Seriously... what happens next?
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Seriously... what happens next?
Over one year post divorce being finalized and coparenting with an alcoholic is just the gift that keeps on giving.
He has supervised overnight visits with mandatory alcohol monitoring currently. Despite my 15 years worth of data, I still get to go back into court to argue for a continuation of his alcohol monitoring that was only mandated for a year soon.
Im up to 3 times this year that his drinking interfered with his scheduled time with the kids such that I had to step in and take them. It’s not all of the time but it’s enough to not be reliable or dependable.
What happens now? I could argue for less time for him- but then I also get less “data” to know if he’s drinking and managing. And what is best for my kids if he has, say a 85% show up rate?
The thought of being in this unpredictable, always in and out of court (me fighting for continued alcohol restrictions and him fighting for more time with kids), turmoil period for the next decade is depressing.
How do you guys deal??
He has supervised overnight visits with mandatory alcohol monitoring currently. Despite my 15 years worth of data, I still get to go back into court to argue for a continuation of his alcohol monitoring that was only mandated for a year soon.
Im up to 3 times this year that his drinking interfered with his scheduled time with the kids such that I had to step in and take them. It’s not all of the time but it’s enough to not be reliable or dependable.
What happens now? I could argue for less time for him- but then I also get less “data” to know if he’s drinking and managing. And what is best for my kids if he has, say a 85% show up rate?
The thought of being in this unpredictable, always in and out of court (me fighting for continued alcohol restrictions and him fighting for more time with kids), turmoil period for the next decade is depressing.
How do you guys deal??
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Join Date: May 2018
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I know exactly what you mean. Where I live there's no mandatory testing etc. Unless he staggers up to the door reeking of booze I have to hand kids over to EXAH. I know its just a matter of time before he does something and we end up in court again. This time I'll be going in guns blazing. I'm hoping I make it so expensive he'll just give up.
My eldest doesn't want to go anymore. I have no clue what goes on in EXAH'S house. He's not allowed drink around the kids but how the hell would I know if he was?
It's an insane situation. He has multiple arrests etc for drinking, he's never denied he has a drinking problem.. Cept now. Yet the courts fell for his 'I promise to get sober, got to AA'. Its like EVERYBODY working on my case had never worked this type of case before... Insane.
All you can do is document. Trying hiring a PI to gain evidence. I'm lucky on one count. X
EXAH gets into a lot of trouble when he's drinking..
He's done some petty criminal (actually one was technically grand theft). I'm hoping he gets caught for something. He's due 8yrs in gaol for the stuff I know he did. It's a boy time he paid for his crimes and freed his kids from alcoholic harm.
My eldest doesn't want to go anymore. I have no clue what goes on in EXAH'S house. He's not allowed drink around the kids but how the hell would I know if he was?
It's an insane situation. He has multiple arrests etc for drinking, he's never denied he has a drinking problem.. Cept now. Yet the courts fell for his 'I promise to get sober, got to AA'. Its like EVERYBODY working on my case had never worked this type of case before... Insane.
All you can do is document. Trying hiring a PI to gain evidence. I'm lucky on one count. X
EXAH gets into a lot of trouble when he's drinking..
He's done some petty criminal (actually one was technically grand theft). I'm hoping he gets caught for something. He's due 8yrs in gaol for the stuff I know he did. It's a boy time he paid for his crimes and freed his kids from alcoholic harm.
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Batchel, this sounds like the worst to endure. He is okay most of the time but not good enough that you can relax. Ugh. I hate to wish for people to get worse but this grey area seems beyond purgatory.
I hope you have a good support system.
I hope you have a good support system.
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Originally Posted by Bekindalways 
Batchel, this sounds like the worst to endure. He is okay most of the time but not good enough that you can relax. Ugh. I hate to wish for people to get worse but this grey area seems beyond purgatory.
I hope you have a good support system.
I hope you have a good support system.
He is good for long enough to have me thinking I am crazy for making it a big deal until I am reminded again next time it happens.
Yes, I wish something would give. Like either get better or don’t.
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So around 15% of the time, he's noncompliant with alcohol monitoring? He only has the kids for one night a week, but he can't consistently restrict his drinking to the other six nights when he doesn't have the kids?
