Messages By: jamodit
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October 3, 2008, 5:29 pm PDT
 My children & I suffered thru 15 years of what I consider extreme parent alienation. The alienation was perpetrated by my ex-wife and her mother & involved my ex-wife's numerous boyfriends and 4 of her 6 husbands. I could probably stop their & let you draw your own conclusions. However, I still need to dump the anger. It started, after we separated, but before we were officially divorced, with her first live in boyfriend interfering with my court ordered visitation and telling me he was a black belt in Karate, ex marine & killed s..t like me everyday in Vietnam. The alienation continued thru high school. I spent $10 to $15K on attorneys & counselors & all I got was higher child support. The years of abuse have had a negative effect on my children. My oldest daughter says she doesn't remember most of her childhood. Blocked it out. Although both have college degrees, are married and have good jobs, both are hesitant to have children of their own. Although I try to give them positive support, I think they are afraid they may fail as mothers. Or, they just don't want to risk their children going thru what they went thru. Both told me their mother should never have been a mother. Very sad. I have allot of personal guilt over that statement 'cause I was half responsible. My ex & I live approximately 1/2 mile from each other in the same town of 200,000 pop. Her mother lives a block away. We have attended numeorus school functions, baseball & volleyball games & tournaments, 2 high school graduations, 2 college graduations and 2 weddings. A month ago, my ex came up to me at my youngest daughter's house warming & started a conversation. What was the point of all the fighting? Who really suffered? The biggest problem I see is no one with authority or power (Judges, police, attorneys, mental health "professionals") really want to deal with the problem. The courts are only concerned with making sure the State doesn't support children when their is a dad to pay child support. Cops are either the biggest chauvinists in the world or are trained to automatically assume the male is the party at fault. Attorneys and mental health professionals have no clue and no backbone and their only self serving goal in life is to part you from your money. The more problems they find or create, the more you will pay to resolve a very emotional issue. My answer to the problem is very simple. When people get married, as they sign their marriage license, make them sign an agreement that states in case of un-reconsilable differences their divorce will be settled by a mediator or arbitrator using set pre-defined rules, set property division guidleines with right of appeal to a higher court. In the mediation/arbitration agreement, state if child visitation is interfered with, regardless of which party or parties are at fault, everyone is going to jail for 24 hours, fisrt time, with a $1,000 fine by each party & the penalty doubles on each re-occurence. Based on my experience, with the above rules, maybe those over the age of maturation (I won't use the term adults) will realize their responsibilty to their children. And, maybe their will be less anger and resentment between ex spouses that is mostly perpetrated by self serving Attorneys and mental health professionals trying to justify their high fees. |
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October 3, 2008, 5:37 pm PDT
Quote From: kinseygirl There are many, many , many parents caught in this Alienation tactic. Good caring parents.. We want to see our children and care for them.. The court system needs to acknowledge what is happening. These children ar helpless to defend themselves...We want to do the right thing by our children.......... This is abuse. With very few words, you did a very good job stating the problem and caring parent's real desire. I hope someone legislator is reading all of this 'cause a change in laws will be required to tackle the problem. |
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October 3, 2008, 9:09 pm PDT
Quote From: sickantired I have been going through a tough time with my husbands ex wife. We spent four years in court just trying to settle visitation matters. Over the years she was allowed to take out at least 30 something restraining orders on him and in the end would be in violation of all of them by telling him he could come to her house and visit with the kids. For some one so scared this doesn't seem like something you would do it was all a control issue if you do what I want I want call the police and tell them your here. He an I had been together 2 years before she would agree to let me meet the kids everything had to be on her terms so I played along trying to support my man. I have even stayed with my husband at her home while visiting the kids over night. And we stayed over night at Christmas once we did what ever we could to keep the peace so he could spend time with his babies.He went to chapel hill one day early because he was to visit his kids the next day and ran in to her at the store and she went and took out stalking charges against him and thats when it was on . We were ordered by the court to drive 3 1/2 hours to visit 1 hour with the kids every other