New. Father. Div/Cust ongoing. 4yr-son. Wife alienating, making criminal allega...

[Drake]

I came across SPARC from a link at a Borderline Personality Disorder site.  
I'm going through a divorce.  My wife has alienated me from our 4yr old son for the past year.  She has claimed spousal abuse, rape/sexual assault, mental instability, and more.  She made the same claims against her first husband, and their children are 11yrs and 9yrs.  My wife has some emotional problems (mood swings, praises me then demonizes, blames, criticizes in front of children, never at fault, etc).  Her psych profile says she has narcissistic and histrionic personality.  Her family knows she is highly dramatic and her first divorce was ugly.  She plays the victim, becomes unreasonable and irrational, and blames others for everything.  Her first husband's psych profile says he has anti-social personality and seeks to be manipulative and believes he's above social law/norms.  He's not trustworthy, but my wife made him look like a horrible, dangerous person with all her allegations and even accused him of molesting their daughter, but now they joint parent, attend the children's activities together, and I am categorized as the evil, dangerous guy.  I'm a great dad and her family knows so, but blood is thicker than water and they continue to enable her.  She is saying I'm a violent sociopath with borderline personality disorder, yet all her traits show that she could be borderline.  She has made numerous criminal complaints and filed for restraining orders and it has taken the better part of a year to get supervised visitation with my son.  I want what is best for him, but not only was he taken away from a parent, which has to be detrimental (no contact from 39 mos. old - 49 mos. old), but now is trying to readjust and figure out who dad is.  And now she is demonizing his father (saying harmful things, telling him bad things about me) to his siblings and him, just as she used to do in front of her oldest two children about their father.  
My son is more important to me than anything in this world.  I want what is best for him and am extremely concerned about his emotional and psychological well-being.  I have no money and my wife is 110% financially supporter by her movie actor brother.
Please advise.

[mistoffolees]

If you really have no money, you need to get some. Beg, borrow or steal to get the money for a good attorney.

There are people here who believe strongly in handling your own case. IMHO, there's too much at risk here - and even a simple error could cost you your relationship with your son.

Yes, you can handle things on your own, but I strongly recommend against it- even in a simple, uncontested case. If you want to do things on your own, you're going to spend many, many hours just learning how the system works and I'd advise using those hours to get a second job to pay a professional.

On what basis was supervised visitation ordered? Typically, unsupported allegations from one spouse aren't sufficient.  I guess it happens, but usually there must be something else.

Assuming that there's nothing important being left out, I'd suggest immediately filing for custody with supervised visitation for her. In order to support that, you'll probably want to get a custody evaluation done.  This step is critical - a good custody evaluator is worth their weight in gold, but a bad one will mess things up. Make sure your attorney picks a good one (for example, you might set it up so that you'll propose 3 and the other side chooses one of them).

My ex had the same pattern - borderline personality / histrionic / narcissistic personality (these three disorders are all very similar and it's hard for even a professional to distinguish between them) and it's not fun. I would suggest that you consider counseling to help you deal with it. If you handle it properly and stop reinforcing her behavior, she'll eventually find someone else to direct her energy at. If you continue to reinforce her behavior, she'll be stuck by your side forever. It takes a long time, though - and my counselor says that NPDs are almost never 'cured'.

Good luck.

[Drake]

Thank you for your response.
"IMHO"???

Personality -- I understand what you're saying and hope she finds someone else.  My whole marriage was turmoil and I never knew how to deal with my wife.  I have been seeking counseling, and even had myself tested and evaluated when she began claiming I was mentally unstable and borderline.  I'm unsure how to not reinforce her behavior but need to learn.  When she cut off contact in December '06, I didn't try to fight her but just expressed my desire to be involved with our son and how important that was to his development.  I'm a dad 110%, and she knows how much he means to me, but placating her didn't work.

When she first cut off contact, I had decided not to get us another place to live together, so I suppose that was her retaliation.  That was last December.  I thought a few days or even weeks would calm her down, but it didn't.  I tried going through her family as many of them know of her dramatics and felt I should see my son, but when it came down to it, nobody wanted to get involved.  She claimed abuse and apparently had pictures of bruises and I suppose the DA wanted to pursue the case.  I didn't have anything to hide, plead not guilty, but made the mistake of admitting to the police that we had argued often (even threatening behavior or intimidation can be a crime in domestic abuse if the partner shows they feel in danger), and trusted the public defender that nothing would come of it.  I was wrong, and didn't feel like the justice system served me.

It was then I learned she was trying to get a default judgment for div/cust. and I sought an attorney.  I retained an attorney who came highly recommended, but paid him $10,000 and in 5 months received nothing but a weekly 5 minute phone call to my 3 yr old.  I had no more money and went on my own.  I was about to get visitation last summer and then she filed a restraining order the day before it would have taken effect making claims that other abuse had occurred 8 months prior.  I had to wait a month for that hearing, which was moved to the family law court and delayed another month.  I had all my witnesses there and opposed all allegations, but the judge had a trial later that day and rescheduled us 3 months later for December '07.  So now it's been nearly a year.  At that hearing in September, even though the opposition was now also claiming rape, child endangerment, and other lies, the judge told them there was no reason I should not see my son and should have been for the previous 9 months.  He then ordered monitored visitation.

I've borrowed money and hired another attorney and return to court next week for a court ordered custody evaluation that will occur in the morning (not a full blown evaluation), and the hearing will be in the afternoon.  I would like psych eval's done on us to show her disorders, and also show how she has purposefully alienated myself and my family and demonized me to the detriment of our son.

Please let me know if you have any other feedback. Thank you.

[mistoffolees]

You mentioned that he she had a psych history of narcissism, then make sure you have either copies of the records or the name and contact information for the psychiatrist who diagnosed her.

When talking with the custody evaluator, you have to walk a fine line. You want to make sure you tell the evaluator your story, but you don't want to be seen as a complainer. In particular, you don't want to send the message that you want to separate the child from the other parent.

The way I did it was that when I had something negative to say, I presented it very factually and without anger - and then provided a stack of paperwork to the evaluator. That sends the message that you don't really want to make an issue of these things, but that you have to for the child's sake.

You really want to get the message across that it's in the child's interest to spend lots of time with both parents.

Good luck.

[Davy]

All this ugliness is NOT happening because you're bad but because you're GOOD ... a 110% Dad.  Good job in all you have accomplished thus far for the well being of your child in the face of all the false allegations, etc.  

You seem authentic and personable.  I'm sure you realize it is best to remain as such.

In my humble opinion and experience it is best to remain silent and/or respond in generalizations/2nd person to get your factual truths  across (and stop placating).  

Of most importance.  The REAL abusers are those that make false allegatons, alienate, etc (just the act there of).  The wrong parent is saddled with monitored visitations.

Best to your son, you and family.  Hope you keep posting.

[John-J-Jay]

Mist,
since your ex had borderline personality / histrionic / narcissistic personality who has custody of the children you or her? if she has custody why wasn't that sufficient for you to gain custody?

Thanks

[mistoffolees]

We have shared (50:50) custody.

I didn't want to put my daughter through a fight for 100% since ex isn't too bad with her. If she ever starts taking things out on my daughter, the situation might change.

[John-J-Jay]

Thanks
I was just curious because we are still waiting on ours to be done. As you know i've had my child all her life 10 1/2 yrs and 9+ of custody. I know that it's going to come back with something on both of ours since all humans have SOMETHING crazy about them but wasn't forsure what the court really considers crazy!