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Deadbeat ex of my wife, stepson with mental issues

HadEnoughWithDeadbeats's picture

I am a widower and remarried after finding true love. I have a college student son living with us, aged 20. Before me and my new wife met, she had an accident which required long term rehab and she could not provide proper care to her children, because she herself had to live with her parents after the accident and her parents cared for her. Their divorce happened before the accident. She's since fully recovered. Before meeting me, and for a while after, her kids, girl 15 and boy 18, lived with her ex.

Her ex remarried about 3 years ago and that's where the wheels came off. If I told you all the stories about her ex and his wife, you'd say I was lying. Suffice to say that the ex's wife is a horror of a woman. Uncontrollable rages, for no reason, apparently. She puts video cameras in the kids' bedrooms to spy on them and spies on their phones. Goes ballistic if they don't thank her repeatedly for buying even them the basics, such as soap. The ex husband is not much better; a weakling and a deadbeat, who never backed his own kids against the new wife. He also resigned from his perfectly good teaching job, cashed in his retirement money, and now has no job. Sits at home all day, drinking and gambling online. His wife got fired from her job soon after for screaming at the manager, whom she slept with too.

Eventually my wife's daughter could no longer stand it, and moved in with us, even though this wasn't the deal when we were married. Happily she's a joy to have around, does well at school and extremely well-mannered.

The problem is my wife's son. He suffered from ADHD, and, after his dad got married, started doing drugs with the new wife's brat who's the same age. And when I say deadbeat dad and horror of a new wife, I also mean that these two adults actually started buying weed for the boys (!!!!) This we only found out when the girl came to stay with us. Of course, it didn't stay with weed and went on to harder drugs too.

And now what has happened is that, possibly because of the drug use, my wife's son has developed signs of schizophrenia. Hears voices and believes NASA is out to get him (don't laugh!). Deadbeat dad and his deadbeat wife no longer have jobs or medical insurance. So guess what? My wife and I are also paying for his treatment, out of our own pockets, because he's not on our insurance and deadbeat ex and his wife don't have jobs. Stepson left high school last year - barely scraped through - but of course he also doesn't have a job and has no ambition to do anything with his life. We're not rich people and this is placing a huge strain on us. Thank god our apartment is too small for 5 people, else we'd have the stepson living with us full time too.

My wife is taking strain too, over and above financially, because of concern for her son living with the ex and bats..t crazy wife, but what can we do? He's an adult and can make his own choices. I've got a wife who's depressed about the situation and it's affecting our relationship too.