Hi all,

I decided to try to get advice on this forum because I don't know where else to turn. In some ways my story is same old, and in some ways it is the makings of a novel. I've never participated in any community forum ever, and after researching a lot of them I feel like I will get the most balanced advice here. Long (long) story short:

In 2008 my husband (now my ex) moved away from my daughter and I (at the time she was 2) for work. His move was over my strong objections due to the fact that I has a good job and more importantly I had family in town. In early 2009 my daughter and I moved out to join him. In the summer of 2009 I began discovering seriously messed up things about my ex, culminating to my discovery that he had stolen something extremely valuable from me, made me think it was missing, and had me submit the insurance claim. I later discovered he did that to pay off more than $100k in debt he personally wracked up - to this day I don't know what for. He never told me. I also suspected during this time that he was having an affair with a much younger co-worker, who for the purposes of this forum we'll call SM because she is soon to be my daughter's SM.

After these discoveries and others, in 2009 I moved back home and told my husband I wanted a divorce. I sent him papers and he stalled at every turn. In 2010, 3 months after we physically separated, my daughter came back talking about daddy's girlfriend "SM". I called him, and told him that if SM was his gf, that he should do all of us a favor and give me my divorce, and also, that we should talk about how we can talk to my daughter about said gf. He denied all of it, and said SM was a work friend. I stupidly believed him.

To be clear, notwithstanding all that he had done, we had a decent to good relationship concerning our daughter. He would see her sometimes, and call sometimes, and often go months without seeing her. When he did see her it was never in his hometown - he would take her somewhere else.

In 2012, I called him and told him that we had to get divorced. He begged - pleaded with me - not to file, and then got aggressive with me as he was want to do when he didn't get his way. I later learned that he was delaying our divorce because he was trying to get a new, much lower paying job at the government and didn't want child support to be set at the higher number. I filed in August 2012, and the divorce was contentious. There were things he demanded from me - like nice jewlrey he had given to me and our wedding China and crystal - that didn't make sense. Through this process he disclosed his financials, claimed he was paying an exhorbitant amount in rent, and told me that he was tight on money and that his life sucked - at night he basically went home and ate dinners from Sam's Club alone. I stupidly believed him. Ultimately we negotiated a joint custody parenting agreement by which my daughter would visit him every other federal holiday and certain weeks in the summer.

Two weeks after the docs were executed