I mean this kindly, but seeking 100% custody and having a parent evaluator in your life is unlikely to get you anything more than 50% custody and has vastly increased the amount of stress in your life. I don’t know your situation, but if your position on custody became more flexible, do you think you could perhaps negotiate a divorce that would be smoother and be done faster? Given what you heard from the evaluator perhaps it is time to find a less stressful path.

And I’m very, very sorry if shared custody is a terrible outcome for your kids. I just think you may need to be more realistic about where your time could be best focused.

Anonymous wrote:Why did you marry and reproduce with an a$$hole?!

I can’t imagine DH doing this and all the friends I’ve known to divorce have amicable divorces and remain “friends” with their ex. Most end up better for the kids. You are at least half responsible for your trauma.

NP here,

I have no idea whether OP overlooked flags, but I can look back and see red flags I missed in my own situation.

But even if OP made a mistake, I don't see how that changes the answer to this question, which is how do I come through this in a way that is manageable and protects my kids.

I'm also going to 100% reject the idea that I am somehow equally responsible for the trauma, because I was naive, as the person who physically assaulted me and my children.

Anonymous wrote:I think there are times in life when you keep going because there is no other option. It sounds like you’re in that phase right now.

I hope you can take some comfort in knowing that there is an end date. This will be over at some point in the near future, and until then, focus on the light at the end of the tunnel.

OP here. This comment and others have kept me going all week.

I had a very unexpectedly bad interaction with the custody evaluator today and unfortunately I think that my documentation efforts and late nights and stupid printer jams are all for naught.

They hadn’t read even the basics of their own questionnaire 2 months into the process and were confused about basic facts of our lives. They said that anything one of my DCs had said was probably a lie because “that’s how kids [their age, not young]” are. Then they asked what I did for STBX to act as I alleged he did and asked if I could see it from his perspective and describe that.

Then they told me my kids are “fine”, (even though they said they haven’t had time to contact their therapists yet), and that “kids are resilient” and “need both parents.”

I think that I expected this outcome based on horror stories I’ve read, and maybe all my documentation and prep efforts have just been a way of pretending I had any influence in an pre-determined outcome.

If you’re religious, say a prayer for my kids.

Anonymous wrote:Make a list of all the stuff you need to pull and spend half the day on weekends pulling it together. Each week make a new list.

Create a chart for visitation so you can just check things off/fill in: Date of visitation, pickup on time, kids clothes upon leaving, upon returning, what they said they ate, health, time of return, etc.

This is a good suggestion for ChatGPT. Are there charts or spreadsheets that AI could create so some of this is streamlined? Is it better to schedule blocks of time to address issues instead of trying to deal with it as it comes in?

Good luck OP!

I think there are times in life when you keep going because there is no other option. It sounds like you’re in that phase right now.

I hope you can take some comfort in knowing that there is an end date. This will be over at some point in the near future, and until then, focus on the light at the end of the tunnel.

I am sorry you are going through this OP. I was dealing with post-separation abuse and him filing frivolous motions. It took me 2.5 years. I only had an attorney in the last 6 months. I was up nights writing objections to his frivolous motions and documenting everything. I had a therapist and so did the kids. My health and sleep suffered. I had to deal with a custody evaluation from the court that was so biased. Thankfully, my attorney suggested a great guardian ad litem. Like you I also had primary custody. However, I don't know how old your kids are, but mine are older and basically refused to go to any visitation. They also saw his ill treatment of me. On the eve of trial, ex settled. I got what I wanted and so did the kids, and monetarily he got what he wanted. I suggest you get a therapist if you don't have one already. And get one for the kids. This too shall pass.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sometimes abusive men use the family court system as another means to abuse their wife.

Sometimes abusive cheating women use the court system to do the same thing.

Since the statistics show coercive controllers lean heavily male and judicial abuse is a form of coercive control, it's far more likely to be an abusive man doing this than a woman.

But yes, women can certainly engage in judicial abuse. It's just far less likely.

Check your facts. https://domesticviolenceresearch.org/domestic-violence-facts-and-statistics-at-a-glance/

Not significantly higher.

I said coercive control. Coercive controlling domestic abuse is merely one form of domestic violence. One of the other two is situational, where there's no unbalanced power and control dynamic, but simply something like both partners going overboard in a rage. The other is a single instance of violence that happens out-of-the blue after separation without a power and control dynamic ever happening before.

Women are far more likely to be engaged in situational abuse or use violence in response to years of coercive control by a partner (sometimes called "reactive abuse") than they are to be engaged in coercive control.


https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2968709/

Your situation is not normal. Most people don’t have the money to fight like that. As you can see, it’s not worth it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sometimes abusive men use the family court system as another means to abuse their wife.