weekend and when we got there we still had to pay 10.00 just to use the facility. this went on for 2 years.After a while we granted a order that would allow us to take them to our home for the weekend . Still having to pick them up and return them to the visitation center which was very much to her disliking. After a couple of visits she stared bringing them and telling the workers there they did not want to go with us for a visit and the worker would simply come tell us they told her they were not going to visit us there and they were not going to our home for the weekend. So back to court we go. while there she was told there would be regular visits and again it failed to happen. We were finally ordered into mediation she refused to participate. We were then ordered to by a social worker 100.00 an hour to supervise our case she did have to pay 40.00 dollars of this. After time with the social worker she was in agreement that these kids loved there dad and wanted to spend time with him and also let the courts know that it was the mothers influence that kept them from wanting to visit. She told the social worker that they didn't f---ing want to see there dad and that if every body didn't leave her alone she would disappear with her f---ing kids and know would would ever see them again all this was said right in front of the kids. Great role model right. She failed to appear in court at least 3 or 4 times and nothing was done just give her one more chance was what was always said. Four years later we finally see them every three weeks and she has attempted twice to break the order and we were firm in letting her know we would prosecute and have the sheriff show up for our visit if she did not have them there. She moved with the kids so we did not even have an address to send child support but we took that to court and now we make payments threw the system which is in poor operation. Although if you have Internet you can find any thing you want so we know where she is she just don't think we know. It is a shame that you can play such games with your children's minds and not suffer some repercussions she has committed mental abuse as far as I am concerned. I have a daughter and was divorced from her adopted father and never denied him the right to see and love her. His ex would love nothing better than for him to disappear from his kids lives. We planned a weekend camping trip for the kids and had to pay for 1/2 of it up front and we got a call at 7:15 the day before we were to pick them up at 4 for there first ever week with dad for the summer visit and said they were not coming they had family in town unexpectedly. We called back and said this was unsatisfactory reasons and we would pick them up on schedule. After we were cussed out in front of the kids cause you could hear them in the back ground we were told that we will just tell them daddy want be fair and reschedule his weekend even though we had both taken off the week to be with the kids. So we said go ahead make daddy look like the bad guy one more time because this is how they operate. Just sick of parents who abuse the system and there children and they always seem to get away with it. If he had pulled the stunts she did he would be under the jail. My daughter is now 27 and me and her daddy get along very well we didn't always but when it comes down to it we realized our daughter was the most important thing in our lives and we need to teach her ti was okay to forgive and learn how to put fun in our dysfunctional family lol. I really tried to search out fathers rights advocate groups but was unsuccessful if you know of any I would like the address because I'm positive this will go back to court again she will find some way to come up with something I have never met some body so full of hate and bitterness. You can expend a huge amount of time, money & emotion on a situation that gets changed very little, if at all, by attorneys, mental health "professionals" and Judges. I know, not having as much contact or being as involved as you want at this time in their lives is extremely difficult. Based on my personal experience, things change. If you maintain contact of some kind, the situation will resolve itself when the kids finally figure out for themselves what is really happening. And, you will look better in the kids eyes 'cause you don't create or get blamed for creating strife in their lives. Going to court creates allot of strife for everyone. I stayed in contact with my kids by going to school & talking to teachers. I found out when they had activities at school or sports activities & my wife & I just showed up, sat in the audience or stands, and didn't hang around afterwards. I fought like crazy over stuff that appeared important at the time. My kids didn't give a hoot about most of the things I fought about & in the end, most of it turned out to be less important than I originally thought. I spent allot of time, money & emotion & only got my child support raised. In the process, I was successful at alienating my kids more & giving my ex more reasons to make me look bad & more reasons to blame me for all her problems. Afer all, every time I went to court, she had to hire an attorney & she had to take kids to counseling & she had to take time off from work etc. Who do you think got blamed for costing her all that money & time? And, who do you think got blamed when mom couldn't or wouldn't buy kids something they wanted. My ex wife's 4th. husband was a drunk & drug user. I worried constantly about the effect he would have on my daughters, about 9 & 12 at the time. My oldest daughter just turned 30. 