Or are you sad that people simply stopped giving you guys backpats and kudos for what you’ve already done? The things he’s done right? Those are things that parents do every single day and I don’t think he deserves some kind of gold star for it. That’s what a parent is SUPPOSED to do.
Let me just add, here is why I think Susan won’t ever take us up on our offer: because she wouldn’t continue to get her big paycheck from Greg. Also she would not want to be under increased scrutiny. She likes getting her money and living however she wants. Also, she wound not want to get a job, and moving here and with her youngest kid going into school soon, she would not have an excuse not to get a job anymore. So it’s pretty much hopeless.
Sleeps, you may not think Greg deserves props, but I admire him greatly and am impressed by all he has done for his kids, every day of their lives. I see first-hand how much he cares for them and how much he has struggled while helplessly watching his kids suffer, and while he has been denied justice from the system that is supposed to stand up for the best interests of the children. I think he deserves a gold star because I observe him to be a great father who has gone above and beyond.
I’ve tried to stay out of this, because what I have to say is so not what you want to hear. But I do have to observe that, IMO, great fathers don’t helplessly watch their kids suffer.
And when I was 11, I most certainly was very cognizant of the fact that my father went off across the country to do his own thing and left his kids. And I certainly felt abandoned.
No, it’s just that he can’t make Susan do what he wants her to do, he can’t make the court do what he wants them to do, so he has only one other obvious choice of what can be changed. Many, many wives sacrifice their high-flying careers for lesser careers for the sake of the children. It’s not impossible, but you’re saying it is not an option. We’re saying, it may be the ONLY option if with the situation you’re describing. Unless you know of a way to make the mountain come to Mohamed.
She’s not going to get anywhere near you guys and a chance for Greg to foster a better relationship with his kids. If they pick him and move in with him, she’ll lose her main source of income. I’m sure she’s trying her hardest to poison them, it’s in her best interests. She sounds vile and venal, sorry for you, Greg and the kids.
I don’t know about
, perhaps this woman is just trying her darndest to keep her family together.
Let’s try an alternative viewpoint:
Susan and Greg had three kids together, but the marriage broke down and Sue was left with custody. She’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but without the emotional support of Greg found herself floundering. She met a new fellow, married and had three more kids before finding out that the bastard was a real bastard…(and how many of us can identify with THAT btw??). 
Susan doesn’t do drugs or booze, and loves her kids like crazy. They love her too, despite the unconventional lifestyle they’re living. Greg has since moved across country, but starts custody proceedings. His kids really don’t know him from a bar of soap as a father, and Susan fears that his actions will toss the family into a greater state of disarray than they are already experiencing with the imprisonment of the (other) father. Y’see, Greg might be a father to three of the kids, but they share a sibling relationship with another three kids…breaking that off is pretty harsh.
The custody applications were initiated through the courts, which cast shadows on Susan’s abilities to mother her children. That’s a pretty threatening thing for any woman, and especially one so vulnerable after the imprisonment of her husband and subsequent epiphany as to his evilness. Her ‘Mother Tiger’ instinct is activated, and she does all within her power to protect her brood from the threat to separate them.
Sure, Susan has made some pretty poor choices in her life, but from the information given here by the OP, none of them have been criminally or morally suspect. She’s doing the best that she can under difficult circumstances, and while Greg continues to hound her for custody of the kids, she’s going to have her claws out and hackles up.
/alternative viewpoint.
I’m sure Greg is a great guy, but he needs to switch from a ‘legal’ adversarial effort to help his kids to a more personal one. IOW, cut out the custody applications, and work with Susan to get the kids on track again. You might feel they would be ‘better off’ with him, and I’m sure that’s true on some level, but these kids are part of a family (however dysfunctional) that has survived for many years WITHOUT HIM. He needs to become part of the family again, (not just providing child support payments) and to do that he needs to move back to where they live. It’s a sacrifice, but if he is serious about wanting the BEST for his kids, that’s gotta happen.
Oh, and read Shayna’s post again too.
Remains to be seen, though, whether she’s “going to have her claws out and hackles up” even if Greg moves next door to her at a possible cost of his career and livelihood. It’s easy to say that a real dad will make any sacrifice for his kids, but scuttling your career without any kind of assurance that a) you can make a living where she chooses to live or that b) your relationship will be markedly different if you were physically closer or that c) you won’t have to do this over and over again, since she presumably is allowed to move as often as she pleases, and will probably do so willingly and spitefully if it inconveniences you.
I was in a similar position to Greg once upon a time, only with easier distances. I had a good job (still have it) 150 miles away from my ex- and my kids, and she exploited those 150 miles to the fullest advantage (keeping me waiting when I drove up to pick up my kids, often for hours, with petty bullshit “I’m doing their hair, and it’s very tangled–wait in your car and I’ll have them ready soon” and then making me wait again when I drove them back because she wouldn’t be home when she was supposed to be, after insisting that I return them plenty early on Sunday afternoon so they woulnd’t feel rushed going to school on Monday, etc., multiplied a thousandfold.) I often thought that I would have it easier if I could find a job in my field in her town, of course, but also if I took a job on the other coast, because then I would be free from all the petty nonsense of spending hours every other weekend being jerked around–I’d get to spend weeks on end with my kids during summer vacations and other breaks from school, but not have to be harried every other weekend and expose my kids to the rancorous hostility on every pick-up and drop-off, just a plane ride every few months. I don’t know if this was just a fantasy, but this horror story shows me that there is no real solution, and the only cautionary lesson I take from this and from my experience is that we, as a society, make it far too easy to start families with people we ought never to consider marrying. I think that very few people when contemplating marriage want to foresee something this resulting from that choice and so put blinders on when deciding to have kids with the crazy.
