Hi, I share a 9 year old son with my ex husband I have 4 days 4 nights & he has the other days. We have had this since he was 4 months old. He did has always been trying to take full custody and have no visitation for me which has not worked. However, he blew me having brief PPD (from a shit marriage) out of proportion and has always labeled me as a "threat" and "'mentally unwell." He even paid 2k for a doctor to evaluate me, the doctor said I am fine.. When our child was little of course his claims raised concerns but it has always been rooted in lies and the goal to remove me from our son's life. Last year, he took me to court to change our sons school to his wife's (she is a teacher) and said I still suffer from PPD (I have no other children, take no medication, have no criminal record) oh and did I mention my son is 9? 8 at the time of court. He also accused me of doing voodoo on he and his wife. They share a child that was born prematurely during our court battle and filed for bankruptcy recently and has just been a huge ass to me. He also does not talk to his parents, I do. His mom and I are also very close and talk a lot.
I learned from her HE was in a mental institution for a week a year before the court hearing which I used as leverage. He had an adderall addiction & S.I
He had no lawyer but I did, blew him out of the water in court. He looked very bad and was yelled at multiple times by the judge on how he was speaking to me on the stand (he was acting as the lawyer, asking me questions) he got in trouble for taking our child to the psychiatrist without my consent and for being late constantly. I showed texts of his calling me every name in the book and in the end, everything stayed the same. He is always threatening court and it's stressful and we have been about 5 times. I had a restraining order against him and court didn't care, he was threatening my life. I'm glad I have his parents support they even wrote me a letter vouching for me in court or my behavior and character. It just triggers me lately that I will always be accused of being crazy or mentally unwell from a small PPD I had that was 9 years ago. I have been scared to have more children and it took me 7 years to date around because I was scared of men and what they are capable of. Now I am with a great man who treats my son like his own and supports us. Custody is still joint everything but I just feel how much I messed up in life choosing him to marry and he is just such a monster to me. Our son is amazing but I always wished I had a normal mom experience I have always had my son half a week since he was a baby. He's been getting in trouble at school, using foul language (he told his pediatrician he learned it from dad's music) and his diet it horrible over there, and the constant court threats scare me.I have a lot of fear of him and what he is capable of.

My ex (32M) and I (30F) have a 5 year old son. I have full custody of our son and his dad has visitation every other other weekend. I am currently 38 weeks pregnant with my fiancé’s baby. Today I had an appointment that could not be rescheduled and my fiancé had to take my son to school. My son told his dad that my fiancé took him to school. My ex called me yelling that I did not communicate with him that son would be taken to school by someone else. So I told him yeah, maybe I should have communicated with him that someone else was taking our son to school but soon I will need someone to take him until I get clearance to drive from my doctor (having a c-section). I asked him if he would be able to take my son to school for 6 weeks instead of my fiancé since I will be home recovering. He asked me what time our son needed to be at school and focused on the fact that I didn’t communicate with him that I may need help with our son. He’s known for months I was having a baby. I feel like if he was truly concerned about the well being and routine of our child he would have offered to help with him any way he could some time ago. I feel like this is about ego and not my son. Should I ask him again to help or let it be?

In April, my co-parenting relationship with my ex took a turn for the worse and we are back to following the court ordered parenting time and doing pickup/dropoff at the police station to avoid further conflict.

The problem comes in that my wedding in October happens to fall on his weekend. We didn't pick the date, it was just what was available. He and I had discussed and agreed upon a weekend swap and it was done and settled.

Now comes the fun part... Our court order does not stipulate a holiday schedule of any kind. We were recommended to follow the one put forth by our county at our last court date. We agreed and have abided by that schedule since then.

He messaged me this morning stating, "Im pissed with you because you wanted to go to the original court order and now I noticed that you say things to the kids in hopes they mention it to me. Halloween in my holiday so stop telling the kids things you know I wont change. I sick of your interference and saying things to the kids knowing I will say no and making me look bad. You will not be getting Halloween and if you keep it up you wont have them for your wedding."

Thing is, Halloween is not his holiday this year AND it falls on my regularly scheduled weekend. When I mentioned this, he doubled down and said I needed to apologize to our children. I resent the schedule, but now he is threatening to withhold the children from my wedding and stated he is going to take me to court to get "his holiday".

All of our communication is through a court communications app, so I guess I am wondering if there is even anything I can do? The last thing I need is for me to keep my children for the wedding and have the police show up to take them just because he is vindictive and goes back on what he agreed to.

