So, only married people have kids? Your reasoning is sound, but we were never married. Never so much as co-habitated or slept together. We were engaged when Emma was conceived, but… When it was clear the relationship was unsalvageable, I took an EPT to the ‘exit interview’. She had hung me out to dry once with a made up pregnancy, I didn’t want a repeat. She hates me because I won’t either do what she says, or go away. Her bluster gets most people scrambling to please her, or often enough she keeps it up. I call her on her most egregious bullshit. But you’re absolutely right about me being stuck.
You never slept with the mother of your child?
Kinda risky to dial 911, yesno? Anecdotal evidence suggests that’s a good way to get your own ass hauled to jail, even if you’re exhibiting a bleeding wound when the law arrives. Fortunately, I’ve no experience in that department - one ex-gf thought it no end of witty to pretend to knee me in the nads, but she never actually made contact. Mind you, it was a waste of breath attempting to explain why I didn’t think it was funny.
If you are a male and the female has hit you, remain calm and report it to the police. The police have been trained to look at domestic violence with a little less gender bias. It’s especially important to report acts of violence if there is a child involved. She may also be abusing the child.
I can understand how this would piss you off, but I hope that is as far as it goes. Since when does the child get everything she wants? This is not up to her. This is your time with her and she must spend it with you. If you start letting your wife take that away from you, you will lose your daughter – perhaps forever. Make it clear to your wife that you will be picking your daughter up regardless.
Please don’t say anything negative about your wife to the child. I know that you would just love to turn loose and I don’t blame you. But this is your little girl’s mother.
When gender discrimination becomes unConstitutional, men will be treated as equals in family courts. It’s about time!
You have been taking the best approach.
Whether or not you move for custody, work with a good family lawyer to cover your bases.
Keep very detailed notes concerning you, your child and her mother.
Consider wearing a wire and recording calls – not so much for a custody battle (your lawyer can advise you as to whether such things would or would not be admissible or even legal in your jurisdiction), but simply to have something solid upon which you can prove your innocence if the mother makes false allegations that land you in jail.
Consider having supervised access exchanges, either informally through a friend or formally through an exchange centre.
I only wish.
Unfortunately, when it comes to family law, it is a lot more complicated than that.
Do it.
Do it every single incident. The only way you can cover your own ass is with a paper trail. It sounds like eventually you are going to have to fight for custody of your daughter to get her away from PsychoMom, and the paper trail is the only way you’ll get it.
Unless she puts you in the hospital. That’s a trump card.
As far as the “man card” comment…FWIW, your man card should be gold embossed. Showing restraint like that is a good thing. The Neanderthal response would have been to deck her.
One of my sisters-in-law, judging by the stories from her brother (my husband) and her other sisters, has a long history of doing just enough violence to someone that when they finally escalate their defense to trying to make her stop, that it often looks like she’s the victim - and she tries to make it look that way.
As a kid she’d do hair-pulling or lighter pummeling, and when a parent came in the room she’d do a masterful crying-and-wailing job about how the other sibling attacked her, whether that person actually did any fighting back or not. I gather when she pulled this in her late teen/early 20s years when at least one other similar-aged sister was living at home as well, she pulled that switch when she heard her dad coming to investigate, and did such a good acting job she got the defending-herself sister thrown out of the house on the spot!
She got violent with her then-husband-now-ex while on vacation; she was also high and/or drunk at the time, and was arrested running down the street in her bikini. (They were going to go to the lake at the resort they were staying at, but a fight started.) An argument had turned into her clawing the hell out of her husband’s back and other locations, drawing blood and everything.
It got to the point where we didn’t really believe any “he did ____ to me” statements from her, until several years ago we stopped by her apartment days after an incident where she’d claimed her then-boyfriend had broken her door in. The door jam was recently broken and repaired, and there was a copy of the police report along with a pamphlet from our state’s attorney general about domestic abuse. :eek: We had assumed it was her telling tales, but I don’t think you can find a way to translate her usual “escalate, then run crying” method over to actually breaking in a door. (Still, it does seem to have calmed her down finally, or maybe the winding down of her partying days have.)
