Missbx

Hi all.. I have posted before, quick round up of my previous thread was basically asking if I was being selfish to throw my alcoholic partner out. We had a 10 month old child at the time, and his behaviour while drunk was just not acceptable around her. The verbal abuse towards me, him vomiting all over himself and passing out, falling asleep drunk with the cooker left on while me and the baby were asleep upstairs .. the list is endless. I don’t want her growing up in that environment… and after multiple chances, false apologies and broken promises, the behaviour was still repeated on a weekly basis during his 2-3 day benders. Anyway, fast forward 5 months, our daughter is now almost 13 months old. Nothing was changing so I did indeed throw him out. But my problems haven’t got any better. I now get him turning up when he’s drunk, demanding to be let in. And when I refuse, he stands outside the house shouting abuse and trying to kick the door through. He doesn’t seem to care that his daughter is asleep and that he’s likely to wake her and frighten her. He is absolutely out of control when he’s drunk, and I have had to call the police on 5 occasions now to have him removed from outside my house. When he eventually sobers up he’s full of apologies and promises that it won’t happen again.. but it always does. He turned up again at 11.40 last night and when I refused to let him in, he called the police and told them he was worried about his daughter’s safety because she was locked in the house with her mother and that my state of mind is fragile! Thankfully the police didn’t take him seriously due to his reputation and the obvious observation that he was yet again, intoxicated. They did however call me to check I was ok, and came to remove him again (but he had already gone by the time they got here). This morning he text me, no apology or anything.. just asking if he could send a work colleague round to collect some more of his stuff. I agreed, packed it up for him., nobody came. Then this evening, half hour after he finished work, he text me again with a load of insults saying that his work had received a complaint regarding his behaviour last night. He accused me of making this complaint and said I had spelt my last name wrong. I have made no complaint to his work at all. I don’t think he was even in work today since his colleague never showed up to collect his things, and the fact that in his text messages he wasn’t making much sense and gave me the feeling he was drinking again. I feel like he’s on another bender, and looking for a way to blame me if he loses his job by making up a complaint I haven’t made. He constantly lies and makes up stories, I’ve had him say he’s told his co-workers he’s a victim of domestic abuse, he’s told people I’m a drug addict, that I was cheating on him with half the town.. basically anything he can to paint me in a bad light because he can’t deal with the fact that I’ve had enough and ended our relationship. When he’s sober he apologises for it all, but I’m terrified of what he’s capable of while drunk. His lies are dangerous and I never know what he’s going to come out with next! I just want him to leave me alone, but obviously we share a daughter and I won’t allow him unsupervised contact with her because I don’t trust him to stay away from the drink while she’s in his sole care. So he only see’s her with me present, and in a public place so that if he’s drunk when we arrive, I am able to leave immediately rather than have him refuse to leave my house and all hell breaking loose. There is no court order in place, and I can’t afford to take that route as I’m now a single parent with no childcare, which means I was unable to return to my job when my maternity leave ended.. so money is a bit tight at the moment. Im looking for some advice on how I can put a stop to him showing up at my house, and how I can protect myself against the lies he tells about me without having to take the legal route, and still allow him to see his daughter while sober.

skjaldmaer3

I'm so sorry you've ended up here, but it's a great resource.

There are places that offer free legal aid - you should definitely check one of those out and look at getting three things:

1) A restraining order. He'll probably break it immediately, but it will give the police a reason to hold him longer. He may take it more seriously if he faces real consequences.

2) some kind of custody agreement drawn up where he has to use a Breathalyzer (Soberlink is one) to have supervised visitation. I say this because depending on where you live, you yourself could be in trouble for refusing him visitation with his child. I suggest you start keeping a journal that tracks when he shows up, what state he's in, and if law enforcement was required to remove him. Then, if he does try to claim you've been keeping his child from him, you have records regarding the frequency and reasons for it.

3) He should be providing child support eventually, so the sooner you contact even a free legal aid, the sooner you're "officially" separated and can make visitation also contingent on support.

That being said, this could all escalate. If you haven't already, maybe find a friend or relative to stay with or have stay with you when you think he's going to be coming by - or try not to be home for awhile so he gives up trying to get to you. If you don't have a friend or relative, then try a women's shelter - this is kind of exactly what they're made for, unfortunately. They can also put you in touch with services for you and your child.

Stopping the lies is kind of impossible. You'll just have to ride it out. People will figure out the truth eventually, he's on a hard downward spiral it sounds like.

Good luck and be safe, I hope he gets the helps he needs or at least finds some acceptance in the situation he's landed himself in.

