Stepdads ex-wife is a psychopath who uses her kids as pawns
Tw: possible emotional abuse, neglect, manipulation, narcissistic parent behaviour.
Posting this here, BC this story is insane and I don't want them to see it if they use Reddit.
So my mum got married to a man who hired me once they started dating so I'll call him boss from now on. He's kinda from an old money family as is his ex, my mum and I come from an eastern European country so it's all a bit strange to us.
Boss and ex-wife Have shared custody, he takes them every other weekend and half terms and still he pays £600 in child support. Ha has a business but she makes more money than my boss, and she own 50% BC he didn't sign a prenup. Ex wife's new partner, also makes more money than him and my mum just works retail jobs, often graveyard shifts and stuff. Ex-wife also gets all of Daniels disability benefits. Still, exwife is always plotting to get more money from him, trying to sue him by claiming there's money he's hiding (there really isn't) . Kinda a spit in our faces since my dad only paid £6 a month in child care, and only took me for a day every other weekend.
Boss also always spends the day looking after the kids, taking them out for fun like the arcade and stuff, but what we hear from them is that if they're at home they're never at home, they always have, drumming lessons or dance lessons and horse riding lessons, extra calicular, etc... for the record Emma is 9 and Daniel is 13 and Daniel has cerebral palsy and recently after boss has been vouching for him to get tested he's been diagnosed with autism too. So Danial much prefers staying at home, I think he gets overwhelmed if there are too many plans.
Also when he was diagnosed with autism, it was so sad BC they asked him to define friendship and he couldn't, He gave his teacher as an example of a friend.
Whenever Emma comes to our place she always complains and she complains about this to her mum as well that we don't punish Dan as much as Emma. I think we discipline them equally, but it kind of seems like at home Daniel gets punished more. When boss and ex-wife were still together he would come home to her sitting in her car while Emma as a baby was still inside with Dan in the house. As a parent I can say that that is horrible. Anything could happen when you're not looking after a baby. Even just letting them cry for 20 minutes is just so bad for their emotional regulation. Even now when Daniel has a tantrum she leaves and their stepdad turns to Dan and says "look what you've done" and BC I'm a parent I told Dan that's not ok to do, you sign up to t take care of your kids no matter what when you become a parent and he says "even if you've been really bad?" "But no even when you're really really bad."
The reason they actually got a divorce is because the ex-wife found some younger man but what they told the kids when they asked is that it's because daddy ate the last cookie. Which is obviously not serious but to a kid that's still putting the blame on their dad. They might assume he's done something that's not appropriate to tell them as a kid. They might just subconsciously blame their dad for their parents not being together. It's not right for a multiple reasons imo.
Ex-Wife is always trying to turn the kids against their dad, especially Emma because obviously she treats Emma better than she does then so she's easier to influence into thinking that mummy loves her more and that daddy loves dan more. Went there at their mom's. Emma and her mum go out shopping and when they're on holiday Emma gets taken out everywhere because they there's a more to do. And dan often gets left at home taken care of by their stepdad because he can't move as quick and can't do everything. They're trying to get Emma to want to stay home with mummy more often and not go to their dad's because that would mean more child care money. So for a while Emma was you know saying I want to. I don't want to be here even though she loves dad as well. She always enjoy spending time with them. It's just during bedtime, she'll have tantrums about missing mum. So finally they ask for one time Emma gets to go home earlier than Dan and boss agrees because he wants her to know that she's got agency. And honestly I don't think it made Emma as happy as she thought it would. Who knows if it was even her idea.
So a few months ago they got an email from the solicitor as they always do letting them know that they are moving to Ireland which is quite far away. Boss says absolutely not. They want to talk about it. Ex-wife said they'll only meet for a conversation if he agrees that they are just going to talk about the logistics of everything and he has to agree that it's still happening. Obviously that's a trap so my boss says no and he goes to court to restrict them from moving away. At some point her solicitor has the gull to write an email about how boss is clearly upset and should sit down and make sure that he's got the right support before continuing the email, which seems to be a new tactic that many lawyers and solicitors use to aggravate someone. The house they're moving to is actually a castle. They write all this stuff about how it's a child-centric decision and how they'll have fresh air and pony club and new school is very accommodating.
Kids are very excited about the Irish heritage, especially Emma. Obviously. Dan gets excluded from most of the activities they do in Ireland so he's less sure, but em obviously is loving the luxury. She even says luxury lifestyle like that is not a word that a 9-year-old just comes up by herself with. She's always boasting about how rich their family is and how their stepdad owned the entire village and they've actually donated it to the church which mean we can't use what a child says as evidence, but to us it kind of sounds like tax evasion. But maybe she just got some of the details wrong.
Also Daniel just started secondary and he's actually made a couple friends for the first time ever. It's the first time I really saw him start to belong and it would just be so sad to rip that away from him.
As I'm writing this. They've already had their first court hearing and it seems so far that they are siding with my boss because they would prefer not to split up a family. But the next step is to get the statements in order for the next hearing and to do that. My parents actually travelled all the way to this Castle in Ireland to see if all the details are correct and what they can use in the court case. First off, the pony club doesn't exist at all. They've asked all the nearby people, the school that Google that nothing comes up. They are school is 45 minutes away by but it's the only one for miles and people come from 2 hours away and it's also a primary secondary school together and it's barely filled to half the capacity. The last school was a good school and this is an acceptable school. They don't even have a school uniform because of the volatile weather in the mountains, which is where the castle is. The town they're moving to is actually a tourist town. So well they say that there's lots to do. It's mostly just for tourists. They claim that that was a cinema in the town which is more of like a one room that you can hire out rather than some place that actually shows movies regularly, it's usually closed. The villages said that most kids move out as soon as they can, so as soon as they go to college or uni they go far away and don't come back until they've inherited some house or something. Obviously. Dan being disabled can't really go anywhere by himself. He needs help and the boss only runs once an hour which is about the same as at our place so it's not any better. We also live on a farm so there is fresh air here as well.
In accordance with what is recommended by the court, my boss proposed that they only talk to the kids about this moving in neutral terms so that they don't start imagining their life. So boss and ex-wife had a meeting over a dinner, and a boss made a comment afterwards about how it was. Very strange that ex-wife left to go to the toilet multiple times in this half an hour conversation. First thing in the morning next day, He gets an email from her solicitor saying that she has over Kiki that she overheard him talking about the move As soon as she left to go to the toilet. How she heard it through the toilet door or something? Which obviously he didn't do, cuz he's not playing nasty like she is.
She also said during that conversation that if they won't be able to move because of the kids her boyfriend is going to move without her and she's going to have to move out to a different place because she won't be able to afford the mortgage and she's going to be a single mum. Her statement in the court is very much insulting boss's character and his statement does none of that. Even though, I genuinely think he could prove that she's abusive and negligent, but he doesn't want to do that. He doesn't want to attack her character. The only thing his solicitor recommended to put in is that she doesn't think that that part is true that she's going to be a single mum and if it is that means that this decision is based on her partner rather than it being a child-centric decision. Which they also have other proof over such as they're not being much for the kids in Ireland anyway. Also boss has also decided to try for primary custody of the kids which I'm very happy about because I think he's a much more caring father than she is mother. He's planing to quit his second job and just focus on his business so he can take care of the kids.
Anyway, so that's all we have so far.