You could try this for court:
Parenting requires demonstrating consistent and predictable ability to parent, which means not being distracted by alcohol. Either he is making a choice to drink when he should be parenting, or he is unable to predict whether or not he will drink on any given night. In that case, it is best that the kids stay with you full-time until he is able to predict his alcohol consumption and thereby arrange his drinking around his parenting. You don't care what he's doing the other six nights of the week, but you need evidence that he has sufficient control over his drinking that he can follow through with commitments to take a night off when he has the kids.
You could try this for court:
Parenting requires demonstrating consistent and predictable ability to parent, which means not being distracted by alcohol. Either he is making a choice to drink when he should be parenting, or he is unable to predict whether or not he will drink on any given night. In that case, it is best that the kids stay with you full-time until he is able to predict his alcohol consumption and thereby arrange his drinking around his parenting. You don't care what he's doing the other six nights of the week, but you need evidence that he has sufficient control over his drinking that he can follow through with commitments to take a night off when he has the kids.
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He has the kids every other weekend and one midweek 4 hour visit every other week. In the past year, there have been 3 occurrences of him not being able to take the kids due to alcohol. So he is able to control it a lot of times, just not all....
I don’t know what to do 😔
I don’t know what to do 😔
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Originally Posted by batchel9
He has the kids every other weekend and one midweek 4 hour visit every other week. In the past year, there have been 3 occurrences of him not being able to take the kids due to alcohol. So he is able to control it a lot of times, just not all....
I don’t know what to do ��
I don’t know what to do ��
Either he has formed the intention to drink when he has the kids and has carried through not once but three times, or he is not in fact able to control when he drinks.
Think about the math - how many hours per year are the kids in his care? How many hours total are there in a year? What fraction of all the hours of a year are the kids in his care? A tiny, tiny fraction. Let's be generous and say 5%. It is reasonable and prudent to expect him to not drink for 5% of a year. That should pose no difficulty for anyone. He has the whole other 95% to get blind staggering drunk every single moment if he wants. Yet he either chooses to drink during that 5% or he is unable to predict or control when he is going to drink, and some of this uncontrollable drinking happens during the 5%. Either way, this is not a setup for safe parenting. His drinking must be restricted to times when he does not have the kids (i.e. the great majority of his time).
When my ex got busted by SoberLink, he used to make a big deal out of the amount of alcohol - he wasn't even over the legal limit for driving, it was just barely detectable, Kid wasn't at any risk - and these were profoundly not the point. The point was that he had committed to not-drinking for the tiny sliver of time that Kid was with him, and he was unable or unwilling to keep this commitment. Why not? Who knows - sunspots, alien mind control, he put the vodka in a Sprite bottle by mistake, whatever. The kindest interpretation is that he wasn't able to control his alcohol consumption (the less kind interpretation is that he was deliberately violating a court order).
Parenting requires predictability and consistency. If he can't demonstrate that - and the math shows that he can't - he has no grounds for expecting to get more time with the kids.
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It usto absolutely amaze me that my XAH would drink w/my children around. I mean, he sees them a total of 4 days per month. You would think he could keep it together. There are times he does not drink for weeks on end. But nope, it still has happened many, many times.
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Originally Posted by batchel9
He has always been the “binge drinker”. He can go days/weeks/months without drinking and then WHAM! Drink himself stupid for 3 days to blood alcohol levels that would have me in the hospital.
He is good for long enough to have me thinking I am crazy for making it a big deal until I am reminded again next time it happens.
Yes, I wish something would give. Like either get better or don’t.
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Originally Posted by Sasha1972
I beg to differ.
Either he has formed the intention to drink when he has the kids and has carried through not once but three times, or he is not in fact able to control when he drinks.
Think about the math - how many hours per year are the kids in his care? How many hours total are there in a year? What fraction of all the hours of a year are the kids in his care? A tiny, tiny fraction. Let's be generous and say 5%. It is reasonable and prudent to expect him to not drink for 5% of a year. That should pose no difficulty for anyone. He has the whole other 95% to get blind staggering drunk every single moment if he wants. Yet he either chooses to drink during that 5% or he is unable to predict or control when he is going to drink, and some of this uncontrollable drinking happens during the 5%. Either way, this is not a setup for safe parenting. His drinking must be restricted to times when he does not have the kids (i.e. the great majority of his time).