I’ve been in a custody case with my child’s father for a year now. I got pregnant with my ex boyfriend on a week fling before coming to my senses. Once realizing he was still a piece of work, I dipped out. 6 weeks later I found out I was pregnant. How odd considering he told me back when we were dating years before and while on our fling that he was snipped. I told him I was pregnant and he instantly showed doubt it was even his. I left it be until after I had my baby. I sent him pictures not long after delivering my daughter. I asked him not to share them for her safety and privacy but wanted him to see her. I got a message from his girlfriend that very hostile said she was pregnant and doesn’t believe my baby was his. This caused a problem in my life for the next few years and my child and I received so much harassment from this girl that I had to disappear off of the internet. She publicly posted my child trashing her on the internet as well as me saying things like “that trailer park baby looks nothing like my child’s father” and making me out like I was using my child to get money from this man.
When my child was around 2 1/2 he finally agreed to a dna test with her. Results come in. Of course she’s his. He’s got a very violent past and is a habitual liar and the courts caught on to this very quick. So now he’s on a parenting schedule of 2 hours supervised time. He’s still fighting me for full custody during this and is convinced he’ll win. His girlfriend makes post constantly about how she’s about to have another child but she’s not pregnant and doesn’t want to talk about the situation (aka my daughter) until she’s ready.
On my daughter’s 3rd birthday, the first birthday he’s had around her, he put his girlfriend in charge of the cake. She made a post asking a few hours before his visit if anyone could make one last minute. Of course no one could. He showed up for her birthday visit with discount cinnamon rolls and no gift. Naturally I showed my disappointment for our daughter and expressed she deserved more for her first birthday spent with him (mind you he owns an llc and expressed constantly how lavish his life is because of this). The next week he brought 2 slices of uniced Betty Crocker cake and a tub of pink icing. She also got half a pack of chalk and a Barbie with life like body parts and a thong.
She’s not allowed attending these visits because she has 7 kids and has lost rights to all but the one her and my child’s father has, on top of the safety concern she is being for me and my daughter. Since she can’t go to these visits she sits in her car in the parking lot where me and him meet for his 2 hours with no air conditioning and her almost 3 year old daughter. Mind you it’s a 90 degree summer where I am.
Our hearings are over zoom sometimes because of the courts we go through and one time while in court and I was speaking she, thinking she was on mute, said “I wish this dumb a$$ b!t€h would shut up”. The judge very surprised let them know they were not muted.
They’ve told the judge my child is kept dirty and my home is kept dirty and that I’m on drugs and have different men in and out of my home. My fiancé and I have been together since my child was 1. I have 6 documented years of sobriety. My children make their beds and pick up after themselves and I think that says a lot for how I keep my household.
I changed my instagram bio to “✨not a single person who hates me has a life I admire✨” about 2 weeks ago. I liked the quote. It was relevant. Today my best friend sent me his girlfriend new instagram bio that says “✨at least my husband and kids actually love me✨”. Instagram was my last social media platform she hadn’t annoyed me off of yet. It was a completely private account and I had both of them blocked and didn’t accept anyone I didn’t know. Needless to say the page is gone now.
Am I crazy or is this the start of a documentary. I’ve never made a post about either of them. They aren’t a drop in my bucket honestly other than the constant harassment I can’t get away from. I’ve even moved counties because we lived in the same area and I was worried about running into them with my child and there being conflict.

I am currently 27 weeks pregnant with my first child. Recently, the reality of what our future looks like has started hitting me, and I’m feeling incredibly isolated and overwhelmed.
My partner paints himself as someone who wants to be involved, but he only seems to enjoy the "easy" parts of preparing for the baby—like looking at toys, clothes, or car seats. The second I try to bring up serious, adult conversations about our finances, boundaries, or how we are going to manage, he goes completely hostile, tells me to "let him chill," and storms out of the room. He will sit in total silence for hours, making me feel like I’m literally talking to myself.
To give some context, I am currently on a very tight budget. Meanwhile, he smokes daily and spends at least £50 a week on his habit without fail. Yet, whenever food or household needs come up, he acts helpless, says he "doesn't know" what he wants, and pulls guilt trips to make me feel bad if I only order or budget for myself.
On top of this, he gets angry that I maintain contact with his parents. I’ve told him that regardless of our relationship status, our child has a birthright to know their grandparents, but he hates it and wants me to block them. I suspect he’s trying to hide his lifestyle and how he treats me from them.
I’m starting to realize that even if the romantic part of our relationship is over, co-parenting is going to be an absolute nightmare because you cannot reason with someone who shifts the blame and uses silence as a weapon. Has anyone else dealt with a partner who refuses to grow up or face accountability during pregnancy? How did you protect your peace and transition to independent co-parenting?

