Why I had full custody myself after the birth of my oldest daughter
Let me tell you the part of my story about the custody of my 2 oldest children. When I was pregnant with my oldest daughter, my ex (her father) got aggressive when he had been drinking, and this was just one of the red flags at the time for me. So my best friend back then gave me this advice:
"Whatever you do, don't give him custody right after the birth. You can always arrange this afterwards, at any time you please. Let him register as the father at first, and let him prove that he doesn't mean what he says when he is now treathning you."
She reminded me of the situation she had been in recently, with her father of the youngest child. They had broken up, and he had joint custody of the youngest (the oldest child has another father) and after seeing the child he refused to bring him home to her as agreed. She found out by interference of a lawyer that he had every right to do so. She said that if one parent does not bring the child back when you both have custody, you can't do anything about it. I had absolutely no idea of this, so I took this advice to heart.
I felt obligated to give him rights too
And she foresaw the problems coming long before I did, I laughed them away at first. I thought there is no judge in the world that will let him keep my child when I am a good mother. But I am very glad that I did put her advise at heart, the first 4 years my ex had acknowledged the children as his kids, but he had no custody rights.
Every single time that we had a fight and especially when it got out of hand, I reminded myself: "see, she was right. He will be the one that keeps the children from you if you split up, listen to your friend." And everytime after a period of calmness I thought: "Maybe it's time to arrange this in the near future." But also every single time this got interfered with the fact that he acted like a bad parent, and especially the threats he made to me were the reason that I never mentioned the thoughts I had about arranging the custody rights for him. I always kept it to myself for years.
At a certain point it seemed like he finally saw the light
We had been broken up, and he came back to me. He came back a different person, at least it seemed this way. He is a good actor, that's for sure. I had complete faith in the fact that this time things will be alright, and I felt the obligation to give the father as much rights as I had. Not knowing that there had been a change in the law very recently, that would give him bigger power than before.
So I went online, filled in the documents, signed it with the digital signature, and the next day the official court letter fell in the mailbox. From that moment on we had the same custody rights over our two children.
I was even happy for him, and send him a happy text with the picture of the letter in it. He reacted mildly, and my gut feeling started to show some signs of: "What if you made the wrong choice?" But nothing I could do now, it was done.
Immediately he started to fall back in old habbits
He didn't come home after work, got drunk a lot, and started to get aggressive again. I felt sick to my stomach. And I knew I made the wrong choice, he wasn't there to change.. it was all just a game! Like it had been all the years before, apparently. He slept over at his new girlfriends house, which I found out because he received a text in his phone and left it on the table while he was in the shower. I should have trusted my gut feeling all along, because I had confronted him before with this so called "old friend" but I never had hard proof. Now I did. But the narcissist he is, he kept denying it.
I decided that it was enough, and started to find a way out of there without him knowing of it.
It was too late, things got for the worse really fast
Just days after the letter from court came, he started to get violent. And I mean really violent. The things he said that night, I still can rephrase by heart. And I also still have recordings from it, I will never forget the devil I saw in his eyes when he was getting at me that evening. I remained very calm, because I hoped this would help when I went to the police with these recordings. But it was useless... They didn't bother to even listen to it..
I had fled to a women's shelter with the children which may have been the most stupid decision in my life
Everything that happened there, it's not in favor of the children at all. But most of you know several things I already wrote about before here in the familyprotecion community. I managed to get out of there just in time, before they were about to take over all my income and I would have had absolutely no saying of it at all anymore. I felt it's time to leave, and just before the signing of the documents I got out of the shelter.
In that period after things got worse when it came to my ex his behavior. And for us personally it got bad too.
We lost our house, and we had been homeless (while the children lived at my ex's mother).
When we got back on track, and had a studio for ourselves there was a change of CPS worker on our case
I had finally managed to have 2 visits with my children, after all the time my ex denied contact. And then they dropped the bomb at me: "There will be another case worker, but there is nobody available yet." I was on top of this, because they told me firmly: "If you won't show up for a visit with the children, we will take action, because it's important that these visits are continuously." But then they are allowed to just tell me that I won't see them for who knows how long because she is leaving? What ? I kept emailing them, and told them I was about to give birth, and after the birth I would be recovering and not being able to come to their office some weeks. Therefore please hurry finding another caseworker. They did not care, or hurry... I didn't see them before I gave birth...
The next caseworker introduced himself in a very odd way
I suddenly received an email from him, where he told me what his name was, and that he had met the father in court yesterday at the custody hearing! Wait a second, did I just read this correctly? I had to read it again and again, and tears were already pouring down my cheeks now. I could not believe it, how can they mess up, again??
Extra information about this exact period: We were busy with a police officer building up a HUGE stalking case against my ex, and she firmly advised social workers and the involved agencies NOT to tell him about it. That she was building this big case with us that needed more time, because we had already been there for 50 hours of conversations and handing over evidence of the last years... She had already said very clearly that HE should be put in jail and lose all custody and I should get the children back, as all the agencies had failed to see what was really going on all this time. And she said she would make sure the judge would hear her in court. Now that gave me hope again, and I was convinced the tables were finally turning here.
So this email of this new guy from CPS was like a bomb that exploded in my head. I could not believe this. And you know what he said when I emailed him back? He said that there was no valid address known at their office, so they could not reach me to let me know! They had been at my house a few times, and the address was not changed, and I even had an email in my mailbox of the previous mess-up CPS worker where she confirmed that she had put my address in the system there about two months before. And now you tell me that you don't have my address? And you just let this happen??
Of course they did, I even think this previous mess-up CPS worker did it on purpose
Because they knew that the nex CPS worker would just say: "Sorry I don't know what happened with the previous case worker, but let's start all fresh." Because that's how they roll. And it's very hard to do something about it.
But as I did not appear in court, of course the judge granted this request of my ex where he requested full custody of the children. And then my life fell apart, I had no hope left actually.
They told me if the stalking case would be finished soon enough there maybe an option to stall it, or avoid them living with him (because they had to wait a few months until he would have his own house). But it did not look good, at all.
The police officer was not to be reached anymore, and I started losing every bit of hope then..
I felt that this would not be avoided anymore, and I knew as the stalking activities took a turn for the worst when they even were targeting my newborn child, that I had to make sure we were safe. This would bring me down to rock bottom if I stayed here. So for the first time I actually listened to my gut feeling right away, and started to make plans to leave.
It felt like we were prisoners trying to escape, in that kind of fear we lived daily.
My ex feels safe now, and doesn't know where I am
And I would like to keep it this way for our safety. But slowly I am gathering all documents needed, translating the evidence, and of course writing down parts of the story here on familyprotection, to start a case getting them back. It will take time, but it will be worth it.
But as you can see, things can change very quickly when you're dealing with CPS and another parent with evil intentions... He had planned this all along, but I never believed something like this could happen to me. But it did..
So be aware, document, check and double check. Because when you forget to double check even one thing (in our case the address) you may be caught by surprise, but not in a good way!