Wow! Why won't the court do anything? I mean if you have mental health professionals saying the mother is causing problems for these childen, doesn't that count for something?!! I have a male friend who has cusotody of his 2 boys over the mother...who does not have thier best interests in mind. But I think he got custody intitially because she didn't want much to do with them. Later, when he found out she made close to $100,000 per year (lied in court) he went after more child support and she retaliated with "I'm going after custody". These kids are also in counselling and the counselor recognizes that the mother causes mental harm by playing games with these children......a long list of reports & testomony later...she didn't get custody. (I think she has every 2nd weekend)

I dont' know California law....but we have a web site of case law here in Canada. I did alot of research for hubby when he was dealing with his X, using case law and substantiating it with mounds of evidence. The judge would have a hard time justifying not siding with hubby....the case was very cut & dry and was very air-tight, legally!!

DO you have any of those resources availible to build evidence on? Once I knew what types of evidence a judge needed to see to rule in our favour...I knew what to look for and document with X.. If my case was similar to the case law I presented it was hard for a judge to go against precident.

Sounds like you guys have gathered evidence.... Keep it up!!! Get more!!! The longer the court stuff went on with hubby's X... the worse it looked for her..as the documents..her lies..etc..piled up in the file and on the judges desk.. It just became to much to ignore!! They had to rule in our favour!!

You knocked bio-mom down 1 day this time. Maybe it will be 2 days next time....

And your SD is of an age where...her say is going to carry more weight in the legal system. If a 14 year old doesn't want to live with a parent.....it's really hard for a peice of paper ..to force them...

My 13yr old didn't want to go to her Dads... I asked him..what he wanted me to do... Physically drag her out of her room..wrestle her down the stairs and put her out the door & lock it...so she would get in the car with him??!!!! (I'll end up charged!!)

Would the cops have to come for every visitation pick up...and phsyically drag her out?

Mind you none of this went on.....we work things out by discussion..and we are all reasonable people..but if 13 yr old dug her heals in...and negotiations didn't work... What would we have done?! What could the courts do?!! Would they force me to have physical altercations with her to push her out of the house against her will? I don't know...I don't think so!

I feel for you and those kids......don't give up

I am very interested! Biomom in my case has done innumerable psycho things. I touch on it a little in my blog, but I have gone through a lot more than I write about here.

*~So sayeth Nymh~*

6 years ago, my dh and I announced we were planning on getting married. And even though bm was unstable at the time, and mostly flaky, she at the moment demonstrated signs that she had her son's best interest at heart.

After our announcement, it was like a switch went off in her, and she began demonstrating horrible, psychotic episodes of anger, hostility, and resentment. She instantly became so upset, that she decided to move across our state just to hide my ss from my dh.

We then decided to petition for a parenting plan, b/c at that time my dh didn't have anything to establish his parental rights over his son. This just put fuel on the fire. From the moment she got served, until the judge signed those papers, she created pure hell for everyone involved.

My ss had 3 rotting teeth in his mouth that was infecting his jaw bone, and was spreading to other teeth, and bm found no interest in getting that taken care of. Our attorney immediately told us there was no chance in hell of getting custody. Her exact words were "mom is a bad mom, she just isn't bad enough.." And it was really true. We had to take her to court to get him to a dentist b/c she wouldn't share him with us so we could take him to the dentist, nor would she take him herself.

There are many, many other accounts I can list of what horrible things she did and said to my ss, and the courts just won't hear what you have to say. Their philosophy is that unless bm's are super bad, they feel it will cause more harm to remove the child from bm's, then to just leave them there. Another philosophy we heard was that since my dh didn't fight from the beginning of their separation, he was now fighting just to avoid paying cs.

Now my ss is 12, his mom had another child from a one night stand, and now lives with another guy. She has literally moved 10 times in the last 6 years, and the current guy she lives with deals drugs from his home, where my ss lives. My ss is the person that is raising his younger brother, my ss is spoiled with excessive toys, yet abandoned routinely. He is unfortunately treated like he is an adult.

There is seriously nothing we can do to change our situation, or my ss's situation. I too have absolutely no faith in our judicial system. I feel it is very biased towards mothers. My theory is that the reason my dh's ex has custody is b/c she has a uterus.

You just try to do your best, and hope one day you did enough for these sk's that maybe a light bulb will go off in their head and they will realize what their psycho mothers are all about.

no comment

I sometimes wonder what a bm or bf has to do in order to be considered unfit by the legal system. Basically unless you can substantially prove that they are beating the kids or they simply choose not to exercise their visitation the courts won't do a thing.