Underline mine. When I was living in Miami, I had people who were miss-estimating my age (thinking I’d just gotten there for undergrad college, when it was graduate) float the notion of a sham marriage to a soldier past me; I know other women who got similar contacts. We were supposed to get faster immigration processes, the soldiers were to get marriage benefits, and their being in the army and us in school justified living apart. I know several guys who joined the army straight out of high school and who were divorced (with or without custody of the children; one of them came home to find his kid on the kitchen table, on a dirty diaper, with a ‘you take care of it’ note) before their first enlistment period was over. It’s one of those cases of trying to instill a set of values which is, in itself, correct, and making a mess of it.
nyctea, one of the things Shayna said to do which I absolutely agree with was to get and stay in contact with the children’s school directly; cut the middle(wo)man. Make clear it’s about trying to keep tabs on things so you know, for example, whether you should arrange for tutoring when the kids come to visit. You know that Susan is the custodial parent and of course do not intend to argue about her parenting decisions but, since there have been communications problems in the past, you’d like to get copies of reports yourselves if this is acceptable under state law and school policies, please. And you’re terribly, terribly grateful for any information they send your way.
You do know that kids are very impressionable right? They tend to believe a lot of what their closest parent tells them, which in this case is the mother. 20 years later there are still things that I have to think about simply because my mother told me about my father which were not true. It’s hard for a kid to believe that their parent would lie to them.
This is pretty funny. I would say that all the money he paid to a lawyer, while expensive, saved him money in the long run. I had to pay $15,000 just to get some visitation rights to my children. And that was with a cooperative ex. I didn’t even want the divorce, she left me so I had zero choice in the matter, it was either pay the lawyer, or get kicked out of my own house that I owned before we got married.
As for moving back, while it might be a good idea for the kids, there is something people seem to be missing. The child support Greg is paying is mandatory, there’s no way out of it. He’s paying $30,000 a year, what happens if he moves to California and can’t find a job that pays more then 50-60 a year? He’s still on the hook for the support.
This kind of thing sucks for all involved, the kids, Greg and the ex-wife. No one should have to go through this but we do.
The thing is, though, that this “one weakness” is the most important thing that he could have done. Everything else is a distant second, third, whatever. He chose not to do the most important thing, and that’s what his kids know, and that’s what they’ll remember. Yeah, college is expensive, but he decided that he would rather have money than be close to his kids. And his kids know that, and they probably feel abandoned by him.
I don’t dismiss everything Greg has tried to do, or your efforts either; it’s just that, in trying to solve puzzles, one has to look at every option, consider every angle, not just the obvious ones. It’s looking for that one foothold, or tiny chink in the armor.
I don’t know that folks were recommending that Greg move to California per se, maybe another state which is closer than where y’all are right now. As sleeps mentioned, there are federal jobs in many areas.
I know that the kids have seen first hand that they can lie to Greg’s face about their activities and he’s so out of touch with them that he won’t catch on for weeks. That’s not just something Susan told them. That’s something that actually happened. That would have been a lot harder to pull off if Greg was personally involved in their lives.
In twenty years, the kids are going to remember that - not how much Greg spent in lawyer bills.
I do understand what you’re saying, but he’s got to pay the lawyer bills no matter what. My divorce has been fairly applicable, with fighting between us, and I’ve still paid a ton in lawyer bills. I can’t imagine what it must cost if there are real problems. He may have some sort of job that can’t be done elsewhere and if he got a new job then his pay could be severely cut. I know I couldn’t afford to change jobs so it’s a good possibility that Greg can’t either. I’m not saying he shouldn’t think about it, but sometimes these situations just don’t work out very well at all.
I wonder, though, if he had stayed local and found no job, wouldn’t that unemployment have been held against him in the custody process too?
If they are failing all their subjects in school, and even the 14-year-old failed PE, what makes you think these kids will ever even be accepted? I can’t see 'em getting into community college if they can’t even pass PE. Worrying about college money at this point sort of seems like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
First, you’re gonna have to get 'em through high school without dropping out or running away (from the sounds of it, that sounds like a distinctly likely possibility). Then you can start worrying about rehabilitating the academic skills they lost from all this distraction from school. Then you can think about college.
I doubt the OP wants to move back to where they came from for her boyfriend’s stupid ex. With things just SO bad and the kids failing so miserably at school, if I were the OP I’d take stock in the situation itself, wondering if I wanted to stay with the man mired in so much emotionally and financially.
I’m sure you care for him very much, but do you want children of your own? That’ll be completely financially impossible with how things currently sound, not to mention emotionally impossible with the guilt Greg would be wracked with, comparing the time he spends with you and new kid to his other kids.
Perhaps it’s cold, but if the OP wants something more peaceful (and she certainly sounds like she at least deserves it), there are guys out there not mired in similar situations.
nyctea, I’ve been following your story through the past several threads, and I was sure Greg would get the outcome he deserves. I’m disappointed and saddened to find out that he hasn’t. I’m so sorry that you and he have gone through so much. I hope that Greg has the energy to continue fighting in his kids’ best interest, and that you have the energy to be his support.
Yes, it would have. But at least he could have been involved in his kids’ lives more often, which would have counted greatly for him in the custody battle. And, of course, if he’d been more involved in his kids’ daily lives, they might not be quite so antagonistic towards him, and be doing better overall.
You realize you’re sending mixed, crazy signals here.