6 months ago, or so, we were talking about her drunken ex step dad. I say ex step dad 'cause her mother is on husband no. 6. Anyway, after 18 years, my daughter finally told me she originally recognized the guy was a loser & told her mother not to marry him. If only I had known that 18 years ago, I would have been able to invest more energy/brain power on doing positive things instead of wasting it on worry. I know not every situation is the same & not all kids react the same, even to identical situations. What I am getting around to is you have to remain positive, always stay on the high ground and quit playing into the ex's traps. You have to talk to your kids about the things in their lives that you are really worried about. I failed miserably to do that. You have to ask yourself if your kids are going to be o.k and determine if you are fighitng something that will have a long term negative impact on them or are you fighting for something you want today that might be un-important tomorrow or not important to them at all. And, I think you have to look at the genes and have faith that the kids have some of your genes and are not going to be carbon copies of the ex, no matter what happens. |
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October 3, 2008, 9:41 pm PDT
Quote From: winner39 I stumbled upon tonight's show about Parental Alienation Syndrome and listened to the panel of guest speakers, and it is truly disheartening when you know that children are inherently placed in the middle of a situation that they did not choose. At the end of the day, there really is not a way to fully provide an opportunity for their voice to be heard, as they love both of their parents. Nonetheless, I heard the word "custody" being utilized many times during the back-and-forth discussion and testimonials and in the state of Colorado the Colorado Revised Statutes state that "custody" should not be utilized when you are referring to a child, as it is deemed and/or considered that the child is property when this terminology is used. The quick 50,000 foot level review is this...Father's do not get the same rights as Mother's do when it comes to who the child is going to reside. Once the home is separated for the child (father's home vs. mother's home), you run into issues for the child that no one, especially a judge and not your panel female attorney can state is "evidence" enough to prove which home is best. Case law shows that Mothers can be severely mentally ill and the primary residence still goes to the Mother. Mother can have a history of white collar crime, and a case law will state that is just a matter of "poor financial" judgement. Why is it that the judges that are usually placed as "family court" justices primary background and experience does not illustrate this type of law/legal background. All the parent truly sees is the dollars that need to be paid to mediators, attorneys, and court costs in order to have a glimpse of time with their children. The focus is not the amount of days that a Father wants in order to abate paying extra child support, but let's say what we mean and mean what we say. Things have not changed and we are all as a society entering into 2009...men do not have a legal right to their children when it comes to residential custodialship. Men are still considered the providers and that they do not have the ability to spend time with their children unless they hire a special advocate, beg an attorney to help, but only after they drop a cool few grand as a retainer to get things rolling, and then they can be led down a terrible path of having to utilize a mediator vs. the court who is a woman (like me), but doesn't provide the law as a guide for how time for the child should be spent with both parents, but instead provide that the child be able to make a choice at the age of 12/13 of where they want to go and be with on holidays and weekend, etc. Heck, I don't recall being able to choose what I wore outside of the house at that age let alone have to make an adult decision, which will have ramifications for both parents for who that child will spend time with... Can't you see that divorce is the number one topic, next to our economy, next to the presidential election, next to energy saving devices, etc? How many people both adults and children that you know have been impacted by divorce? This should not be just a show on a Friday evening, but a showcase to show more about Father's rights. As you can see, my plight is for Fathers. Do you know that well over 90% of the time, Father's are truly not even considered during a custody hearing as being the person to have residential custody (there is that word again)? Yes-yes, it has to be said as I type my thoughts quickly that even though both parents share joint custody per the court (50%/50%), what does that really mean when the residential custodian decides when, where, what, and how? Then, sends the Father the bill even though the Mother is receiving full benefits and