Custody Battle - The Kids Are Always The Victims

I just thought I needed to get this out there, as this experience truly altered my worldview.  It is a very painful thing to recollect, but I feel that I needed to share this.  Please don't think that I am trying to pretend to be a saint, as I've screwed up as a parent plenty of times.  I know there's always two sides to any story, but I do feel I am a good father and my son and my current family were drug through hell for 2 years due to a vindictive ex wife.

I met my ex wife when I was a sophomore in college and she ended getting pregnant by accident.  My son was born just over 9 years ago and we got married about 6 months after that.  I was very apprehensive, as we were two very different people and I wouldn't have married her otherwise, but I was trying to do what I thought would be best for him.  We were divorced within a couple years after that, when she cleaned out the apartment while I was gone and ended up pregnant within a couple months to another man before the divorce was even finalized.

We agreed to joint custody, and I thought that was best for him.   When I started getting serious with my current wife, and the ex broke up with her boyfriend and started pursuing me.  When I told her I was not interested and I was going to get married, my ex decided to seek full custody of our son.  In fact, she filed for it the day after I got married.  It was purely out of spite and using a child as a tool like that is inexcusable.  Unfortunately, the truth was that she wasn't the best person for him to be around, so I countered and sought full custody as well.

It got really ugly after that.  She hid him from me, lied about me to him.  You name it.  She even went as far as to call in bogus DHS reports.  Unfortunately, in my state, they take the kid for up to 48 hours until they can determine if the claims are factual or not, and one of our daughters was taken for 6 hours until they could investigate the claim.  This was very hard on us as parents, but much worse for her.

Fast forward two years and I went into the custody trial with a written recommendation from the guardian ad litem, and a mountain of evidence showing the ex had no business raising a child, including recordings to back up all undocumented claims. I had documentation of her failing to pick him up from school, with him attempting to walk home alone, to her refusing to give him medication, and her leaving him in the care of an abusive grandparent, and police reports of her assaulting someone a year prior. I honestly thought I was going to beat the odds and my son would be living in a better home. Getting the guardian's recommendation was a big thing, as she had sided with my ex from the start.  Even when she started to lean in our direction, she said she had concerns that we would celebrate in front of my ex and she would be upset.  I couldn't believe that was actually said.  Who cares how the ex feels about it, do what's best for the child.  Boy, did I ever underestimate the system.

Things went bad when my son,8 at the time, had threatened to use his mother's gun to shoot my daughter, 6, the week prior to the trial. I spanked him and explained that saying things like that could get him suspended from school or even worse. I attempted to call his mother in an attempt to co parent. When she refused to acknowledge that he had done wrong, we became engaged in a pretty heated argument and I ended up calling her bad names, after she called me one and she threatened my life.  A recording of this one argument was used by the guardian as grounds to terminate my rights completely. It was a 180 degree turn from what we had expected going into the trial. 

My attorney was terrible, to say the least. He was convinced that we would win based on the GAL's recommendation, and prepared for the trial very horribly. The GAL informed us that she had completely changed her position the morning of the hearing, much to my attorney's and my own surprise. Her new position was that I would receive no visitation, much less custody, due to the name calling.

I wasn't very confident in my attorney at this point, so I ended up settling prior to going through the hearing to at least be able to maintain some visitation rights. I don't know if it was due to my ex planning on calling the GAL to the stand, or if something else influenced her, but it was completely out of left field. I feel like I have been set up by this GAL from the beginning, only to have the rug pulled from beneath me at the last moment.

At the end of the day, I do know I did everything in my power to protect my son.  At least I can look him in the eye one day and tell him that honestly.  Hopefully, he will be able to see through the hate and lies he has been told in the meantime.  So far, we've had a great relationship and I really enjoy having him on the weekends that I do.  He's smart and I hope he trusts me enough to allow me to guide him when he's older.