I guess I officially started WWIII with my ex last week. The kids have been having a really hard time this year with increasingly serious things (the stakes just get higher for adolescents in distress). El Generalissimo, everyone's favorite ex-husband, doesn't answer my emails, has given up even pretending to be willing to collaborate with me, and discovered a new way to not to have to work with the court-appointed parenting time coordinator, so there is literally no way to try and work out solutions or resolve any issues. All the while, he just continues to be his usual supportive, compassionate, genial self. Oh, and he also got remarried in October to a woman that he had only known for a few months, whom I have yet to be introduced to, and have been told I am not allowed to meet, or even exchange contact information with, because I am apparently an actual demon, and she is some kind of delicate flower who might wither away and die in my presence, or even at the sound of my shrill, harpy voice. Or something like that. (Reasons were not provided, so I had to interpolate them on my own.) Anyway, we were all genuinely hoping that the whole marriage thing would calm him down and make him easier to get along with, but it turned out to have had the opposite effect, and has only emboldened him in his hostility towards me.
So, I had my lawyer file papers requesting a custody modification that will end the 50/50 schedule, and asked that a new parenting time study take place to recommend something better (because unless people agree on a new schedule, the judge will just order a study as a matter of course, so it just saves time to ask for one.) The kids are old enough to request their own court-appointed lawyer, now, who will be assigned by the county sometime this week, and who is supposed to meet with them and their various providers, and present the kids' wishes and best interests to the court. That might make a difference, but I don't know how much. The hearing to get the person appointed hasn't happened yet, so I guess we'll see. (It is, by the way, a complete MYTH that when kids turn 13, they just get to choose where they live. Don't tell people that. Especially don't tell children that, for crying out loud.)
I don't know how this is going to play out. My previous experiences with the court system have not been great, and if there was any other way to make things better for the kids, I would do something different, but I've exhausted all of my non-court options. The papers were served last Friday, just as I was picking up the kids, which was a harrowing experience in and of itself, but went down pretty quietly. And it's already causing some improvements. The kids (ages 13 (boy), 12 (boy), and 12 (girl)) have all been crammed into a single bedroom at dad's house since the new wife arrived, which has been very awkward and difficult for all of them. I heard last night that after months and months of excuses, dad is finally getting his shit together and finding them a 3-bedroom apartment, so that situation will be improved, regardless of how the schedule turns out. That's a win so far, right?
This is a weird way to return to blogging, since it was a court-related thing five years ago that made me give it up in the first place. (The violation of having every stupid thing I ever wrote subpoenaed and then picked over in depositions, looking for things to use against me...) But I realized that I have told almost no one that I know about any of this, and it's a pretty big thing to be going through, and I'm tired of going through it all alone. There's not much to be done now, but wait (and possibly wait, and wait, and wait, and wait if it goes like last time) and see what happens. Maybe he'll just settle and that will be the end of it. Or spontaneously combust and that will be the end of it. Either way would be perfectly fine with me.
