I'm new
I've been lurking here since Summer. I had typed a long intro/background then lost it....UGH! No time to go back and redo, but I need input.
My husband of 18 years left me and our 2 kids (7 & 9) in May of 2009 for a married mother of 2. He was always a big drinker and I had to put some safeguards in place to protect the kids the best I could during his Wed night and EOW visitation. My daughter (9) has epilepsy and uncontrolled seizures. Emergencies are a regular occurance in this family. I thought we were on the same page regarding his sobriety during his visitation. Recently it has become very clear that we were not. He pretended...LIED. It just took me too long to put it all together.
He has been supporting this household (and his). I was moving forward. D was filed, I was gaining confidence in my ability to care for this family alone, I started dabbling in dating (I know, I know....but I also knew that this D could take a long long time and I was tired of putting my life on hold). Then....July...He goes to work drunk (in the am), drinks more at lunch, gets caught, gets FIRED! In that moment, I realized that if he was not able to stay sober to go to work, he was probably not able to stay sober during his visitation. Prepared to go to court to end his unsupervised visitation. He actually vountarily gave it up. He is/was going to substance abuse counseling, "said" he was attending AA meetings. It has been less than 3 months and now he wants to return to the old visitation schedule. He sent my attny, an AA log for September (filled out by him, and none for Aug or Oct) and a summary written by his counselor that stated he "showed low risk for relapse." Thats it. Is this really all he needs? I need more than this. I think he is just doing the minimum to make it look like he is "cured." Just like he did during the 5 months we tried to reconcile our marriage. I don't think he actually believes he is an Alcoholic. I think he sees the problem as situational. Things got out of control while he was dealing with all of HIS personal problems. 20 years together tells me he is most definitely an alcoholic.
Now what do I do? How can I protect my children? I don't want to keep him from having time with the kids. He was once a good father. It was a long time ago, before the alcohol took over. They love him and love spending time with him. I have been extremely cooperative with coordinating his supervised visitation, allowing him here to spend time with the kids and overnights at his place with SIL (whom i totally trust), keeping him informed about activities.
Unfortunately (or fortunately), he has no DUIs or DWIs or any type of police record relating to alcohol or anything else for that matter. All I have on my side of this is my word, my history with him, and the fact that he was terminated (I am sure it does not state why in the paperwork). I feel panic swelling as I fear I don't have much recourse here. If something happened to my kids because he was not safe, I don't know what i would do. Sucks I may have to wait until they end up in a dangeros situation before I have any legal back-up.
Thank you for anything you may have to share.