Situation in OK

[notnew]

is to stay in the house until you have a signed agreement from her stating that you two have agreed to shared custody. Can't you wait until the first hearing and let the "status quo" be established of shared custody? If you leave in advance, then you are seriously jeopradizing your foothold on the matter.

A lot of women seem agreeable until you are out the door and then file a whole bunch of lies meant to restrict you from your child as punishment for leaving. If your wife is already unstable, you have no way of knowing how she will proceed. If I were you, I'd make sure my a$$ was covered every step of the way.

Keep us posted.

[mistoffolees]

I guess it's a matter of interpretation. My attorney told me that if I got my wife to sign an agreement to shared custody and 50:50 split of my daughter's time, then it would be OK to leave. Apparently, Soc and others think that this might still leave me open to problems.

I don't recall if I mentioned it, but my wife appears to have many of the characteristics of narcissistic personality disorder. While she hasn't been diagnosed with that, she meets all the criteria. One of the characteristics is a tendency to lie and to retaliate (the way my therapist described it is that if I pull one hair out of her head, she won't be happy until she pulls out ALL of my hair). Clearly, she will try to retaliate. Not maybe, she will.

Therefore, I've pretty much decided to try to get her to sign the 50:50 agreement and then stay in the house, anyway until the preliminary hearing - unless I can get an iron clad statement from my attorney that it's OK to leave. Someone suggested that I might want to walk around all day with a tape recorder going to ensure I catch any of her rages. If she blows up, it helps me. If she stays calm, that helps, too, since it would help us get started on our separate lives more rationally.

[socrateaser]

>I guess it's a matter of interpretation. My attorney told me
>that if I got my wife to sign an agreement to shared custody
>and 50:50 split of my daughter's time, then it would be OK to
>leave. Apparently, Soc and others think that this might still
>leave me open to problems.

Attorneys say all sorts of things to clients, for all sorts of reasons, and they are rarely caught in a mistake, because attorneys will rarely put anything in writing for a client. That's why I advised that you get a written statement from your attorney as to the strategy before you act on it.

Then, if your attorney is wrong, you will have grounds for a malpractice action. But, if you don't have this advice in writing, then my friend, you don't have the advice at all.

>I don't recall if I mentioned it, but my wife appears to have
>many of the characteristics of narcissistic personality
>disorder. While she hasn't been diagnosed with that, she meets
>all the criteria. One of the characteristics is a tendency to
>lie and to retaliate (the way my therapist described it is
>that if I pull one hair out of her head, she won't be happy
>until she pulls out ALL of my hair). Clearly, she will try to
>retaliate. Not maybe, she will.

Please don't advance "armchair" psychological analyses of the other party in this forum. It creates an unnecessary adversarial environment.

[mistoffolees]

I met with the attorney today. She confirmed that if I have a signed agrement and my wife tries to say I abandoned the house that she could make a very strong case that I only did it on the basis if the assurances that we'd split the child's time and that (at least in this state which strongly favors evenly split custody in the temporary custody stage) most, if not all, judges would accept that and would not penalize me. HOWEVER, she agreed that there's still a very slight risk that it could go wrong and that the judge would see it the wrong way (she can't recall having seen any cases where it happened, but can't guarantee that it won't).

Therefore, what I will do is ask my wife to sign the split custody agreement. If she does so, my attorney thinks she and my wife's attorney can probably get it in front of the judge for signature within a couple of days - and then it becomes binding on both of us. That will get us through the temporary custody stage, at least, which has a good chance of becoming permanent. I will stay in the house untiil they are able to convert my wife and my agreement into one signed by the judge.

Thanks for all your help.

And sorry about the analyses. You can imagine that it's stressful. I'm working on it.

[socrateaser]

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