My fiancee's ex is bi-polar and extremely unfit as a mother. Recently her husband had a double stroke and was in the hospital. She ended up leaving her 3 kids at home by themselves for days at a time when she was at the hospital. Someone called social services on her and she ended up having to find a relative to take the kids because they would not allow her to keep them in her home any longer. Luckily my SD had nothing to do with this since she is with us full time. The only reason my fiancee got full placement is because her bm gave it up. She moved two hours away and slowly started coming less and less for her visitation. She used to have her lawyer send stipulations about not passing on clothes to my daughter from SD, not living with someone who they are not married to, and many other ridiculous things. Of course he didn't sign any of them. She ended up marrying the man she was with before my fiancee who is a convicted pedophile. Because of this she is not allowed to take SD to her house and cannot leave our county with her.
My fiancee simply got lucky with bm giving up her placement of SD, otherwise we would be in exactly your situation. It must be very frustrating.
I have to say though that it is equally frustrating for me because my ex is an unfit father. He is an alcoholic and drug addict who has been convicted of many crimes relating to these problems he has. He has spent the past 9 months in jail because of this. Yet only recently did I get the courts to agree to EOW visitation (after he gets out). My attorney basically told me it would be impossible to get full custody unless he willingly gives it up. He was physically abusive to me and I was able to prove that in court with witnesses to testify to this. Yet unless he hits the kids it has nothing to do with my custody even though he did these things to me in front of them. The court was actually considering making the kids go to the jail for visitation! It wasn't until I got their counselors involved who thought it would be traumatizing to the kids that the courts finally agreed with me not to do this. I know from personal experience how frustrating and time consuming it is to deal with the courts when it comes to unfit parents. And I am the bm!

The family court system is totally screwed up. When the biomom went homeless, we were told by our lawyer that we still couldn't get custody!!!!

My husbands ex is getting a check from social security for being mentally ill. We could not bring up her medical history in court. When we tried to get custody she accused my then 12yr old of molesting her son. The SS said it never happened, but the judge ordered the two boys to be kept apart so we lost custody. After 3 years of no visits her mother finally had enough of her crazy behavior and went with us to court and told the judge her daughter had lied about the molestation and told the judge she was crazy and on meth. We finally got emergency custody this last May. Without the help of the ex's mother we would have never gotten custody. But unfortunately 5 years of her telling the boy his daddy doesn't want/love him has done damage and he has severe anger issues and needs therapy. The courts don't seem to care about how bad or crazy a mother is they almost always side against the father when it comes to custody issues.

This idea seemed to have a lot of interest so I created a forum for it.

Dawn

Thank you for creating this. It realy helps to talk to others with the same situations to deal with day in and day out. My husbands ex-wife is bipolar and causes so much trouble for anyone who is involved with her. I have 2 beautiful step children that are also having behavior of bipolar. It started in there teens and has progressed to something that is so evel. I have two restraining orders against the mother and she still finds ways to harrass me directly or through her children, vandalisam, stealing, turning the hot water off in the middle of the night, breaking things. They have problems in school and with friends. They have no morals and a lack of sexual inhibitions. It truly is a nightmare. On top of all of it my husband has MS a neurological disorder that makes it difficult to deal with the children. His disorder and their disorders together can realy make my life a living hell. Teachers have tried to help and so has CPS they can only do so much, what a tearable shame that the court system will allow the mother to continue to do this to her children and not stop her visitations. I have been raising the two children for 7 years, when their mother was out of the picture and in mental hospitals they were the most wonderful children. Now this sick women has put them at risk for all kinds of problems.

I was not in the picture when my husband went through the divorce with BM. I can only tell you bits and pieces of what I herd from others in the family. BM is the one that filed for divorce. From what I understand BM was in and out of the mental hospital during the last part of the marriage, her behavior was very bad such as, buying 9 new cars for people she didn’t know, leaving the children (then 6 and 3 yrs old) at a gas station, standing in front of stores and buying merchandise for people, pretending to be a doctor, faking pregnancies. The list goes on and on. From what I have witnessed she is very, very emotionally abusive to her children, telling them she is going to die or kill herself and she talks about very sexually explicit things that are not in anyway appropriate for anyone to hear.

The court did decide that she was fit to have them every other weekend because they had become accustom to her behavior. Ugggg!!

I can’t begin to list all the damaging things that have happened to the children in her care. I think I will say this--- Have the judge leave one of his grandchildren with her for 1 day and maybe something would change.

The BM has caused me much trouble with her sickening stunts. It’s not my nature to just turn my back on children in need of help. I would rather die than leave these children to the currently life destroying legal system to fend for themselves. When their father asked me to marry him, I told him I would have to think about it for a day or so before I could give him an answer, on my way down the stairs to the kitchen I encountered to children on the steps, little brown eyes that said, “Your not mad at him are you?” “ Your not going to leave are you?” Because if you do, we will all suffer. I turned around, went up the stares and said yes! Little did I know it would be the biggest challenge of my life?

“Boy” felt good to get that out!!

