She seems to enjoy hurting/putting down the ex-husband, he is grown he can deal with it, but hurting the kids to get to him is one hell of a different story . I also believe it is emotional abuse of those children, she is one screwed up female.
Document, document, document as everyone else said. You might also talk to a lawyer in your state to find out what the law is about tape recording phone calls on your own phone. Here in Texas it is legal to record calls without a court order as long as one party involved in the call knows it is being recorded. It would be oh so lovely to have her on tape pulling that shit and admitting what she is doing.
If he took the ex to court and gave his lawyer such tapes and documents the man/woman would probably have an orgasm on the spot.
Beings like that give women and mothers a bad name.
DO NOT even call her a bitch, I will not have her in my Queendom !
Document, document, document – with tape recording if that is legal in your area. And get a lawyer as soon as possible.
And, next time you have the girls alone I think it’s time for a frank discussion. They are young, but given the situation (and their vicous hose-beast of a mother) it’s obviously past time for frankness. Don’t blast the mother (as hard as it will be not to). Have your husband say something like: “You girls know that your mom and I have a hard time getting along, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you and want to see you. Sometimes when I come to get you I find that you’re grounded or something and I can’t see you, but I want you to know that I always want to see you and I miss you all the time. I’m checking with a lawyer to see whether or not your mom and I can change the visitation rules so that I still get to see you regularly, even if you’re grounded. I also wanted to show you this [produce his pay stub] and explain how child support works. The money for your support is taken right out of my pay every week – see it’s right there on this line – and given to the child support enforcement people and they send the money right to your mom every month. It goes right into her bank account. I don’t want you to think that I’m not paying for you guys just because you don’t see a check every month. I want to support you and I do. Do you have any questions?”
I don’t see how trying to “not blast the mom” will achieve any sort of goal: if a person is trying to achieve total possession they will keep pushing till they achieve it.
Now it would indeed look vindictive if a non-parent did the “blasting”, but for the father to explain, in purely factual terms, what is happening, seems AOK in my book. A calm explanation with the facial subtext clues to let you know that you are really hurt yet trying to overcome your anger can do a lot to both let the children decide for themselves the truth and to let them know how much the parent is affected by it without trying to influence the children’s opinion beyond telling your side of the story.
You know, I really do have to ask when I see a situation like this. I’m not being sarcatic, but it always springs to mind: What was she like when you were dating or married to her? I means, she’s an evil bitch from hell, but I find it hard to believe that something like that just exploded all of a sudden.
My sister went through a bad divorce that her hubby initiated. I’m sure she’s the evil ex to him, but after he repeatedly cancelled visits, stalked her, vandalized her house, and refused to pay child support—he works for his family, for cash now----his kids just refuse to see him. I’m sure he blames her for that, even though the kids made the decision on their own. But he was kind of a jerk from the get-go----when I was fifteen and he was thirty something, he used to taunt me till I cried, then just sneer, “Kidding!”
But, yeah, seriously, what was this bitch like when you were married to her?
I feel your pain, Deadly Nightlight. I was a pawn in my mother’s attempts to get back at my dad because she cheated on him (don’t ask, I don’t get it either). My dad silently took all her shit for 12 years, and by the time my youngest brother was 18, we were all living with him. She’s alienated two of us, and has almost done the same with the third.
The bitch in your OP will get what’s coming to her, one way or the other.
NOW.
I’ve been through this. I’ve been through the “you can see her this weekend, but I’m going to need $200” spiel. I’ve been through the “he kidnapped my daughter” when I show up to return her from my visitation. I’ve been through it.
Once.
Go to a lawyer. She’s setting him up, in more ways than one. She’s creating a pattern that she can use against him in court. She’s the one writing history right now, and you can’t let that keep happening. Those kids will forever be weapons if you do nothing. My joint custody agreement is so specific its insane. Stuff like as long as she’s in Illinois, I can’t be considered to have kidnapped her. That she’ll never have to call anyone else Mommy/Daddy but me and her mother. That if I am blocked from two visitations she’ll be charged as a felony.
Go to a lawyer, and preferably one that usually represents mothers. They’re the real bulldogs. They have no problem being petty, and that’s what you need at this point. He has to let go any emotional attachment to that woman. He has to give up any ‘mother of my children’ shit he’s held on to. Fuck that bitch. She is the enemy. Your responsibility is to those kids, and she unfortunately is just another thing to protect them from.
Go to a lawyer. Get in court. Go back every goddammed time she slips up. Try to get a persistant judge on your case, and make him/her sick to see her name come up on the docket. These things worked for me. After all the problems I had with the ex, I now call her a tornado in a bottle.
MrMyth is spot-on. She’s also trying to make Deadly’s fiancee blood boil to the point where he either does something physical or looks like he might do something physical. This is her game, and I am praying that you won’t play it.
Record those calls. Do it on digital & transfer it to your PC. Email copies of these calls to the lawyer. (Targus has a digital recorder that records, plugs into your PDA as a module, and can transfer to your PC at your next hot-synch. Targus item is about $80, Handspring PDA is about $80, and if you’re posting, you have a PC.)
Yes, write everything down. But when you play back that Bitches Nasty Shit in court, the judge will blow her out of the water with a battleship broadside. There is nothing that says ‘your a lying little c-word’ quite like playing your own words back at you after you’ve spent 15 minutes denying you said them to a judge in open court.