allocated dollars each month for the child? The Mother doesn't utilize all of the child support for the child. Since there is a schedule for everything else for child support and technology is what it is today, shouldn't there also be a schedule for how the recipient utilizes the child support money for the child? Hmmm...another law that should be brought into the 21st century...child support schedule that documents that the money was a percentage of the overhead expenses and other expenses for the child? What is wrong with this idea? Everything else is dictated with schedules. Personal snapshot: The Mother moved the child over 75 miles away from the Father...the courts did not do anything. The Mother dictates travel, pick up and drop off, etc...I mean everything for the child. The Mother supplied garnishment papers to the Father's workplace when he was never late on child support, so the Father decided to pay child support voluntarily through the court, so she could not cast a web of lies around the Father about child support. The court did denounce her notice of garnishment and stated that "next time" proper notification had to be provided and true facts of late payment had to be in place prior to submitting such a document. The Mother has been on the news for white collar crime. The Mother has even stole from other children with a stealing a large girl organization monies and was arrested for it. The Father laid down close to $75,000 in attorney fees for the child custody battle in order to get his child and provide a more stable home environment for the child. In addition, the Father and I have provided furniture, clothing, money, extra flights, 800#, email account access, etc. for the child so when the power is out again at her Mom's house, the phone is out again at her Mom's house, etc., she has a way to reach her Father. Courts, attorneys, and mediators all start to sound like the female attorney you had on your show. Not only are they clueless when it comes to what they are doing can severely impact the lives of many children, but that they are also BLIND when it comes to the real issues. Fathers want time with their children. Fathers are parents too. Fathers want to do more for their children. This is a different generation, and yes, the residential custodian can have STRONG manipulation on a child. So much so that she says because the child lives with her that "she knows what her thoughts and wishes are." Earlier this year, we found out that the child "begged" and cried asking to live with her Father. It is our understanding that the Mother went into a manic phase of crying, screaming and "you don't love me" discussion with the child that the child is worried about "stressing" out her Mother when she even "asks to spend time with Dad." Please Dr. Phil, do more, more than you have ever done before for children who are growing up learning how to be "pleasers" because they do not have rights themselves. It is not a choice for the children and there is absolutely no constituational right or justice for a Father in this country. Times have changed and men want to be with their children--they are not a paycheck, they are people who should be a guidepost for their children. Okay, I have quickly typed my draft novella...thank you for your time. A good sense of humor about all this stuff. I see you are in CA. You need to review Texas Family Law codes. Might want to bend your legislator's ear to get changes made in CA. Fathers for Equal rights in TX tried for years to make changes, but were perceived as a bunch of whiners about paying cs. The current law is far better than what we had 25 years ago when I got divorced. Unfortunatley, law schools appear to instill chauvinstic attitudes in judges. And as I wrote earlier, most attorneys & mental health "professionals" I have had to deal with have 1 purpose in life, separate you from your money & blame failure to resolve issues on the law or court system. |
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October 4, 2008, 7:36 am PDT
Quote From: marylandmary ...that I believe PAS exists. My husband, Dan, and I have been together for almost 8 years. This is my first marriage and his second. He and his first wife had two children. His first wife left the marriage in 1995, after meeting someone on the internet . She had no resources or plan to support her children. She struggled with emotional and financial problems while living on her own. My husband had custody of both children after she left, though she had visitation. In addition, she paid NO child support.
Flash forward to 2001 when I met my husband....everyone is getting along OK, first wife re-marries and moves about 30 miles away. My husband and I get serious and make plans to get married (all this time the kids are living with him and see her once every other weekend, which was her choice, at her new home). Well, as soon as Dan and I bought our new home and started making plans for the future with the kids (from vacations to choosing and paying for college), this women went nuts! She started telling lies about Dan to the kids, particularly my step-son, sendiing me e-mails accusing me of being a childstealer, among other things. She made it very difficult for the kids, and us, and all this time she is still didn't pay a dime of child support!