This. You man card is a platinum one as far as I can tell. You’re in a really rough spot but you continue to operate on your same basic principles to do what’s right and you’re not getting budged off of your spot. If that’s not manly then every single cowboy movie ever made is a lie! 
In the sense of sharing a sleeping space, no. One of her ‘issues’ was an abusive ex husband. She said that she was afraid of freaking out if she woke up with a man’s body next to her. I guess she was afraid of flashing back and thinking I was him. Yes, we had sex, but the only times I spent the night, I slept on the couch.
I’ll take “Clues I Should Have Heeded” for 1000, Alex.
On a serious note, though:
a) it’s good you’re out. Limited contact with the ex and no trashing her to the kid is the absolute right thing to do. Kids develop bullshit-o-meters pretty quickly and this attempted brainwashing will hopefully not get far.
b) You were assaulted. You weren’t battered, but the great thing is you can file charges for one and not the other. And you should. Even if she gets a desk appearance ticket- hell, even if she gets it dismissed, the DA’s office has a record of everything- even things continued without a finding.
The important thing about filing charges for everything that happens is that the when the DA’s office knows the number of free passes someone got before the current court appearance, they know whether someone is lying or is habitual. You’d be surprised how many screwups come in all confident, “This is my first offense!” No, it’s not- actually you have a record of escalating misdemeanors that got CWOFed or dismissed, but apparently you didn’t learn your lesson, so it looks like you’re getting a few days in the House to think about that big word I used before: “escalating.”
File charges. It establishes her record. And while prior criminal acts can’t be used in court to prove propensity to commit the instant offense, they are CERTAINLY used to decide what to charge the defendant with or what to accept come plea time.
I am not a lawyer. You are not my client. This is not legal advice. Even if we’re in the same state, your DA’s office may run things differently.
Oh, and it’s “dropped THE dime” or “dimed out.” Just so you know for next time.
Malacandra, that’s part of why I told them I didn’t need contact, once I was away from her apartment. I would hope that CA cops would be less discrimanatory against the man in a domestic, but you’re right it’s a risk.
Zoe, I’ll have today to think about it, maybe talk to the PD about the incident, see what they think about doing a civil standby tomorrow. The strongest I’ve said to my daughter about this (She’s seven and beginning to understand) is "Mommy and Daddy aren’t getting along just right now, but we both still love You.
Muffin, I have been, if she refuses custody tomorrow, it will be the fifth violation of the parenting agreement since Xmas. I just don’t want my filing to sound too much like ‘She’s not nice to me, waaaah’ That’s not what this is about.
**
Clothahump** and Cluricaun, Thank you. That’s how I see it, I wasn’t sure anyone else would. So, re: cowboy movies, when do I get to go all John wayne, put her over my knee and spank her?
Ferret Herder, she’s just that sort of drama queen. She twists anything to paint herself the victim, no way at fault, etc. When she kicked me out of her apartment from the hospital and directed me to take Emma to a family friend, This became ‘Giving Daddy the weekend off’ and when another work/school week arrived, she told Emma (who was longing for her own bed.) That of course she could go home, as soon as Daddy stopped insisting on sleeping in his own bed, and agreed to go back to Mommy’s couch.
ETA: My place is unacceptable for sleepovers, because I have male roommates, and all men are molesters until proven otherwise.
Loves knows no Jeapordy, I guess.
I hope hers doesn’t. They’re pretty tight. Her parents support her, so she gets to be 100% stay at home mom.
I wish you damn lawyer types would make up your mind. Last time, an assault was a threat that made you scared, and battery was unwanted touching. I wasn’t afraid she’d hurt me, I just didn’t want to be touched with my coffee cup.
The rest of your advice, I’ve taken seriously to heart.
Really. People carried a special dime, just for calling the police? I’ve seen it both ways. Maybe it’s the dime, these days because phone calls are 50 cents, that’s if you can find a payphone.
I wish you victim-witness-types would tell the whole story.