When my ex got busted by SoberLink, he used to make a big deal out of the amount of alcohol - he wasn't even over the legal limit for driving, it was just barely detectable, Kid wasn't at any risk - and these were profoundly not the point. The point was that he had committed to not-drinking for the tiny sliver of time that Kid was with him, and he was unable or unwilling to keep this commitment. Why not? Who knows - sunspots, alien mind control, he put the vodka in a Sprite bottle by mistake, whatever. The kindest interpretation is that he wasn't able to control his alcohol consumption (the less kind interpretation is that he was deliberately violating a court order).
Parenting requires predictability and consistency. If he can't demonstrate that - and the math shows that he can't - he has no grounds for expecting to get more time with the kids.
Either he has formed the intention to drink when he has the kids and has carried through not once but three times, or he is not in fact able to control when he drinks.
Think about the math - how many hours per year are the kids in his care? How many hours total are there in a year? What fraction of all the hours of a year are the kids in his care? A tiny, tiny fraction. Let's be generous and say 5%. It is reasonable and prudent to expect him to not drink for 5% of a year. That should pose no difficulty for anyone. He has the whole other 95% to get blind staggering drunk every single moment if he wants. Yet he either chooses to drink during that 5% or he is unable to predict or control when he is going to drink, and some of this uncontrollable drinking happens during the 5%. Either way, this is not a setup for safe parenting. His drinking must be restricted to times when he does not have the kids (i.e. the great majority of his time).
When my ex got busted by SoberLink, he used to make a big deal out of the amount of alcohol - he wasn't even over the legal limit for driving, it was just barely detectable, Kid wasn't at any risk - and these were profoundly not the point. The point was that he had committed to not-drinking for the tiny sliver of time that Kid was with him, and he was unable or unwilling to keep this commitment. Why not? Who knows - sunspots, alien mind control, he put the vodka in a Sprite bottle by mistake, whatever. The kindest interpretation is that he wasn't able to control his alcohol consumption (the less kind interpretation is that he was deliberately violating a court order).
Parenting requires predictability and consistency. If he can't demonstrate that - and the math shows that he can't - he has no grounds for expecting to get more time with the kids.
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Originally Posted by Mango212
Hi batchel,
How are you doing through all this, overall? Are you able to find things that are helping you through this?
Alcoholism/addiction sucks.
How are you doing through all this, overall? Are you able to find things that are helping you through this?
Alcoholism/addiction sucks.
I have a lot of anxiety about my kids and wanting to do what is best for them and keep them safe while not making them feel like I’m holding them from their dad.
I also fear more than anything his potential ability to fool a judge into thinking he is ok when he is NOT. He is smart and can play the game quite well most of the time of just drinking when no one knows and he won’t get caught.
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Originally Posted by batchel9
I feel like I have good and bad days. Have you read the intermittent chicken in the stickies??? That is me. I go a little crazy with the unpredictability with it all. Some days he is a mess and other days he is so normal it makes me wonder if I am the crazy one.
I have a lot of anxiety about my kids and wanting to do what is best for them and keep them safe while not making them feel like I’m holding them from their dad.
I also fear more than anything his potential ability to fool a judge into thinking he is ok when he is NOT. He is smart and can play the game quite well most of the time of just drinking when no one knows and he won’t get caught.
I imagine that the thought of him having longer visits is anxiety-inducing - it was for me too. But my ex never managed to get through the "proving" period without screwing up (failing breathalyzers, not submitting tests, not arranging visits, etc) and so he never advanced beyond short visits (a few hours) until he died. I suspect the same will be true of yours.
I learned that judges see these types of losers all the time. It's a type. A halfway-competent judge will have his number.
(Another thing you might want to add for court - he needs to exercise the parenting time to which he is entitled before he gets more parenting time - in other words, no cancelling or no-showing for visits for six months, and then saying "look, I wasn't drinking around the kids for six months so I get more access". Technically, that's true, but it's irrelevant to his fitness to parent [at best, it shows that he is able to gauge his own state of sobriety such that he doesn't put himself in situations requiring a breathalyzer test when he knows he won't pass]. My ex tried that one too - didn't see Kid for eight weeks, then said to the judge "I haven't failed SoberLink for eight whole weeks! I should get overnights!". Didn't fly).