For the next five years she continued to lie, evaded child support ,and voluntarily impoverished herself by quitting her job as a school teacher to go back to school to get a Master's Degree! Can you believe it? So while this is all happening, she is continuing to tell my stepson, who was 15 through 19 at the time, what a horrible father and stepmother, Dan and I were. One night in January of 2006, after an argument with his dad, my stepson left the house, called her, went to live with her and for ALMOST A YEAR didn't speak to us! Through all this craziness, her craziness, Dan "took the high road" and refused to stoop to her level. I was so angry...angry that she had a $27,000 child support bill reduced to $4,400 (She told my stepson that Dan and I were trying to financially ruin her by enforcing the child support order - WHAT?!?) , angry that she alienated my stepson from his Dad, his older sister and me, angry that she went out a bought a BMW Mini-Cooper, while my husband and I are both working full time and sacrificing to pay for braces, college, car insurance, clothing, cell phone, you name it.
Now that my stepson is a Junior in college, I think he "gets it". He has distanced himself from her, but as he has said to us, he feels "sorry for her". My step-daughter is cooly cordial toward her and has no desire to have a mother/daughter relationship, but that has come with a cost to my stepdaughter's trust and self-esteem. I believe that their mother's own insecurities, fear of loss, selfishness and envy of us and our relationship as a family made her alienate herself from her children through the veil of PAS. I can't be responsible for her "choices" and it is a shame that during the most critical period of her children's lives, their teen years, she pitted them against us as a way of being in control, because she had no control over her own life. Sometimes, I think PAS is self-induced and we all pay for it. Some of the details of your situation are similar to mine, with a similar outcome. I would not agree that selfishness & envy is the reason in every case. Perhaps that was just the title of your story. In my case, my ex has psycho problems and her mother was an instigator. My oldest daughter, now 30, got a degree in psychology. When I asked her why she was going to major in psychology, she told me she was so screwed up she needed to figure out why. The response hurt, but I hink she figured out most of her problems and how to deal with situations. Both of my daughters finally realized they had been lied to and manipulated by both their mother & grandmother. They knew what was happening but it took until they were 21 or 22 to be able to deal with that realization. Both have told me their mother never should have had children. Kinda like saying I wish I hadn't been born. Hurt! My kids got shafted twice. First, when mom & grandma used PAS and turned them against me, my wife & my step kids. Second, when my kids realized what mom & grandma had done. The emotional abuse in both instances has been horrendous. My oldest daughter had her grandmother on a pedestal. The pedestal lost a little luster as she got older & realized what was happening. But, she wasn't willing to confront grandma & risk the relationship. About 5 years ago, when grandma started the PAS with "we love you more" or "your dad is ..." guilt trips, my daughter finally blew up. Her relationship with her grandmother has not been and most likely will never be as close. Although it was nice to see grandma knocked off the pedestal, I know it was extremely hard on my daughter. It took her a couple of years to deal with the surface emotions. I could go on & on like most of us could. But, as I wrote on another page, we all attended school, sports and church functions for the kids. We attended 2 college graduations & 2 weddings where ex & I stood together at the altar to give away our daughters. In a town of 200K pop, Grandma lives a block away (her choice) and ex lives 1/2 mile away (her choice). I see the ex & her current (6th.) husband driving to & from work. At a recent house warming for my youngest daughter, my ex came up to me & wished me happy b-day, which was that day. It was a nice gesture, but shocking. I paid good child support, provided health insurance, paid 1/2 of braces, paid for college at a private university, paid for a wedding, paid for part of a car after graduation. I could have done more, but point is, I was not a dead beat dad. So, what was the purpose of all of the fighting, manipulation & control? In my case, I think it boils down to people having psychological problems. In my case, allot of the problems could have been nipped in the bud if there was a law that required arrest of and stiff penalty ($$ or jail or both) for all parties, regardless of guilt, if a disturbance was created during a pick-up or drop-off for visitation. Or, take the kids away from both parties & make each party, regardless of guilt, pay for foster care for 30, 60, 90 days. Kids would be put in a situation where they had a way to recognize & escape from the abusing parent & the abusing parent would hopefully quickly come to the realization cretaing problems was going to cost dearly. Would give the kids more power, but also more hope and would probably cost less $$ & emotions than going to court with an attorney & mental health "professional" in tow for both sides. And it would do something for the kids. Some kids would realize they don't want either parent. |
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October 4, 2008, 8:39 am PDT
Quote From: children911 I see a lot of parents very frustrated about their personal issues with divorce and children. Please stop trying to be self serving and be more selfless. Let's serve for a better cause, the best interest of our children. The statistics do not lie and I hope you do not want this for your child or for your own selfish reasons.
