Need a lot of advice. Can't afford attorney to fight ex wife

[WifeOfDH]

I am going to start with the basic's to give an idea of the crap that has been going on since I met my husband. I know a large part of his ex's issue is control. When my dh got his divorce, she is the one who filed and she gave him joint custody with visitation stated as he could visit the kids at any time with prior notice. That worked fine for the most part until she found out we were planning on getting married. Visitation started slowing down quickly. Within 6 months of me moving in with him it appeared that the kids were having problems adjusting (now we know it was the mothers munipulation) and I had my husband get the kids into counciling. At that point he had been divorced from his ex for over 2 years (long before we even met). The counciling somewhat seemed to help some but not a lot. At the end of the first year, Dec 08, his ex had visitation being strictly a few minutes here and there and no more over nights. She blew up the last time, telling the kids right in front of him that he didn't care about them and on and on and he actually raised his voice to her for the first time and years and told her to shut the hell up. Of course she then filed a restraining order against both of us, though I wasn't even there, and tried using that to keep him from seeing his kids at all. Thankfully the judge who did the restraining order seen through it and only signed off on no threatening her and made it clear that she couldn't use it to stop visitation. Before that was over we had to file a modification of the divorce decree so some more strict visitation was stated so she couldn't control it so well. We also had to have it stated that the kids were to remain at the current counciling center that we got them into because she tried to change it to another place and make it sound so the issue with the kids was a family issue that she be resoved with family counciling which would have been her, him and the kids in the same room ever meeting together. That modification was signed by the judge on Feb 1st of 10'. My husband got true joint legal and physical visitation with the time span and holidays mentioned specifically along with it stating that both parents had to sign before counciling could be changed.

This arrangement has been going on for over a year now, and for the most part has been working great. My step-son who is almost 12 is mentally disabled and strict routine is very important for his adjustment. I have seen huge improvements from him now that we get him on a regular basis. His sister (15 yrs old) has had depression from before I first met her. It has only increased over these years. Though I didn't even know her father at the time they divorced, she blames me and my daughter for her parents divorce. She has continually and increasingly harrased my daughter who is with us full time with me having sole custody. She has now began to lash out and distroyed my daughters room twice during one weekly visit. So much so that it would probably have been cheaper and easier to replace the dry wall and we had to pull up the carpet because it was too trashed to even try to clean. We are now waiting on her evaluation results so we know what the best way to get her help is, but she has to stay at my husbands parents house because we feel she could be a danger to my daughter.

Long story short over the last year, the weekly works great with dh's son, but nothing has worked for his daughter to this point.

Now to where we are needing the advice on how to go about all this. Earlier this month his ex filed a new modification stating that she want's full custody now. Even on the weekly arrangement she did that willingly without us ever having to goto court. She is claiming a lot of bull crap stuff that we can easily prove otherwise on. Examples are like their school work is suffering from this arrangement (daughter has sever depression yet only one subject is actually being affected but all her grades are the same for the most part over the last 3 years, son's consistantly makes better grades on the weeks he is with us), she states that the kids do not like nor want to come over here for a week at a time (both, including the daughter whos been explained that shes old enough to make that choice, continue to be very verbal on wanting to keep coming here like they are now), we take away daughters cell phone and deny her contact with her mother when shes here (well after trashing the room shes grounded from the damn cell phone that we got her and shes been told many times that she can call if she wants but she never asks or wants to when we ask) and other crap like this.

We know we have to fight her on the custody, if for nothing else, because of how it will affect my husbands son if he is no longer coming here on a regular basis. We have worked hard to get him from a baby state to acting more like a normal child. He literally wouldn't even ask if needed anything including food. At the most he would do would be to grab your shirt and drag you to what he wanted. He was doing this at 10-yrs-old!

We know that their mom has been doing a lot of munipulation of the kids and it has had the worst affect on his daughter. And we know that the reality of the situation is that even with all the help in the world that we can get her, with her being 15 and still having contact with her mother, she will not change, therefore the crap she does to my daughter will also continue. We have discussed this a lot and both feel that the best situation for all the kids, including my daughter, is a split custody for his kids with him having full legal and physical custody of his son and his ex having the same of his daughter, yet with stipulations of getting her the help she requires. We have heard though that the judge does not like this type of arrangement.

We don't have the money to hire an attorney so we have no choice on this but to represent ourselves in the case so any help will be much appreciated. We really have no idea where to start or what we need to look at doing first. The info that we do have at the moment is a past evaluation of his son that is almost 2 years old, we are starting another in 2 weeks that will be completed before the next court date. We will have the evaluation over his daughter next monday. We have his daughters school transcript and a detailed grade report for his son for the last two months. The kids councilor is willing to help us all we need because she doesn't like their mother either from the things she has seen her doing that has prevented the counciling from working for their daughter, but she wants something from an attorney or the courts before she will give us any info so we don't know what we need for that information. The next court date is July 7th and its listed as a motion docket. What do we need to do for this hearing? Also, when looking up the date, I just noticed that last friday an application for order appointing an attorney for minor children was submitted. What does that mean?

Thanks for any help and sorry for being so long winded on this.