Sigh

[VocalMinority]

If my step-son's mother sends him one more greeting card...or book about how important mothers are to their sons...or money...instead of showing up for a visit, or even explaining why she can't come...I am just going to vomit.  

The up-side is, it makes me feel more secure about keeping custody.  How, exactly, do you:

- Dump your kid's health insurance;

- Offer to pay for music lessons and half his tuition, but never follow through;

- Get an exemption from paying child support so you can spend the money coming to visit him, then only come for one weekend in the last 18 months;

- Meanwhile, put $200/month on your 13-year-old's secret credit card, so you can be the "cool" parent who enables him to buy stuff online without his custodial parent knowing (so evidently it's not that Mom's "broke"...)

- Then imagine it's a "done deal" that you'll get custody if you take your ex back to court?

Surely, we would have to be beating him or selling him into indentured servitude, for a judge with any brains to let him move across the country to live with her, right?

[Adaline'sMama]

Right.

Secret credit cards, no visitations, not paying for stuff she promised to pay for?

That sounds really frustrating.

[Smithie]

Very frustrating. But she's the mom, you can't discount the likelihood that she is going to get him back. 

I know that's not what you want to hear, but I want you to be steeled for it. She has no record with Child Services. She never willingly gave him up. He is likely to testify that he wants to be placed with her. Heck, if she wasn't a total nutbar, it might even be GOOD for him to be placed with her. He was taken away from her against his will, and if he were allowed to return, it might lay to rest the idea that the courts and his father conspired to kidnap him for some nefarious purpose. 

Of course, she's a total nutbar and should not be raising a kid. Will the judge see that? Will s/he care? We can't know.