Need advice on a personal situation

[Guyute]

I feel that this whole "illegal weapons" thing is a serious issue that this lawyer could jump all over. If she spends more than 5 minutes in that house with your (his) kids, the court should freak out to find that there are weapons in there which would be considered shady. I would be freaking out if my psycho ex's psycho cult parents were "touched" enough to keep these weapons laying around. The jusdge should know this!! Imagine if one of the kids got their hands on one?????

"oh yeah, and by the way Your Honor, Mr. So-and-psycho keeps a loaded AK-47 full-auto in his front closet in case some twit comes by selling Electrolux, and I am SURE he has no permit for it."

Or tell someone who knows someone (EVERYBODY knows someone who knows a biker or some other under-the-radar-of -the-cops type) that this guy has those weapons laying around in case they want to "borrow" them. Who would he complain to?

[OnyxCougar]

YAY on the lawyer! When is your hearing?

[kerosene]

Yes, the illegal weapons are a big deal. We haven't even fully discussed that with the attorney. We don't have proof of it, though, so I am not sure how we should go about approaching that.

Thanks, OC! The hearing is on Monday, 3/7. We have a week, but our attorney plans on adding several addendums with evidence. I think we have a good shot at it...and there is a possibility that the court may require a psych eval to re-determine custody. If this happens, they appoint an evaluator, but we are not so sure we want social services digging around in our lives. I guess if it comes to that, we don't have much choice. If we had the money we would hire an evaluator and request the evaluation ourselves.

One other thing, we requested the attendance record from bf's daughter's school and we received it in the mail the other day. Daughter has had 18 absences so far this year. She is a kindergartener. 9 of these absences were excused by her mother and 9 of them were not excused. There is a whole week in January where she was absent unexcused, and when bf asked about that in an email to the ex, she never responded.

Anyway, thanks so much for all the support here. I will keep you posted!

[Guyute]

What exactly are the illegal weapons?

[kerosene]

personally, I am not sure what they are. I have no knowledge in that arena. Bf knows about it, though and it isn't like they just sit out for everyone to see/use. They are hidden in the basement. I think one of them is a modified auto-matic something or other and there is a sawed off shotgun. There are others, I guess, too. Plus, her brother doesn't have a license to have any sort of guns, but he has several, and lives in the same house.

[wolf]

Most jurisdictions don't require a license to own a gun, but do require a permit to carry a gun. There are legal standards regarding prior criminal history or prior mental health commitment (in sometimes this includes voluntary treatment) that may restrict firearms ownership. You can get information regarding state laws at http://www.packing.org

Many modifications are legal, including sawing off shotguns to a certain barrel length (usually about 18 inches, IIRC).

[kerosene]

Good to know, wolf. I am glad we aren't really using that angle, anyway. I couldn't care less if there were guns around, actually, unless they were accessable by the children, and I doubt they are. I would like to learn to shoot one, actually.

Sounds like, according to the attorney, we have far more compelling evidence in other arenas (parental alienation, her outrageous emotional behavior, her unwillingness to allow a relationship between kids and dad, etc.) to even go the gun route.

Her only witnesses are going to be her and her new husband. We thought she would call her entire clan up to the stand, but it doesn't look like it will be so.

[mindster2000]

i understand completely what you are talking about.i was in the same situation for a few years until i was educated a little about child custody.i now have custody of my three children and yesterday i was amazed to see a check for cs in the mail(they had kept her taxes).one of the most important things you can do and most people don't know about:at the county clerk's office in the county you were divorced in,you have a file that you can see that holds everything regarding your divorce and custody issues.they will even give you copies of anything in there for a small fee.any time she won't let you see the kids write a letter and go put it in that file,also you can put copies of the cs receipts that you pay,you can even contest anything she files on you by putting it in writing and having a clerk there witness it and put it in the file.before any kind of hearing is scheduled by the judge,he looks at this file.if you don't do this all the judge can see is a file that seems like you don't even care.you should even write about how much you miss and love your children. i kept at it until the judge finally saw that my ex was playing games and using the children as a tool to get at me.i also found a good lawyer who believed in me,too many nowdays are sell outs.if i can be of any help let me know. oh yeah,one other thing is if they are telling the kids that you are so bad and confusing them,if they are young the dhs in the town you live in can do an investigation.doing that to children is a form of child abuse.but most importantly,tell your kids the truth about what is going on,they will understand more than you think they do.