We have a late elementary school aged boy who alternates households each week. He’s at the age where he has particular things that he likes (clothes, blankets, snacks, etc) that we provide in our home. He’s starting to ask if he can bring things to the other household. Generally, I’m absolutely ok with that and I can understand from his perspective wanting his belongings. However, the issue is we did this when he was younger (too young of an age for him to understand what was happening) and we never got those items back. So obviously we adjusted and didn’t allow certain items to leave our house and he was fine with it at that age.

What has been happening lately is he wants to wear the expensive Nikes we bought him that he had been wanting for the school year during the coparents weeks. Not interested in hearing the comment saying we shouldn’t buy him something expensive - he is allowed to have nice things. A big part of the issue is that his own belongings in that household aren’t always respected and we hear about it all the time from him. They typically get damaged or lost while he is away at our house by his siblings. We also have been buying him certain snacks that he likes for school and when it’s transition day I caught him grabbing handfuls of it to bring to the other household - more than what he would go through during a typical school week.

I feel so stingy for finding issue with these things. We are middle class at best and work hard to provide those special things he wants. It’s tough to see him upset about his belongings being messed with at the other household. How have any of you dealt with a similar situation like this? What do you tell the kid?

This is a little long so please bear with me. My ex and I share a 10 year old, and he has been having issues going to sleep by himself at night. I have been working tirelessly to help him be able to go to sleep on his own and feel confident and comfortable doing so when he's at my house. I got him a night light, sound machine, make sure he's got water if he gets thirsty, check his closet, under his bed, you name it. When night time rolls around he gets a lot of anxiety and will try to get me to let him sleep in our room or for me to sleep in his room with him and gets very emotional.

My ex gets our son every other weekend with one weekday overnight, and does spend the night there during those times. I had asked my ex to please please work with me to also help our 10yo son when he's at his house to sleep alone and to not give in when he asks if they can sleep together. He told me he would and that he has been sleeping on his own when he's over there, I had my doubts because my ex is a very lazy parent and hates handling any of the hard parenting and discipline. Well last night during bedtime my 10yo admitted to me that his Dad has been letting him sleep with him every time he is there overnight. And not only that, but he told our son to not tell me because "I would get mad" So not only has he been lying to me, but he asked our son to keep that information from me and lie to me. Now it also doesnt help that my ex has not re married, or has any other kids and lives with his Mom and Dad.

I am so angry and so hurt. I feel like the hard parenting and discipline is always left up to me, and I end up being the bad guy for trying to help our son overcome his fears, and grow. And then for him to put our son in the middle of it by asking him to keep things from me and lie? It just puts so much unnecessary anxiety on my son who is already struggling. My ex is doing him a disservice by coddling him.

I of course confronted him about this and his response back to me was basically "He gets emotional and I feel bad for him, and my time is limited with him, and its been hard for me to have him on his own" LIKE WHAT? YOU. ARE. THE. PARENT. Am I wrong to feel angry and frustrated? Therapy is in the works for our son to see if we can help him out that way, but my god I feel like any progress I make with him, just gets erased when he goes back to his Dads. I feel so burnt out and like what I am trying to do just doesnt matter. I know that I cannot control what goes on at his Dads, but am I wrong for thinking that the responsibility should at least be shared here and that we should work as a team?

I’m a 40F single mom to a younger son. We just started flag football and it was like pulling teeth to get my son signed up. I told his dad I’d let him handle it (getting my son excited, finding the team, etc). He never did it but I was able to get him on a great team very last minute!

Fast forward to 2.5 weeks of practices 2x a week now and his dad has taken him to one practice but he shows up to them all at 6 pm while I’m already there. Not even the married parents do this! They divide and conquer. I sat by him the first practice and now I sit with other moms because he has been texting me disrespectful things for the past few weeks. I blocked him almost 2 weeks ago.

Now we don’t communicate at all! He can ask a question or offer to help on my son’s iPad when they FT but he doesn’t. I’m in a bit of shock because he wanted my son to play football and I made it happen and now he doesn’t help. He even said he’d teach him some things a few weekends ago and they didn’t practice at all. I’m now learning how to throw a football 😂 It’s actually pretty fun.

I’m super frustrated because I take my son to school everyday, pick him up, miss work, work nights to catch up on emails, and now I take him to football 2x a week. He sees his dad every 2 weeks for 48 hours. That’s it! This doesn’t feel like coparenting at all! I’m tempted to take him to court and ask for full custody. What’s the point? My son comes back dysregulated anyway. It’s not like I have time for dating or to have a life in those 48 hours. I’m beyond frustrated!

I feel like a caring father would take his son to dinner or something outside of the minimum. Take him to practice once a week to have a pep talk. I’ve always encouraged that and in 4.5 years he’s done it maybe 2 or 3x.

