Toxic Mess

Here’s a little background info into the situation I am dealing with. It has been an eye opening experience for me to learn so me of the actions people are capable of and some of the crazy people out there. Before I get started, I will say...yes he is my one and I am staying with him. He makes me incredibly happy and we are so great together. And there is no way I am letting the sins of his psycho piece of trash ex get in the way of my happy ending.

When he went through his divorce, he found out that this piece of work never actually graduated from college. (They met in college and she failed out but kept up the charade with him and her parents that she actually graduated.) And he found out that the prestigious job she claimed to have, the company never actually heard of her and she never worked there. His parents have money and it seems like she was lying and scamming to get into the marriage and he was trusting, led a sheltered life and was from a small town so he fell for that crap but her own parents did too and we’re shocked when the custody investigator told them the truth about their precious girl. My fiancé also told me that they didn’t decide together to have a child, she lied about taking her birth control and trapped him into it.

Fast forward to her filing for divorce, she had scammed people out of some money in my fiancé’s hometown. As part of her “photography” business, she did children’s sports pictures and church pictures and took peoples’ picture money and never gave them their pictures. When people started realizing, she moved to another state where his parents had a vacation house and she lived there for a while while he kept his job in his hometown. Then she established residency and hit him with divorce papers. Now don’t ask me how she was able to establish residency and file before him, I don’t know how she pulled off any of her scams. I had a different upbringing and grew up being very good at reading people and obviously less trusting than some. Realistically, they had lived apart for part of their marriage due to him doing internships at different states and her starting her prestigious fake job. Knowing his parents, I’m sure they were against him filing for divorce and they were pressuring him to move there with her instead. At this point, all her dirty secrets hadn’t come out yet.

So fiancé was stuck with paying travel expenses EVERY MONTH for visitation, to the time of $600-$1000 depending on airfare. Stuck paying travel for all court hearings. Stuck paying absurd alimony and child support and court expenses like $11,000 for a custody investigator to uncover all of BM’s scams and disprove the lies and sick accusations she made against him during the divorce to try and get full custody (for full custody, she would get more money for child support). I don’t know what I find more appalling, the things she’s done or the fact that she’s never been JAILED. Apparently our wonderful court systems bow down to birth moms and give them the sympathy vote, and I’m completely disgusted with what the courts have given this woman. She even stole all the appliances out of his parents house and his own attorney told them not to press charges because it would look like they were being “too harsh” on her. And he ended up getting screwed in court anyway so they might as well have filed charges, maybe then she would have done jail time! 

Fiancé’s parents are completely obsessed with grand-daughter and are the type of grandparents who LIVE for their grandchild. They think the world revolves around her and that everyone else should think that too. So when the courts gave him visitation for one weekend every month, he was stuck going even though the cost of visitation was more than the cost of increased child support for less visitation time. I do think that the visitations every month were a little ridiculous. Is it a lot of time with your child, no. But if you can’t afford it, then you don’t do it. I’ve heard of other people who have kids in a different state and they only see them a few times a year for holidays. Im sure it is hard on the kids but it’s about what you can afford to do. A while after doing the visitations, paying the alimony and child support, then dealing with the hardship of losing his job but being stuck paying the same alimony and child support (because the quality of life can never be reduced for child and BM, oh no! And it’s outrageous for BM to be responsible for supporting herself), fiancé went bankrupt about a year ago. 

Things have improved since then and he is building his credit back up. BM actually agreed to a new agreement to reduce child support (very minimally and it’s still too much) but she gave up alimony if he pays the full child support amount. He was paying less for a while because obviously he could not afford the higher amount the court was holding him to when he lost his job and got a new job at a lower salary. Also, he has a lot less visitation now and less travel expenses.

His daughter is fairly well behaved, considering she spends the majority of time with the BM. Fiancé did tell me that she was learning after her mother and learning to be manipulative at a young age. She’s a little sassy and insanely spoiled. She isn’t disciplined because BM does not discipline her but she listens to fiancé fairly well when she is with him. I was more involved the first few months after I just met him and before I learned anything about this toxic situation (I’m sure he waited to tell me because he was worried I would be scared off). Then I also started seeing some of daughter’s behaviors that were annoying. Now she has liked me from the beginning and I know that however she turns out will mostly be because of her mother and that’s not her fault. I’m willing to be a positive female role model because BM is not a hard working strong female, she is an entitled moocher. One day, daughter will probably have a better understanding of what kind of person BM really is. When she does, she may need someone to turn to and I’m willing to be there for her. And Lord knows she needs an ethical person to teach her morals. However, I would like to take a less involved role as a stepmother and I have chosen to be disengaged to a point for my own sanity. But it’s becoming somewhat of an issue for me to disengage because I was involved for that short time in the beginning and now everyone expects that from me and they are making a huge deal out of me trying to disengage. I will make another separate post about disengaging. This post is mostly about the toxic BM and to give some background info. I’ve been reading step talk for a while, and I know that others that mothers out there are dealing with toxic BM’s as well!