Sharing your children with their father

[ellebelle]

After 8 months of struggling - things are over between me and FOB.
When the girls were first born, he was effing up left, right and centre, from being abusive, to making me feel like I couldn't talk to him, not being supportive, getting high while taking care of the newborns, etc.
I kicked him out and we were on bad terms for a long time but I still wanted him to have a relationship with the twins so I let him come over and see them almost every day.
He started taking steps to turn himself around and we went to counselling together where he was told he was in the wrong so he finally apologized, but 3 weeks later turned back around and was blaming me for EVERYTHING.

I wanted it to work SO BADLY between us, but I just cannot be with a man who was capable of being abusive to me and my daughters, who is so negative and full of hate and who is so quick to blame me when I have bent over backwards to make this easy for him.

We're going to settle custody through court and he's telling me he is going to fight for as close to 50% as possible.

I can't imagine spending Christmas mornings without my beautiful daughters, can't imagine them not coming home to me every night

How do you all deal with sharing custody with the other parent???
Any one in situations where the fob was aggressive/had anger problems/was abusive? He never hit me and would never hit the children, it's all emotional abuse.

I think I feel extra sad because this is a fresh breakup but... talk to me ladies, please, I am so utterly crushed to be in this situation.

 

[isil]

I don't have experience of FOB being abusive. But he did mess up a lot - didn't see LO for 6 months, refused to support him financially, dragged me through court despite me always being open to him seeing LO.

Shared residency is difficult, there's no denying it. We've been doing it for over 2 years. Although FOB has LO 2-3 nights as opposed to a 50/50 split. You have to try and be on the same page about things and be willing to discuss things as they arise. Judges want to see that you can be adult about things and compromise. There's no point in splitting a child between 2 homes if you can't parent together.

 

[emeraldbaby]

The only advice i can give you is DOCUMENT EVERYTHING.

 

[resursval]

You really must keep track of his foul behavior and write everything down. Tell court everything he has said and done that you remember that proves he his not a suitable father.
Imagine if a man like that has his daughters 50% of all days and weeks of a year.. Oh gosh. He sure doesn't sound fit to be a parent.

 

[teal]

I agree with the above - keep a record of everything xx

 

[Natsku]

like the others said, document everything.

My ex was abusive to me but never to Maria so I agreed to 50/50 custody with him but it is really difficult to share custody like that, I'm finding it harder and harder and wish I could get most custody. I dread the idea of not having her every Christmas etc. But I allow it because he is a good dad and he has just as much right to her as I do. But it sounds to me like your ex is not a good dad and so I would think that you should aim for getting more custody than him.

 

[Cazamatazaaa]

Its extremely rare for fathers to get 50% especially if there has been abuse of some kind, and getting high infront of children! document it all! i think full weekends would be what he would get!

 

[jackie2012]

i was in a similar situation with my ex only it was more than verbal abuse. i kept logs of everything printed out the texts he sent me ect. everything was very well documented and there was a lot of stuff documented with the police and by the end a restraining order in place.

one day when i was at work he went to my sisters house with the police and took the kids because we didn't have a court agreement in place he had a right to. no one would do anything and for two week i had no clue where they were it was the worst two weeks of my life. i had to go to court and get a temp. injunction to get full custody until we could go to court and an order for him to bring them back or he would be charged with kidnapping.

After that i didn't want him to see the kid at all but my lawyer said the court would grant him some sort of visitation and it would be in my favor to set out what i would be comfortable with and we would go for that.

So in the end we went for me having full parental rights and him starting out with supervised visitations a few times a week for an hour or two. as part of that he had to submit to random drug testing, and if he wanted to go for unsupervised had to go through a whole whack of course like anger management, drug counselling and parenting classes to name a few.
after about 6 months he complied to all the courses and was allowed unsupervised visits but he first had to get a home inspection and interview with child services and still do the random drug testing. It started out with an hour a few times a week and eventually we worked up to every other weekend and every other holiday and two weeks in the summer.

He had stepped up and became a great father so by that point i had no issue with it. although it does suck to share. one of the arguments i made was with that it was better for the boys to have one stable home than to be shuffled back and forth especially now that they are in school.