I too am dealing with a mentally unstable bio mom. Kandy has 3 children with my guy and they are boy 10, girl 7 and boy 6. They share custody. (she also has a 2 year old by another man)The unstable bio has done time for trying to kill a boyfriend with a shotgun (now she can never handle or posess a firearm as long as she lives), for which she is now a convicted felon and is on pretty strict probation. She has been and may still be a drug user as well as she is an alcoholic. Get this her mother is in the mental health field and her sister is a pshycologist. They actually helped her to lie to the judge, they taught her how to make her case a bio polar, PMS case. Can you believe that crap? Her mom I guess helped to get her the judge she did. She is a very very good manipulator as I have been learning most cases like her are. She has tried to weasel her way back into my guys life and he wont bite. She has told the children that I am trying to replace her and she has shown she is going to be nothing but trouble for us. She is one who flies of the handle at everything, she goes through rant and rage episodes that are nothing but bizarre. No one knows what she is going to do or who she will be from one minute from the next.
Now that I am going to be permanent in their lives she is now schedualing things for the days when my guy has his "days" with the kids. For example...one night while he has the kids she schedualed the youngest for baseball, now she has schedualed the middle child for gymnastics on one of his nights. He is a very very very devoted father and cherishes his time with the kids. So she is doing things so that he will actually get less time now. She doesnt set anything up for her days with them only his. He was going to come out for my daughters 11th birthday and last horse show of the year. (the biggest show of her life so far) this actually fell on one of the weekends he was due to have them (they alternate weekends and share days through the week) he asked if she would trade and she said absolutely not. she told the kids he was more interested in what his "girlfriends" daughter was doing than he was in them and that he loved my daughter and I more than she loved them. She refused to trade with him. But on her weekends she sends them to relatives or friends homes so she doesnt have to deal with them. He never says well your mother doesnt love you because she farms you out etc. She does everything possible to not have to have them on "her" time. He has even asked if instead of sending them off places that he will gladly take them and she wont let them come over even if they ask unless she cannot find anyone to watch them. Then she lets him have them. It is so sad.
I know I am the better mother as I love my children and I so love his. God I love all the kids. In my eyes they are "our" children. Now she is telling the middle child that she is going to get full custody of her. I know she is scared that with me in the picture full time the kids are going to see what a good mother is and they will finally see that she is not that at all. I am a hands on mom, I love to do crafts, I love to read to my kids, I love to take them to museums, farms, aquariums etc. I love to play in the yard etc. She does none of that. I know the kids are scared to tell her they have fun when I am there. I dont blame them. It is so sad she is using the kids emotions to start and fuel fires.
I, like another poster said get along with my ex and my ex is very happy that our daughter has such a good man in her life to pick up where he cannot. I am not overly fond of my exes wife but she is a good steppie. So this is all very hard for me. I know that I just need to drive on and deal with things as they come up. I just dont understand this womans game playing. If you want to get pissy with kids dad or me that is fine but do not involve the kids. They so dont deserve it.
I also understand that the court systems are flawed and unfortunately because of this kids are caught up in problems they should never have to deal with. It is so sad.
From all of these posts I feel blessed to know I am not alone. There is a support system out there and while me may not be able to change the court system we can help each other.

I believe that Texas Law states that a minor child over the age of 12 can live with the parent of their choice! Call the Attorney General's Office,they can prvide accurate information AND can provide a way to get child support without you having to spend money!
Good Luck,

hangingin

Do they have to be undiagnosed? BM is definitely mentally unstable, but not sure what she was diagnosed with. I do know that when DH moved back into the house after she left it abandoned, he found a letter on his computer to the President from her. She wanted to inform the PRESIDENT that she had been implanted by a microchip, by dh and former boss. She went on to give the name of the Microchip(doesn't exist I was sure to check), and the privacy code numbers(they also don't exist) dh and her ex boss had violated by doing this. She went on to say that it made her see/hear things. Like people were trying to turn her children against her, and that the devil was after her. I mean it went on and on. The true rantings of a mentally broken person.

The thing was DH didn't think that she really sent it to the President, he didn't realize until I showed him, that the email adress she sent it to was indeed the President's. Now we all know this is an email for the public to send emails to the President, so chances of him actually seeing it are slim to none. The issue is that she actually sent this letter.

She checks herself onto the mental ward of the local hospital often, and I am pretty sure they have her on some strong meds. The problem with that is she won't stay on the meds. A person that works with her is a family member of dh's and she told MIL that if bm would stay on her medicine she would be fine. I have a background in the medical field, and can say that it is common for mentally ill patients to rebel against taking their medication. Our concerns are that if she continues to go off and on these medications, it is going to have a seriously adverse affect on her, and something could happen to SS.

She checked herself into the hospital about two weeks before divorce was final, dh wanted to go for full custody, but his jellyfish lawyer didn't want to do the work. He guilted dh by saying, it will hurt your son more if he can't ever see his mother again. DH took the lawyer at his word. He has since regretted that decision. It is extremely hard to prove a mother unfit, and despite everything we know, it isn't enough.

**How seldom we weigh our neighbors in the same balance as ourselves. ~Thomas à Kempis**