[mrnoodle]

Is anyone living in the house a convicted felon? If so, the presence of the guns can mean lots of trouble for them.

[hot_pastrami]

Your boyfriend's ex sounds like a bitch from Hell. It is rare that a person would consider themselves evil, yet people like your boyfriend's ex do seemingly evil things on a regular basis. The interesting thing is that most people who do such things feel completely justified in their actions. People tend to compromise their principles more readily than they realize when they believe it will result in "justice."

I figure that your boyfriend's ex must have such a delicate self-image that she can't admit wrongdoing without putting her self-image in jeapardy. To protect their self-image, such people unconsciously prop up flawed logic with true facts, selectively employed, thinking that they can nullify facts that disagree with their logic with those that support it. They become blind to reason on the matter.

This results in victim mentality, which produces exagerrated feelings of entitlement (to make up for perceived wrongs that have been done to them). If such a person is unhappy, the cycle accelerates, and any little thing can snowball into huge feelings of entitlement. That person may then sacrifice their principles and do nasty things, viewing them as necessary to achieve "justice." The farther down this road one goes, the more one is invested in it, and the more cemented the original flawed logic must become to protect their self-image.

I think this is why so many intelligent, reasonable people can do seeminlgy evil things, while similarly intelligent, reasonable people can sympathise with them. But that doesn't make it less evil.

It's a rare thing to find someone with the strength of character to admit a mistake, particularly with something important. People don't want to admit mistakes if it will also be admitting a fundamental character flaw. This constitutes a greater human flaw, I suppose.

Good luck to you, and keep us posted. Sorry for the windy writeup.

[kerosene]

*Sigh*

Well, I guess it is time to give you all the update. My delay in posting to this thread has probably given away, in part, what the outcome was.

No, we weren't successful in getting the children out of bf's ex's influence, but we did manage to make a little progress:

The judge ruled that the move would be permitted. Part of her reasoning had to do with our choice to move to Boulder for school (1 1/2 hours from kiddo's grandparents' house) and part of it, I believe, was due to the judges past experience as a single mother. But some of the benefits of the ruling included the way the judge expressed her concern about the influences of the ex's family and the ex's noncholant attitude about her daughter's performance in school and attendance record. She repremanded the whole family on her side of the room, while they were all sitting there. She told them their behavior was disgusting and these children should never EVER be put in the middle of a situation like they have. She expressed to the ex that she never should have allowed the children to be in the presence of people who were making those kind of remarks about their father and didn't support his role. She also gave bf the entire summer, all spring breaks, and every other winter break with the children, as well as scheduled times to call them throughout the weeks they are with the ex. I didn't get to be there for the whole thing, since I was a witness, but I heard all about how bf's lawyer made the ex read portions of countless emails she sent threatening bf. I heard that she couldn't finish reading them, it was so bad. Her whole self-righteous family was denounced and she was "publically" embarassed. She ruled that whenever the kids are with their mom, visiting Colorado, bf has first right of refusal and is allowed to have additional parenting time for the length of the visit. That goes for any and all visits she makes to Colorado, period. One more thing, the judge said that if she hears of any more absences in school that are excessive, she will not hesitate to bring the children back to Colorado (judge's words).

So, here was my take on all that: It was disappointing for the judge not to have put much weight on the ex's inability to put the needs of her children before her own. But, this was not a custody hearing, it was a move-away hearing and the ex stated in the beginning of the hearing that if she was not permitted to bring the children to Texas with her, she would not move to be with her husband. I am sure the judge would have assumed she would continue to live with her parents where the crux of the emotional problems in that family lie. Add that to a long distance marriage and a lost battle with bf, and I am sure the judge realized the emotional repercusions to the children while with mom. As for the visits to Colorado, we are pleased as punch that anytime the ex wants to come visit her parents, bf can prevent their influence by exercising his parenting time for the duration of the visit. Also, like I said, the judge had raised her children by herself and was new to family law, as she had been a public defender for many years prior to becoming a judge. So, yeah, some of that may have been reasons for such a shocking outcome, but we are not giving up.