Sometimes abusive cheating women use the court system to do the same thing.

Since the statistics show coercive controllers lean heavily male and judicial abuse is a form of coercive control, it's far more likely to be an abusive man doing this than a woman.

But yes, women can certainly engage in judicial abuse. It's just far less likely.

Check your facts. https://domesticviolenceresearch.org/domestic-violence-facts-and-statistics-at-a-glance/

Not significantly higher.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m so sorry OP.
That sounds very stressful.
I can’t imagine the circumstances that would cause you’re DH to act this way—particularly if it’s a divorce YOU did not want.
I sort of get him acting all mad and crazy if he caught you cheating and is irreparably hurt by it or if you insisted on divorcing and taking the kids and he is hell-bent in not letting that happen.
But since you said in your original post that you are in the middle of a “very unwanted and very litigious divorce,” I’m trying to make sense of that since it seems like he is initiating the divorce and choosing to be nasty and difficult for no reason? Are you sure he knows that you do not want a divorce?? It just makes no sense for him to go nuclear when you aren’t pushing his buttons. And given that in 85% of all hetero divirces, it’s the woman who files, this is definitely unusual.
Hang in there.

OP here and well aware how unusual it is. I shouldn’t share too many details. Basically last year I finally stood up to his bad behavior, he threw the equivalent of a toddler tantrum, quieted down for a few months, and then started turning on our tween DDs (but not our younger DS). When the girls pushed back before I even could, he went verbally crazy at them. Then disappeared, as in took his work laptop and keys and was gone. Then filed.

I think he felt caught and ashamed and so he panicked. I had tried to get him to make amends and seek counseling. Instead he was just gone- like I literally had NO idea where he was for 10 days- and then filed. It seems possible from bank activity that he had an attorney and filing lined up way back when I started standing up to him and just had to pull the trigger.

Sounds like there is more to the story and you wanted him to leave and divorce so he did it. He cannot force you to have a relationship with him.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sometimes abusive men use the family court system as another means to abuse their wife.

Sometimes abusive cheating women use the court system to do the same thing.

Since the statistics show coercive controllers lean heavily male and judicial abuse is a form of coercive control, it's far more likely to be an abusive man doing this than a woman.

But yes, women can certainly engage in judicial abuse. It's just far less likely.

Anonymous wrote:Sometimes abusive men use the family court system as another means to abuse their wife.

Sometimes abusive cheating women use the court system to do the same thing.

Anonymous wrote:I’m so sorry OP.
That sounds very stressful.
I can’t imagine the circumstances that would cause you’re DH to act this way—particularly if it’s a divorce YOU did not want.
I sort of get him acting all mad and crazy if he caught you cheating and is irreparably hurt by it or if you insisted on divorcing and taking the kids and he is hell-bent in not letting that happen.
But since you said in your original post that you are in the middle of a “very unwanted and very litigious divorce,” I’m trying to make sense of that since it seems like he is initiating the divorce and choosing to be nasty and difficult for no reason? Are you sure he knows that you do not want a divorce?? It just makes no sense for him to go nuclear when you aren’t pushing his buttons. And given that in 85% of all hetero divirces, it’s the woman who files, this is definitely unusual.
Hang in there.

Not OP, but I'm in the middle of an unwanted divorce and I'm also the one who filed.

It was that or wind up in the hospital.

I literally can't live under the same roof as my STBX, but that doesn't mean I want to be here. What I want is STBX to not be an abusive addict, which was true at points in our marriage so it's a reasonable want. It's just...not going to happen. And STBX has undergone the literally tens of thousands of dollars of therapy to prove it first.

Anonymous wrote:Why did you marry and reproduce with an a$$hole?!

I can’t imagine DH doing this and all the friends I’ve known to divorce have amicable divorces and remain “friends” with their ex. Most end up better for the kids. You are at least half responsible for your trauma.

Not OP and WTF? The very definition of an abuser is that they can put on a nice face to anyone they want to, at any time.

That includes the person they marry for as long as it takes to reel them in.

And the abuse is calculated to break you down and get progressively worse, so at each stage you really have a very hard time noting it or fighting it. Gaslighting and DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim and offender) keep the actual victim guessing and confused.

It's literally best compared to the psychological (and unfortunately sometimes physical, but the psychological is worse in all cases) torture prisoners of war undergo.

And you're blaming OP?!?

The only person responsible for abuse is an abuser.

Sometimes abusive men use the family court system as another means to abuse their wife.