I’ve set out to write something for a few days, unable to string anything together that wasn’t angry, resentful and mean. I finally came to just writing about the facts based on my perception, and that would suffice for the message I wish to convey and the need to speak my truth.

I have toiled over writing here too much about my personal life because I do not wish to cause anyone in my personal life unintended harm, even if I do not particularly like the person.

First, some background information.

Our daughter has been living with her birth mother for her 8^th grade school year, and it’s far away. From the beginning of this arrangement, she told us she missed us, and that she wanted to come home.

The outside people involved in our complicated situation told all of us that this would occur. In fact, her therapist, our therapist advised against it her going, based on the situation. Our daughter’s therapist has been in touch with her birth mother.

The agreement between the adult parties and our daughter would be that this was a temporary arrangement based on how our daughter felt about everything.

When you arranged something like this, you have to rely on faith and trusting other adults to always do what is in the best interest of the child.

It reminds me of that analogy of not trusting a snake. If it bites you once, it will bite you again and blame you for trusting them.

Right before our daughter came home for Christmas for her break, we were served with legal documents stating that her mother wanted to go back to court so that she could get full custody and child support.

My husband has primary custody that does not exclude rights of his ex-wife. Her claim is that she wanted full custody so that she could handle any medical/school/other records that came about. The current custody agreement allows her rights.

In fact, she was able to get our daughter on psyche meds and a psyche evaluation without any approval by my husband. This was a breach of the custody agreement, as she was to discuss this with him before the act, and not send a typed note after the fact.

She would later tell my husband that we weren’t supposed to have gotten the custody papers until after our daughter flew back after the holiday.

During this visit, our daughter expressed her very strong desire to come back home. It was not a surprise to us due to the fact that we’d been a family unit for eight years. We are whom she grew up with; she has friends and family here, lastly a baby brother that misses her a lot.

My husband and I met with our lawyer during the visit to find out what we should do, or if we should even be concerned. One suggestion that came about was that since we did have primary custody, we could just keep her here and send for her things later.

In fact, this is what our daughter said that she wanted to do if her mom was going to try and keep her. None of us felt very good about this option and as you can imagine a tough situation.

She spoke to her mother on the phone while here and told her she was not flying back. Her mother got angry with her, and accused us of trying to manipulate her into this.

I must point out that throughout all of the roller coaster drama we’ve had with this situation for over 8 years, my husband has always held firm to being fair, honest and never trying to do anything sneaky. In fact, it has been suggested that we might try and get a “snake” for a lawyer, but my husband is opposed to that.

The Christmas situation got cleared up (or so we thought) when our daughter’s mother promised her daughter and us that she would drop the case. We both told the mother that we had no issue with paying her child support while our daughter was living with her.

She never paid us any child support while we had our daughter, never supported her financially in any way. My husband is a stand up kind of person and didn’t feel it was necessary.

Our daughter’s mother has been unable to retain steady employment for the past 18 years; I can only assume that she is asking for child support to supplement her income. I know how this sounds and I am not trying to be petty, it is what I honestly believe based on her actions over the years.

Our daughter ended up flying back to her mother’s home and we thought all was well. We were to find out later by mail that it wasn’t ok, and her mother would continue with the custody suit. She has not put forth any efforts to communicate with us other than email and written letters.

Typically, when any type of psyche evaluation is done with a minor, all parties involved are to be communicated with including the parents she’s been with for the past eight years as opposed to only living with her mother for four months.

To leave my husband and I out of this evaluation would cause one to wonder if someone was trying to build up a case in order to gain full custody. In addition to this, she communicated false information into the psyche evaluation about my husband and myself.

On advisement, my husband wrote a letter to the person who performed the evaluation in order to correct the errors in the document.

Our daughter is in active therapy and she likes her therapist. After this therapist advised our daughter’s mother to drop the lawsuit and the pressuring our daughter on “where she wants to live,” the mother told my husband that she would be dropping it again until the summer.

She did not drop it. In fact, we’ve been in contact now with our daughter’s therapist and it appears much lying has occurred and false scenarios described in reference to our situation to the therapist.0

Our lawyer called us last week about 11am stating that we have a hearing in court right now, today. The ex flew down here to appear in court for the initial hearing. The last we’d heard from the ex was that she was dropping it again on the suggestion of our daughter’s therapist.

My husband rushed down to the court room and a temporary judgment is presented. His ex will gain temporary custody of our daughter in addition to us having to pay about 15% of his gross income a month in child support, to include back pay for the 6 months that our daughter has been there.

Hearing that kind of news, is a little like feeling your stomach being ripped out of your body through the route of your nose. Suddenly, you weigh 9000 pounds and you are filled with brick.

I called our daughter at school that day to find out if she had any idea what was going on, as well if she was ok with her mother having full custody.

She said she was NOT ok with it and her therapist recently advised her to tell her mother the truth and our daughter did this in front of the therapist.

Lucky for our daughter, there was a witness. In addition, her mother has been blocking communication between her Dad and I to our daughter. This actually began many months ago. Prior to that, our daughter could not go into a private room to speak with us it had to all be done in the company of others.

It was a very difficult decision to allow our daughter to go and live with her mother for the 8^th grade. We had been discussing this for at least three years. It was extremely painful and gut wrenching for all of us and suffice to say our summer last year was painful.

We were honoring our daughter’s request to see what it would be like to live with her mother on her own terms since she was older.

I trust that it’s been a big a good experience for our daughter to live with her mother. We were willing to accept that we could possibly lose her, as long as she was happy and peaceful. She loves her mother, but is very angry with her over this situation. Our daughter wants the freedom of choice, not to be forced by law.

The future is uncertain right now, yet my husband and I have been here before, and we are a united front. We will acclimate with the outcome whatever it will be, even if it is not the one we would choose.

The big picture is there are only a few more years before our daughter will be a legal adult and hopefully all this insanity will be behind us.

As I told my daughter when I last spoke with her, we will go to bat as far as we can even if that means we will have to live in a dumpster.