I have so much on my mind..

[MommyOf1]

I have a 6 year old with a recovering addict, he has spent three years in prison out of the 6 years our daughter has been alive. I currently have sole legal custody and he is fighting to get his rights back. He is mentally abusive towards me and despite getting married, he still harasses me blaming me for all of his short comings. He never wanted our baby, from the second he found out that I was pregnant, he pressured me to try and get an abortion. I told him no and to leave, I would raise the baby on my own. He chose to stick around (mostly because of his Mother) and has made my life a living hell. He blamed me in the past for relapsing, he blames me for the money that he has to pay to child support every month, he blames me for not bringing our daughter to prison to visit him. He has dragged me through the mud in every way possible. I have begged him to sign all of his rights over and I will never go after him for child support again, he told me "I will never give you that satisfaction." He started having supervised visits with her (court ordered) and his last supervised visit is coming up soon which will turn into unsupervised visits very soon. He has assured me that he will do everything in his power to convince our daughter that I am a horrible person. I am scared, my daughter is my life. She is the reason I get out of bed every morning, she is my reason for living and breathing.

I have been having anxiety attacks consistently for the past few weeks. I am also weaning off my medicine at this time which doesn't help, this is due to lack of insurance. I have also been struggling financial with my fiance which causes us to fight. My ex causes my fiance and I to fight. My fiance is also controlling, he controls the money, he doesn't want me to go out without him and he asks who I talk to every time I'm on the phone. He's been pissing me off a lot lately. I cannot take much more at this point. I am so stressed out, I don't know what to do. I talk to my Mother, she helps a little bit but she doesn't know all of the details of my relationship with my fiance and I don't want her to know. I have no where to turn..

 

[may71]

Sorry to hear this.

If you are in the US or Canada, you might want to try calling 211 or visiting www.211.org.

www.hotpeachpages.net has a world-wide list of domestic abuse agencies

You may be able to get free legal aid for dealing with your ex.

You may be able to get help with insurance and some other things too.

Hope that something changes for the better soon!

 

[Walker]

Hey there
This sounds like two different issues - you've got a controlling fiance. Why? Why are you trying to marry someone you are already so unhappy with? You're going to be back here trying to figure out how to get divorced from this guy, split up all your shit and wrestle custody of *another* kid in a couple years from *this* guy... But I guess that's not what this thread is supposed to be about.

I assume you can't afford an attorney... but presumably neither can he, right? So you're on even playing field as far as that goes. Once he gets visits you need to be keeping track of every single thing that goes wrong for the court. Any time he brings her back late, everything she says he told her that is messed up, anything he does that's wrong, if you meet and she's not cleaned up, etc. Write that stuff down right from the beginning. Everyone figures they'll just "catch up" later on or they'll be able to wing the documentation by saying "he's always 15 minutes late" but the court doesn't care about that. They want to hear "he was 13 minutes late on _this day_ and 22 minutes late on _this day_" She hadn't had a bath on this day. Hair was dirty, dirty clothes I dropped her off in, face had kool aid on it" etc. Be specific. This is how you keep more time.
BUT, this is 2017 and fathers who want their kids are going to get time with them. You're just going to have to wait it out and see what happens with things. Unless he does something gravely wrong he's going to end up with time with her, that's all there is to it. Prison isn't an indication of automatic bad parenting, in the eyes of the court. It's gonna be up to you to keep track of things that go wrong and things that are said in this immediate time in order to get things moving in the way that you want them.

Have you considered switching meds instead of getting off them? It sounds like you need to be taking something. Many meds are $10 or less if you shop through the pharmacies. Lots of them are just a few dollars a month.