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This thread is the kind of thing that reduces me to tears. We want good lives for our children and work so hard to keep them safe and well.... Then blindly, because someone who wouldn't know our children to look at them, decides it's time to hand them over to someone who's so self involved our children are left to fend for themselves, OR WORSE!
any sane person would see these laws modified. But lawyers and judges line their pockets with our money and stick to the status quo. :'(
any sane person would see these laws modified. But lawyers and judges line their pockets with our money and stick to the status quo. :'(
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Originally Posted by Zenial
This thread is the kind of thing that reduces me to tears. We want good lives for our children and work so hard to keep them safe and well.... Then blindly, because someone who wouldn't know our children to look at them, decides it's time to hand them over to someone who's so self involved our children are left to fend for themselves, OR WORSE!
any sane person would see these laws modified. But lawyers and judges line their pockets with our money and stick to the status quo. :'(
any sane person would see these laws modified. But lawyers and judges line their pockets with our money and stick to the status quo. :'(
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Join Date: May 2018
Posts: 296
Originally Posted by batchel9
I feel like I have good and bad days. Have you read the intermittent chicken in the stickies??? That is me. I go a little crazy with the unpredictability with it all. Some days he is a mess and other days he is so normal it makes me wonder if I am the crazy one.
I have a lot of anxiety about my kids and wanting to do what is best for them and keep them safe while not making them feel like I’m holding them from their dad.
I also fear more than anything his potential ability to fool a judge into thinking he is ok when he is NOT. He is smart and can play the game quite well most of the time of just drinking when no one knows and he won’t get caught.
Cept it was all ********. He'd never sobered up. All that heart ache over something that wasn't even a sniff of reality. The sad thing is.. Even though I now know through his own admittance that he's back drinking.. I stupidly believe his promises that he would never drink round the kids.
Even after we split... He's still doing a number on me. When I finally find out he's drinking round the kids.. I'll probably be surprised. I think we stay in a state of denial loooong after the alcoholics are gone from our lives. We were programmed to deny.. Deny.
It's not that he's being normal.. He's just hiding who he really is behind an illusion.
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Originally Posted by Milano58
This is what drives me insane too. Last year I KNEW he was back drinking. I just knew it and I went through months of heart ache believing that that fudger had sobered up, was finally in recovery and I was going to have to come to terms with the fact that even though I booted him out to get him sober, another woman was getting my old hubby back.. All sober. And I felt guilty thinking he'd drink again, guilty for minimising his access to the kids.
Cept it was all ********. He'd never sobered up. All that heart ache over something that wasn't even a sniff of reality. The sad thing is.. Even though I now know through his own admittance that he's back drinking.. I stupidly believe his promises that he would never drink round the kids.
Even after we split... He's still doing a number on me. When I finally find out he's drinking round the kids.. I'll probably be surprised. I think we stay in a state of denial loooong after the alcoholics are gone from our lives. We were programmed to deny.. Deny.
It's not that he's being normal.. He's just hiding who he really is behind an illusion.
Cept it was all ********. He'd never sobered up. All that heart ache over something that wasn't even a sniff of reality. The sad thing is.. Even though I now know through his own admittance that he's back drinking.. I stupidly believe his promises that he would never drink round the kids.
Even after we split... He's still doing a number on me. When I finally find out he's drinking round the kids.. I'll probably be surprised. I think we stay in a state of denial loooong after the alcoholics are gone from our lives. We were programmed to deny.. Deny.
It's not that he's being normal.. He's just hiding who he really is behind an illusion.
He started dating a girl and got her pregnant super quick. I KNOW she didn’t get a different person, she is dealing with the same stuff. It just doesn’t seem to bother her yet? She acts like all is well but I have hard proof he is still drinking. Sometimes my emotions get the best of me and think “maybe he will change for her and he wouldn’t for me?? Why wouldn’t he change for me??”. But the reality is he isn’t changing. Just need to stay plugged into reality.
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Originally Posted by batchel9
Milano don’t believe for one second that he won’t drink around your kids. Sometimes my emotions get the best of me and think “maybe he will change for her and he wouldn’t for me?? Why wouldn’t he change for me??”. But the reality is he isn’t changing. Just need to stay plugged into reality.
He will not change for her. Maybe he will someday hit some kind of bottom for himself and decide to stop drinking but it is best not to live as if this is going to happen any time soon.
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