Missbx

@skjaldmaer3 thank you for your advice. We live in the uk. I don’t refuse him access to his child, i just make sure his access is supervised, and that he’s not under the influence of alcohol at the time (which I feel is definitely the right thing to do) .. I don’t let him come into the house anymore because if I do, and he’s drunk, he refuses to leave and becomes verbally abusive. So I make sure it’s done in a public place so that I’m able to take the baby and leave if he is drunk. I have lots of videos of him being very verbally abusive while drunk, and even more messages in which he’s insulting me, also a few where he is threatening me although he has never actually been physically violent (towards me anyway, but he does get into drunken fights on a regular basis - he wants to fight the world when he’s drunk) .. I thought about a restraining order but then my worry with that is being unable to supervise his contact with our daughter. I don’t want to stop them having a relationship, I just don’t want him around her drunk. For his sake aswell as hers, as the older she gets, she’ll end up scared of her own father if she’s around him witnessing the person drink turns him into. The difference between him sober and drunk is absolutely crazy. I’m trying to protect her from seeing that side of him as she gets older. I know I could use breathalysers, but just because he may be sober when he collects her doesn’t mean he’ll still be sober until she’s returned - he has always used any opportunity he can to drink when I’ve not been around to watch him. Even something as simple as popping out to get his haircut, he used to come back drunk even though he’d only been gone an hour. He’d literally walk in holding a half empty bottle of vodka, slurring his words, reeking of booze, stumbling around.. and still claim he hadn’t been drinking. Then twist it around on me saying I’m in the wrong for ‘accusing’ him! .. One occasion I left the baby with him sober while I went to do a quick food shop, the local supermarket is around the corner from my house, I was gone for less than 30 minutes.. when I got back he seemed to be a bit bleary eyed but denied he’d been drinking.. then I found 4 miniature vodka bottles empty, hidden in the bathroom that definitely hadn’t been there the previous day as I had cleaned it. I haven’t left the baby with him unsupervised since. I have no trust in him at all. He is a compulsive liar especially when it comes to his drinking.

trailmix

Hi Missbx, I hope you are documenting all of this. Times you have taken your daughter for supervised visitation, dates, times, where and whether he was obviously or seemingly intoxicated (ie you left because of that).

You may not have the legalities in place yet, but at some point you may want to or have to, so it's important to keep all that information, as well as your videos and texts/emails from him.

The only way to stop him coming over is to move or get a restraining order, really that's it. You might be able to get a restraining order which allows for public supervised visitation, but you would need to do some research on that. You might want to contact your local domestic violence office, they may know or have some free legal contacts you could find out from.

You can't protect yourself from the lies at this point, he is free to say whatever he wants, true or not. Unless you have some proof, then you could sue him for slander, but you would need proof and a lawyer. He obviously shows little care toward you or his daughter, so trying to reason with him, is probably a waste of your time.

I do have a suggestion though. Perhaps you have too much contact with him? How does he have access to you to tell you all these things and berate you? Your conversations only need to be about your child really? One idea is to set up a separate email address for him only. That can be your only contact with him. Tell him you won't be answering his calls or texts and the email is for items about your child only, the rest will be ignored. You can then choose to block him if you would like to.

Unless you take control of this, he could drag out this misery for years.

Question, how often is he requesting visitation? Does he normally request or do you suggest it?

skjaldmaer3

I don't think you're doing anything wrong by leaving with the child if he's intoxicated, but he will have a case that you are refusing him visitation if you don't document what's going on (time, date, specifics of where you met and why you left). He absolutely should not have time alone with any child, let alone an infant, but again, if you don't get some kind of custody agreement in place where he is required to be sober, to verify that he is sober, as the child's father, he will have that right. He may not even be the one to pursue his parental rights, but his parents and/or family might.

Supervised visitation should't involve you - that's not fair to the other parent or the child. Supervised visitation usually involves a qualified or agreed upon adult who has charge of the child and the space during the visitation. These are usually provided by the government until such time as the parent requiring supervision meets criteria (sobriety, housing, therapy).

I'm pretty sure these things are all available for free in the UK, but you will have to go find them.

A restraining order would not mean that he gets unsupervised access to the child. Again, setting up some kind of official custody agreement will protect you and the child, otherwise right now he legally has unfettered access and can claim you're keeping him from his child.

You can't protect her from his alcoholism by constantly hovering and trying to control his visitation - getting a solid custody agreement that requires verified sobriety and supervised visitation will. If he breaks those agreement, the courts can protect your child by revoking his right to custody. You're just constantly in the middle of massive stress otherwise, and that's not healthy for you or your baby.