Ok, so SD is having a nervous breakdown and refusing to speak to or see her dad and BM is keeping her holed up in their apartment, not going to school, not going to her extracurricular activities, just wallowing in the dark and freaking out and staying up till all hours of the night together, but instead of despairing I am going to focus on the good things going on. Like, even though this is terribly traumatic for SD right now, at least BM is misbehaving in front of the family therapists and SD's psychiatrist so they can witness first-hand what is going on and be there to help SD and perhaps get the ball rolling on us pursuing custody. I am so very sorry that SD has to suffer, but BM is only helping our case.

If we do get custody soon, this next news may complicate things, but for now it's very good news - we have our child support modification hearing scheduled for June 25th so we can put an end to sending out 60% of my fiance's income every month. I found out in March that he is way overpaying because the calculator didn't take into account his second family he has to support. So we've been struggling for YEARS unnecessarily. According to my calculations, his payments will be at LEAST cut in half, possibly even cut to ONE-THIRD of what he's paying now if they put an end to the alimony pendente lite, which *should* happen once the divorce is finally freaking final.

Which brings me to my next very exciting news - I think we may have *finally* found a lawyer after three long months of searching. After hearing some of the attorney horror stories on this site, we knew we had to hold out till we found a stellar one but man was I getting tired of looking and waiting it out! After a very promising phone consult today, my fiance feels very confident in her abilities and he is meeting with her in person on Tuesday. I am really hopeful that this is the one! Hooray, we can finally get BM's claws off my fiance so we can get married after years and years and YEARS of this hanging over our heads!

So, we'll be able to keep more of fiance's income AND legimitize our family. And if SD comes to live with us, we'll have to modify support again so I'm hoping there's not a waiting period between modifications in our state. All it says is that you can modify only when there is a significant change in circumstances and I do believe that a change in custody warrants a change in who pays whom! I have about zero hope of ever getting child support from BM, but at least we wouldn't be paying her anymore.

So things are happening. We just have to keep our chins up.