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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’ve posted before that my husband and I are recently separated and I’m informally supervising his visiting the kids in our home. He’s an alcoholic, in recovery now, but has driven drunk with them, broken things in the house in anger, got in a street fight. Kids are 4 and 7 and I haven’t yet decided whether I want to divorce, hence the separation while he works on staying sober and I have some space.

Anyway, his parents live out of state. For a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with me, we haven’t seen them in almost a year. We were finally supposed to go in January, which was cancelled because he was in inpatient treatment. We had to reschedule instead of cancel the tickets so rescheduled to April. I don’t want to go for 2 reasons. One, there’s not any easy way for us to sleep separately or have space from each other visiting his parents. Two, there is alcohol everywhere at his parents house. Bar on the main floor and bar in the basement, lots of drinking in the family. His relationship with his parents is really triggering. I think there’s high relapse potential. He doesn’t think any of that is an issue, which is more concerning to me. But the kids love and miss their grandparents and their grandparents love and miss them. I like my ILs and want them to have a relationship with the kids.

I asked if we could fly his parents here to see the kids. He doesn’t want to do that while we’re separated. I want the kids to see their grandparents. I’d even be happy to take the kids to visit without him. I think he thinks he’ll move back in a month or two and everything will be back to normal.

For divorced/separated families where one parent is not really in the picture, how do you maintain a relationship with that parent’s family?[/quote]
Why doesn't he want to fly out IL while you're separated?  Has he not told them?  Do they know he's in recovery?  He can't expect you to go visit and pretend everything is hunky dory.

For divorced couples, he'd just fly to the ILs with them on his week and you wouldn't be involved.  It sounds like you don't trust him to do that now, but that's exactly what will happen if you're divorced and he has at least partial custody.[/quote]

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