This is my first post on this site, but I have been reading for quite some time now. A little background on me...
I am dating a man that I have known since I was a kid. He is 8 years older than me. He got married, had three kids (daughter 14, daughter 8, and son 6), put wife in rehab twice during marriage, she ran up over $58,000 in credit card debt (in 7 months) by applying for a card in his and her name, only had the bill go to a friend's address (so he wouldn't find out). Every transaction was for pain medication she was purchasing online (not sure how that works), clothes and fast food... nothing else. Needless to say, this was the end of their marriage after he found out about the credit card bill. He works 6 days a week, night shift, sleeps during the day. He thought everything was fine, but it wasn't. Anyway, he was separated from her for 3 years, the divorce was final last summer. It took so long because he wanted custody of the children. He knew she would not discipline them and basically take the easy way out. Plus, he didn't want them around the drug environment.
Ok, fast forward to me running into him a few months back and we started seeing each other. He is a great man with good morals and wants the best for his children, but his hands are tied with the court system. He was not awarded custody because he works so much. He really got screwed in his divorce, but I feel like his situation is only temporary. You guys aren't going to believe this. He ended up having to pay the house payment for the next 3 years, $1,000 a month child support and she got $66,000 from his 401k. This woman had no job at the time. Now she is working 15 hours a week. She got the 401k money on December 12 and bought a Cadillac Escalade on Dec 20. We are assuming she paid cash. You would think that $1,000 a month would be more than enough to keep the utilities on in the home since she doesn't have to worry about the house payment. However, the utilities are constantly being cut off. We picked the kids up one weekend and they were smelly. I was like, what is going on? Then they told us they haven't had showers for a few days because they didn't have any water. Then another weekend they didn't have electric. They don't even have trash pick up. She gets money from her parents to get the utilities turned back on for a little while, then they're shut off again. My boyfriend has talked about taking her back to court for custody this summer, but he's afraid that they will make him pay more money and he is scraping the bottom of the barrel right now. He wants to gather more evidence against her, so he can be sure he gets what is best for the kids.
He gets to claim the home interest on his taxes and he gets to claim the kids as dependents, so that's a plus. The home has to be sold in three years from the date of their divorce and he gets back what he has paid in payments since the divorce and they have to split any profit 50/50.
Oh yeh, another thing is his oldest daughter has missed 29 days of school (at last count) and the year is not over yet. The two younger ones have missed 18 as of last count. A friend of ours, who is also an attorney, told us that if the kids aren't going to school and she is not providing for them with the money allotted to her, he may have a chance.
I think he should hire a private investigator to watch her for a few weeks and figure out the drug usage and other things. I also think he should try to subpoena the utility companies for proof of termination, get school attendance records along with report cards, and find witnesses to take deposition regarding her drug usage. Opinions???