Ah, she grabbed it out of your hand. Gotcha. Looks like my problem is still not reading the question thoroughly. :smack:
Well, OoooKay. I did talk to a nice officer about a civil standby. He explained that I could document any incident just as well by calling it in. The police, evidently, won’t serve as witnesses in family law cases. I called and said I’d be there at 11 for our day. She called back, says she’s not influencing Emma to refuse, tried to talk her into it. I agree it’s not Emma’s decision, but… If I take her when she doesn’t want to go, it doesn’t offer ideal bonding, or promise a good time. I can understand her missing her mom after two weeks in hospital. So. I’m letting it go for now, she offered me a day during the week, her parents are here next weekend. She doesn’t allow that her folks being up and my parenting time aren’t mutually exclusive. Her parents and I get along pretty well, she’d just prefer to keep me away from them. While I’d like to take a hard line, I don’t think it would be best for Emma, tactically. I am going to look into what it would take to re-evalute the parenting plan and custody. I’d like to go for 1/2 time for each, split expenses, no child support. But I want to do it with as little trauma to my daughter as possible. I’m not going to rip my daughter from her mother’s arms, not even symbolically (Sp?).
So, again, I’m caught between what’s backing down, and what’s the greater part of valour.
When the conversation devolved to who did what to who, re the coffee cup, I just said “This is going nowhere, I’ll call you next week. Bye.” She wants me to pay for a new shirt. Anyone got a spare $10 K-mart gift card?
Agreed.
Discretion is the better part of valor.
I had lots of sympathy for you until the Kmart card. Why on Earth would you buy her a new shirt? I don’t care where the shirt is from. No wonder she bullies you–it works! Tell her politely, no. If she uses Emma as a weapon (by withholding her until she gets a new shirt), time to call the cops etc.
This is what happened to my husband with his ex (he’s given me permission to talk about his experience because he wants the message of women beating men to get out). She hit HIM, but she got to the phone first, so he was handcuffed and put in the car and charged, even though he was the one bleeding. The police knew it was bullshit and pretty much told him that, but the local judiciary system was having a push on domestic abuse, and had it in their little brains that only men abuse. The charges were dropped when his unstable ex left the country and never showed up for her court date, but it was a eye-opening experience for him. Men are likely to do more damage when they hit someone, but men are making up a significant portion of the people suffering domestic violence (36% according to this site - more than just a handful) -
I also think it is important to start a paper trail for your ex, who sounds quite violent, unstable, and manipulative from what you’ve said here. Document everything - as Judge Judy says, if you can’t prove it, it didn’t happen.
Good, then I’m going to very valourously go hide in a closet. (Douglas Adams?)
Because, well… After she hand wrestled me for the cup a bit, I got it away and poured the rest of the (cold) coffee on her. HSHP is right about us witnesses, (had she gotten the cup, she would have tried to bean me with it.) we tell it the most positive way we can think.
I didn’t run right out and buy a gift card, I looked for a free one first. :rolleyes: Plus, the whole K-Mart thing would annoy her. Beneath her station, you see, to shop at a K-Mart.
You’re right. If she wants to keep her wardrobe pristine, she shouldn’t try to wrestle me for my coffee. 
I am working on that. I didn’t run out to replace the shirt, or apologize.
I may not be the only one who calls her on her bullshit, but those who do don’t stay in her life long. Me, she can’t shake, she had my kid.
Wait a minute. She threw coffee on you, so you dumped the rest of the coffee on her?
You both need to spend some time locked up, IMO. Your story of assault has lost its impact–I now see two very immature adults throwing drink at one another while a small child watches and learns how. What to go, Dad. :rolleyes:
Mom needs help or a whup 'side the head. The only way Emma has a chance to not be completely fucked up more is if you get custody, again, IMO. The only way you’re going to get custody is if you behave, not rise to baiting and report Ms Bizarro’s shit every time it happens to build that paper trail.
I have sympathy for Emma. And she’s gonna have to grow up quickly, if this is how her weekends look. 