is scary. Sure, take it with a grain of salt but many have seen it. Sure, it's not one of those things I can prove in court which goes back to my main concern that when I go to court I will have to accept that he will get some visitation, and I wondered what kind of visitation agreement would be agreeable to him and the safest for my son.
All of the "rambling" is only as character reference. Do I think that stealing my money will affect his visitation? No. Will the fact that he was banned from two college campuses for trying to meet girls there affect his visitation? No. His lack of employment, English skills, citizenship, etc. will not affect his visitation, I know. But in the meantime, I work as much as I can, study, do everything for my son, and am only trying to move forward in the most honest way possible. There's no legitimate reason for him to object to my move because he currently does not try to see our son. The fact that I left him in one state and moved to another negatively affected him IF you think that having my son around was a priority, but I don't think it was. And again, please tell me what I should have done when I left him? To be honest I applied to graduate school in Philadelphia and did not get in. The one in NC is the only one I got into. That's the main reason I am moving. I have suggested that I could potentially live near him (if he does get custody with weeks of visitation I would rather live near him) when I am done with school.
My ex's sister got divorced. She raises the kids while her ex husband lives in another country and never sees them. My ex said that his former brother-in-law is lucky because he gets to have kids and let them be raised by someone else. That's how he sees things. He is not "suffering" because I moved far away. He is suffering because he does not have my financial support anymore.
I guess I will restate how the previous visitation worked out:
my ex said he was going to come. Several times he came by bus. Some of the time I paid for a ticket and picked him up (1.5 hours away). Any time he was behaving in a normal way, I let him stay at my house. That involved giving him food to eat and etc. After new year he started to come by car. I still let him sleep over when he was behaving. The sleeping over thing was not great because he was not willing to 1. be normal acting 2. not try to sleep with me etc. As others have said, it's weird to *know* that someone is abusive and not trustworthy, and let them sleep at your house. On the other hand, my "decent" side felt guilty (as you pointed out I should) that he lived far away and had to make this effort to see his son. During all of this time he has not paid child support and let me add that before I left him he drained our shared account, that contained money I (and only I) had earned. More than enough money to pay for his trips to see our son over the past year).
In this thread I initially stated that I was willing to meet him once a month in Richmond, and once a month (one weekend) let him sleep over in NC to see our son. That would more than double his visitation time. Lots of people said it was a bad idea because I can't say he's abusive on the one hand, and let him sleep over on the other. It's not totally black and white of course. As I said in my post from a year ago, and in this thread, sometimes he's ok and everything is fine. If he will just keep his cool I have no problem going out to eat as a group, watching a movie together (I mean with our son) and engaging in other activities that let my son feel his father's presence. At the same time, this all goes against my gut feeling that my ex is a bad guy and undeserving, yet I know it's not up to me to judge, until he has done something really blatantly dangerous to our son.
My father was divorced from his ex wife. My half-brother stayed with us a lot of the time. The ex wife and her husband stayed over to visit us. There were never scenes, nothing nasty, nothing dangerous. I know that exes can remain civil for the sake of the child and I try to do so. But my ex is really hard to deal with, unpredictable, and I think he could potentially be dangerous. He is sometimes just in the moment and his fits of rage make no sense and are scary.
My lawyer says that he wants to create a situation in which my ex has limited visitation or perhaps just drops out of the picture. Is it wrong of me to want that? I don't know. Obviously I want my son to have a dad but the one he has is not even trying to be a decent dad. He literally hasn't done anything to show that he is putting our son first and wants to remain civil for our son's sake. When he sees our son he is hardly affectionate with him and only plays with him for 5 minutes.
You still aren't making any sense OP... Even he's a danger to your child or he is not. The more you post, the more confusing you become. I'm just not buying all of your accusations, because you're saying one thing, but your actions are contradicting. It's just really hard to give any advice w/o hearing both sides of the story.
My ex and I get along just fine now. I see my children regularly. However, during our custody battle, she was describing me as the devil and I said the same about her. We exaggerated incidents, and took what ever we could out of context. We both wasted a lot of money and time and energy nit picking about little things that did not really matter. The sooner that we got over it and everything that happened in our relationship, the better it was for everyone including our children.
Also, the fact that he's fighting in court now could be seen as him wanting to have a relationship with his son.
My goodness. I haven't had time to catch up on the rants, but I'll read them later.
I want to impress upon you that he will someday have visitation without you around since you have ZERO proof of abuse. Your allowing him to stay at your house and be around you further negates any claims you have of him being abusive. Your excuse that you're allowing it to protect your child is absolutely and utterly illogical.
What happened in the past is irrelevant going forward. The visitation hearing doesn't care that he spent your savings. His not paying child support has no bearing whatsoever on visitation.
I understand that you're worried and want to protect your child, but you're not thinking rationally and you're bringing up a billion things that won't be considered relevant in a visitation hearing. We don't need dramatic explanations about his character because none of it will influence the court because you have no proof.
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