Just got a text from my wife (around 10:30am the day after the incident):
"Just got a very somber voicemail from [our attorney] saying that he had gotten 'a very hostile letter from [the ex's attorney] talking about some pretty serious accusations about what goes on at your house' and that I need to call him ASAP."
The incident at the gym happened yesterday at 7:15.
Our attorney is needing my wife to respond to a hostile LETTER the next day at 10:30.
How do you get a letter delivered so quickly after the post office is closed? Was it hand delivered?
And whatever the accusations are, they will be unfounded, untrue, unprovable, and grounds for taking us to court. And they will hurt my wife. And she will be torn up about them, and feel horrible about what's being said about her and her children and her home. And she will feel, again, like people are looking at her to prove she is an unfit mother. And they will overlook that the father was denying visitation time with the mother. I wonder how long it would have taken to fabricate these things had my wife allowed herself to be bullied out of more time with her kid?
How can I help my wife?
How can I not feel anxious about all of this?
Before I had finished typing this entry, I received this text from my wife:
"So. [The ex] has told [his attorney] that I have threatened [our youngest] with no dinner if he does not come home at the time I have dictated and that [the ex's attorney] is obligated to inform the police if he suspects child abuse. [Our attorney] doesn't believe any of that - and there's apparently much more - but says it's clear that they will make this ugly and expensive and that you and I cannot afford the extensive legal help we will need to fight this. He also says there's no way for us to know what the truth is about what [our youngest] does or does not want and that he thinks we should let it go."
I guess I didn't mention in my earlier entry that we purchased a burger for our youngest on the way home, because he said he was hungry and we asked him what he would like to eat. He said, sullenly and angrily, "I don't care." My wife offered several options for him, to which he replied, "I don't care." She then suggested Carl's Jr., and he nodded his head to that. And we got him a burger, fries, and a drink. Which constitues as dinner. And we didn't get it for him because he did what we, the parents who are in charge of his well-being, told him to do. We got it for him because he said he was hungry. Most parents who take care of their children try to feed them when they're hungry. And we have always done just that. And never threatened no dinner. I didn't mention this because feeding your children is what we have always done and to be accused of anything less, even to be accused of threatening to withhold food, is fundamentally NOT who my wife and I are. It's like saying "up is down", and the cops are going to be involved if we dispute that up is down. Ridiculous.
I am not happy to be receiving this kind of legal advice: do whatever the bully says, because you don't have the money not to do what the bully says, even if it's not the best thing for your child. Unfortunately, we can't do what is really best for our child: make it so that his father is somebody else.
If we call the police, we escalate the fight=expensive court fight we can't pay for and hurts our youngest.
If we don't do what the ex says=expensive court fight we can't pay for and hurts our youngest.
If we let our youngest be taken from us by his bully father=we don't pay for court, our youngest only gets hurt by his father, and we get to see him 3 nights a week during the summer, and 2 nights every other weekend during the school years.
So stupid. And maddening. So ultimately stupid.
This has all happened within an hour.
My wife has just sent me another text, stating that it's a "crime" and she's "furious", mostly because our attorney is right. We cannot afford to stand up for ourselves. I echo her feelings. All of them.
"Extensive legal help".
Did your mother need extensive legal help to raise you as well as she did?
Could your mother have affored extensive legal help to raise you as well as she did?
My words are choked off by my rage. Green and red tinted rage vision.
This must stop.
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