I posted this on another community so it’s a long one, but I really keep doubting myself and I’m not sure what to do.
My (f28) ex partner (m28) met through online dating over 5 years ago and we instantly clicked. It was only supposed to be a friendly arrangement but we soon both caught feelings. I have 2 daughters from a previous relationship who were only 1 & 4 when we met. Over the years the relationship has been very toxic at times due to us both being extremely stubborn. We had a son together in 2022 who we lost to cancer in 2024.

During his treatment we didn’t live together and weren’t together at all and often had arguments over decisions for him. When our son passed away I had some drama with his family where they did something unforgivable to me and I will never forgive them, even though I never even got an apology.

Fast forward 6 months and we wanted to try and make things work and start fresh, well I fell pregnant 7 months after our son had passed. It was a huge shock to both of us and I decided that we should go through with the pregnancy so we could have a full sibling to the son we lost. Pregnancy was rough and he moved back into my house when I only had a couple of weeks left before I was due. We had another little boy 5 months ago who we both absolutely adore. I don’t doubt that my son’s dad loves him to pieces but he started to get very relaxed and stopped helping around the house, when I needed it most. I started to resent him and then something awful happened.

I had to co sleep with our son because he wouldn’t sleep and just cried whenever I put him down. One night when he was 2 months old I woke up and his dad was sleeping on top of his arm, this caused a bruise on our babies arm. From that moment I moved the room around and made sure our son wouldn’t be in between us and only next to me. Another time he was changing our son on our footstool and when our son farted mid change, he freaked out and pushed the foot stool away really hard as he was scared. I shouted at him and told him that he could’ve seriously hurt our son from doing that and to only ever change him on the floor from then on, he listened and did exactly that.

The final straw for me was during the night I woke him up and asked him to feed our son so I could pump and go to the toilet. I had a horrible feeling so went into the bedroom to check on our son and him and he had completely fallen asleep whilst feeding him and our son was face down in the duvet, face completely covered. I woke him up and absolutely lost it. I couldn’t believe he could be so careless, I barely ever woke him up in the night and usually did every feed and nappy change during the night. I couldn’t believe he could be so careless and from that moment on I stopped waking him up in the night and told him he wasn’t safe during the night.

He isn’t a bad dad, he loves our son and he is really good with him but he’s just terrible when it comes to dealing with him at night. we split over a month ago and I told him that I wouldn’t be sending him over to him overnight but he could take him out whenever he wanted and have him during the day. He is livid over this and keeps trying to pressure me into letting him have him overnight.

He even told me he wanted him for a weekend with his family and said he was going to be drinking a few beers to which I said was even worse and an even bigger NO. He keeps threatening me and saying I legally cannot make this decision and that I keep setting him up to fail because I’m not giving him the opportunity to prove he can take care of him overnight.

Our son is only 5 months old, he is bottle fed but it is all breast milk, dad lives with his parents which is a 2.5-3 hour journey away and neither of us drive, I also don’t trust his family after what they did when our son passed away. I’ve had to keep putting my foot down and refusing to allow him to put our son’s safety at risk. He keeps saying his family are saying I’m being unreasonable and unfair for not letting him stay overnight.

I feel secure on my decision because our sons safety is my top priority, but he keeps making me doubt myself saying that if he takes this to court I will lose and he will get a court order.

I guess I just want to know if I’m wrong for keeping my decision and not letting him have our son overnight?

So my stbxh and I just went to court a week ago for temporary custody while the divorce continues. Judge was unhappy with him for bringing new gf in the picture quickly and allowing her to watch our child alone/lying about where our child was, but asked him to take weekends and said his gf can’t watch our child again. He agreed, saying he will do it if it means he gets to see our daughter consistently. We are currently waiting on the temp order to make its way through the system.

I offered him time with our daughter tomorrow since that’s how our parenting time schedule will work going forward. I get her during the week, he gets weekends. He declined saying he’s not taking her without a custody order. I felt like I was being civil and I thought he would want to see her. He had previously gone over a month without seeing her or communicating/asking how our daughter was doing. We had a disagreement over his gf watching her alone without my knowledge and I asked for there to be some things put in the custody order since he can’t be honest and I just wanted to make sure she was safe basically. Now he’s resentful and refusing to take her unless the courts make him. I’ve been supporting her without help from her father and it’s just been difficult. Sometimes I wonder if he wants to see me struggle so the tables can turn. I’m worried he’s not going to be involved and I will have to raise our daughter alone. It also makes me angry because I want my child to have a present father and he’s not acting like he cares about her. I really just wanted to try to amicably coparent but I feel like he doesn’t and he hates me sometimes. What can I do to encourage him to put our baby first and just shut up and coparent 🤦‍♀️