Statistics are good. But do you have any idea on how to transform statistics in to law? How do you convince a legislator those statistics mean lost productivity, loss of family structure, higher health costs etc.? |
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October 4, 2008, 8:45 am PDT
Quote From: children911 I see a lot of parents very frustrated about their personal issues with divorce and children. Please stop trying to be self serving and be more selfless. Let's serve for a better cause, the best interest of our children. The statistics do not lie and I hope you do not want this for your child or for your own selfish reasons.
Do you have a plan for transforming statistics into something a legislator is interested in like keeping from clogging the courts, or lost productivity or reducing health care costs? |
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October 5, 2008, 9:24 am PDT
Quote From: children911 Joint physical custody should be automatic when there are 2 fit parents. We are not divorcing our chilren, but for some reason the court system wants to make our children and the non-custodial parent a slave to their system, by extorting them into paying child support, so they can increase the states financial incentives from the federal government. Anytime you have created a custodial parent and a non-custodial parent you have minimized one parent and maximized the other parent. This automatically creates a PAS environment. A child needs both parents, not a parent and someone they visit. The child should have the right to know both sides of themsleves equally. It is the childs god given right. Like many others, I wrote part of my story. The platform needs to move to more discussion about solutions. I have no idea, and doubt anyone else has any idea, how many "fit" parents there are in divorce situations. I'm going to assume 50/50. So, for the 50% that aren't "fit" parents, how does the court system deal with them? And, for the 50% that are "fit", who is going to referee the disagreement that is going to ultimately occur over which doctor to use, or which school to attend, or even more likely, which religion is going to be the religion of choice. 1 reason people get divorced, even "fit" people, is because they disagree over basic issues. I don't really think maximizing 1 parents power for decisions affecting the children is bad, unless abused. Although it is a fine line & very subjective, that abuse needs to be dealt with. When "fit" parents disagee over which doctor to use, are you going to have an arbitrator or courts decide what is in the best interest of the child while the child dies? Legally, I was a child support payment center only. So, I had no control over schools, doctors, religion etc. I did not agree at all with the decision about religion, Ex is Baptist & I'm Methodist. However, I recognized some religion was better than none. I thought religous tolerance was good. So, I took my children to church, but they rebelled, mainly because their idiot grandmother denegrated methodism. If I had had my children's best interest in mind, I probably should have attended their Baptist church and cut out the conflict. Their grandmother probably would have changed her religion. I tried to focus on my children. I failed in some areas, like religous preference. I am very blessed and perhaps very lucky, because my children turned out pretty good, actually, very good considering the revolving door of 4 step fathers and numerous live-in boy friends. The older I have gotten, the more I realize allot of what I fought against or had anger over was the un-known and my way versus my ex's way. I also realize I had no support system (parents died when young, brother & sister had no children) & I was not knowledgeable enough to deal with some of the problems I was confronted with after divorce. I think every divorcee with children should be required to go thru post partum training to help them deal with some of the issues. Court ordered training, paid for by those who can afford it & no payment for those who can't. Who does it & how does it get funded? Well, it gets funded partly by state tax revenue & partly from fines from those that interfere with child visitation orders. Cost could also be reduced by volunteer efforts from the metal health "professionals" or from religous oranizations. In my opinion, religous organizations have totally missed the target on providing post partum couseling. After reading allot of the blogs after the show, it appears pretty obvious their is a problem with PAS. Now, the real issue is what to do about it. |
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