We have started a log (which we should have done a long time ago). Everything that occurs between bf and his kids or his ex is getting recorded with dates and times. I am doing the recording for him to help him out. Everytime he calls the children, it gets logged. Everytime the ex makes a comment in front of the kids that the judge would consider inapporpriate for the children to hear, we log it. This week and next, we have the kids, because they are still in Colorado and the little girl is not in school, because of spring break. Ex didn't call tonight on her scheduled night, so we are logging it. EVERYTHING is getting logged.

The other side's reaction? As one might expect. They heard the judge say the move was permitted, but must have been plugging their ears for the rest of it. Bf's daughter asked him if he had to go talk to a judge with mommy, after her grandfather had explained the whole court process to her(completely inappropriate, IMO). BF talked with ex's father the other night to ask him not to talk about the courts to his daughter and was told that the ex was now going to a "home life" and the kids will have a "real father". He was told the grandfather would continue to explain all of that to bf's daughter because "she should know that an authority is allowing her mother to move to Texas", etc. This is all getting logged too. We are being supportive and positive to the children about the move, though, since we don't want them to feel like they are disappointing dad. We have come up with some neat ways to stay involved with them (videos, webcam, letters, etc.) The ex denies what the judge has said about the influence on the kids, and refuses to address any of bf's concerns about the kids. We will be ordering the judge's transcript for our records and usage. We are preparing for the next battle, because the war is not over yet. At least, in the meantime, the kids are going to be better off than they would have been without a court hearing, out of their grandparents' house and never to have that influence forced upon them. Let's hope the psycho can handle being in a world without her parents within a day's drive, unless, of course, she comes back to Colorado.

[kerosene]

Originally Posted by hot_pastrami

Your boyfriend's ex sounds like a bitch from Hell. It is rare that a person would consider themselves evil, yet people like your boyfriend's ex do seemingly evil things on a regular basis. The interesting thing is that most people who do such things feel completely justified in their actions. People tend to compromise their principles more readily than they realize when they believe it will result in "justice."

I figure that your boyfriend's ex must have such a delicate self-image that she can't admit wrongdoing without putting her self-image in jeapardy. To protect their self-image, such people unconsciously prop up flawed logic with true facts, selectively employed, thinking that they can nullify facts that disagree with their logic with those that support it. They become blind to reason on the matter.

This results in victim mentality, which produces exagerrated feelings of entitlement (to make up for perceived wrongs that have been done to them). If such a person is unhappy, the cycle accelerates, and any little thing can snowball into huge feelings of entitlement. That person may then sacrifice their principles and do nasty things, viewing them as necessary to achieve "justice." The farther down this road one goes, the more one is invested in it, and the more cemented the original flawed logic must become to protect their self-image.

This sounds *exactly* like that family. They have a lot of money, but they have sort of swindled it out of people, with all kinds of justification attached to it. When you call them on it, they get into attack mode, hurling insult after insult at the accuser as if to make you seem worse than them. Kind of like "well, they pointed out my shirt was red, but look, his shirt is GREEN!"

They are messed up, emotionally...all of them. I can't wait to afford a psych evaluator for that group of loonies.

[OnyxCougar]

*sigh*

Well, this may be for the better in the long run. Without knowing the people involved other than your descriptions of them, my opinion is that thing with Texas isn't going to last long, and when she moves back to colorado, it's all about having the kids full time.

Absolutely keep logging everything.

This ain't over, sweetie.... I'm sensing you'll have them sooner than you may think...

[kerosene]

I know what you mean, OC. In these situations people tend to demonize the other side. These people are seriously messed up, but I would hold the same reservations.

You're probably right. I'll bet she doesn't make it too long 20 hours from her parents. Either that or her husband will wise up at some point and give her the boot. I don't know, though. We will just see how things go.