problems

The years since my divorce have not been easy. I could have laid down and taken it but I choose to fight back and protect my rights. I have paid dearly in many ways, financially and in my personal life. Personally it nearly cost me a three year long relationship with a woman that I care for deeply. How, the numerous false rumors that have beeen spread in an effort to discredit me. If you want to believe the stories that are out there about me, I am a wife beating, drunken homosexual on parole. The sense of humor that I have is the only thing that makes these attacks on my caracter laughable to me. My the good Lord have mercy on the next person that attacks me in this manner. I will come after them with the full power of the courts.
Finacially it has cost me nearly $150,000, between the lawyers and having to refinance the house.
Don't assume that people who supported you when you got into this will support you in the years to come. I have had my own mother turn against me and most of my friends walk away. I have put my son first in everything including my personal life.
Shortly after the divorce was final I was hit with papers stating that she was filling for full custody. Back to court for a full-blown custody battle that was supposed to be settled. It took a year but I won because she couldn't pass the psycological testing that the court required.
I have had to put up with repeated violations of the agreement through the years. She has taken off with my son on vacations and failed to provide contact information that is required by the agreements. She has failed to share medical information. She has refused to allow me to pick him up on Fathers day because it was not convenient for her to get out of bed when my son wanted to be picked up. She has not picked him up on Mothers day or her birthday. Guess she figured that this was her time.
Her father has attacked me in front of my son. Her new husband has threatened me when I told him to mind his own business because he has nothing to say with the raising of my son. I have never seen his name on any of my custody papers.
This is a woman who got married and informed her son when she picked him up on Sunday for the weekly transfer. She then proceeded to move him to a new residence. By the way this all took place during the school year.
This year she didn't even give him a birthday present until a week after his birthday so the she and he could celebrate their birthdays together. Through the years she has never given him a birthday party for him and his friends. That has always been up to me.
She has endangered my son by refusing to allow him to use a bathroom that was next to his bedroom, telling him that he could only use the one in the basement even if he had to use it at night.
This year I did the same thing again. She again filed for custody with no basis. Several court officials told her that she didn't have a case or issues that they would consider as cause to change custody. The result, again I defeated her and stood up for what I knew was right.
This has not been easy on my son but he has filed an affidavit with the court stating that he wants to now live with me full time. Yet her reaction has been to continually tell him that he is not old enough to know what he wants. She has told him that the school, that he enjoys going to isn't any good and that he will never succeed because of where he goes to school. This is a form of mental abuse by belittling him repeatedly. Any real wonders why he doesn't want to live with her?
The one thing that I have done through out the years is be honest with the boy. I told him when she filed the papers and told him what she was trying to do. He told me that he didn't want to live with her because of conditions within her house. I.e. step brothers that gang up on him and a lack of friends to play with. I have stood behind him the whole way.
Honesty with the child is the key to our relationship. We talk all the time and have stood behind each other all the way. There are things that I don't tell him because I don't want him to have the same worries that I do. I don't lie to him, I just don't tell him everything. I carry the burden of the problems because these are not kid problems, they are adult problems.
Work can be a problem also because too few employers recognize fathers as the raising parent. Get your head out of the sand, you will make concessions for women that work for you, why not the fathers that are raising their kids?