I am in a relationship (and living with) a wonderful man who has 3 sons, custody of 2. I'm going to try my best to capture our story in a nutshell. My SO is originally from another country, where he met his ex wife. She was from America and the way he tells it, he was not interested in her initially, but she was a little aggressive. At the time, he was heavily into Christianity, and though he says she was not his type physically, he felt that she was a good person overall and he married her. After getting married, she became pregnant with his first son. He said she then wanted to come back to America to break into the fashion industry when his son was about a year old. He has no family here so he was hesitant to make the transition, but he ended up moving anyway. He said that after they arrived here, her behavior towards him began to change. She began to make accusations that he was cheating and began having dreams that he fathered a child from his country. He said that he loved her at that point, so he stood and tried to change her. However, she began to get in the habit of kicking him out of their apartment and he would have to stay in his job. She would always be sorry afterward and want him back so he would go, because he didn't believe in divorce. Her behavior worsened, but during this time, she had applied for a mortgage and had him sign, with her as the cosigner. He said he didn't believe it was a good idea, but he did it anyway as she was now pregnant with their second son and he wanted the marriage to work. She kicked him out 3 months later (called the police and falsely accused of him of being violent towards her). He then would stay in the locker room of his job, where his boss found him and allowed him to stay with him until he found a place. During this time, he filed for divorce, sort of abandoned his religious beliefs and bought a small apartment. She would have her sister drop the kids off to him at work, knowing that he didn't have a place to stay, and opened up credit cards and maxed them out under his name, which he filed charges against her for. He claims that during the next five years, nothing sexual happened in their relationship until one day where he wanted to see if it was possible to just have a sexual relationship with her. He said he had met someone special but she had just left her husband and had been dating someone else so that relationship didn't continue. It was after he slept with his ex wife after five years that this person called him back. He said he completely fell for person #2. However, once ex wife heard that he was moving on with someone who had a child as old as the youngest one, she began her craziness. She began to keep the children from him, took him to court for child support (300 weekly he was mandated to pay), and had her sons allege that new woman's son was molesting them. She also claimed she was pregnant, at which point he had to explain to new woman that he slept with her only once and before she called him to begin their relationship. New woman then, after stating that she is a very difficult woman to get pregnant and even had to take potions (yes, you read that right), to become fertile, suddenly miraculously gets pregnant after 3 months of meeting SO and after knowing that soon to be ex wife could potentially be pregnant. After she gives birth to SO's third child, she is overwhelmed with everything happening. She wanted to move out of state, but he refused because he was now going for custody for the first two children. After ex wife has a psych breakdown, SO gains custody of his first two children and new woman is not able to adjust. SO states she had it out for his oldest son and as she continued to ask him to leave the state while he was still in court, now taking ex wife for child support, he suggests that she leave if she felt it was not going to work. He said he felt as if she was asking him to turn his back on his first two children (before he was granted custody). During this time, their divorce was finalizd and ex wife and new woman were in constant battle, to the point where new woman has ex wife recorded where ex wife tries to physically assault her (new woman demanded to go with SO to ex wife's sister's apt to pick up the kids). He showed me all the emails and texts that went back and forth between the two as he had to save them for court. New woman eventually left when the baby was about 18 months old. SO and I eventually began dating. I had already been involved with someone who had EOW visitation so I was familiar with steptalk and stepparenting in general. Or so I thought. I ended up moving in with SO during my final year of nursing school and the plan was for me to leave after I found a job. We got along great so that never happened and we are now talking marriage. Herein is where the issue now lies. When I first met the boys, they were great (they still are). However, when I first began staying here, I had episodes of "missing money". I brought it up to SO, and the third time it happened, I actually began to think it was him who was taking money from my purse. However, it turns out that oldest SS, who was 12 at the time was taking my money out of my purse. He was never really punished for it. Obviously, youngest SS lives out of state, so there are not real issues there. But there seem to be constant issues with the first two children, mostly stemming from their mother. I have refused to trash talk her, though I really dislike all the crap she has pulled since I have been with SO (she just recently filed an order stating that SO has been physically and emotionally abusing her and the boys for the past 9 years). But my SO is constantly in court and constantly having to defend himself from her as she continues to make false accusations about him. She is supposed to have the kids EOW but she picks them up from school every Friday and we don't see them until Monday afternoon after school. That's totally fine by me, especially since she does not physically abuse the boys and they genuinely love their mother. BUT, she sends them home with clothing that don't fit, she doesn't make them breakfast before school, nor buy them at least cereal (even though she somehow gets the welfare food card for them), and they told us that they love being there because she lets them sleep late and they don't have to bathe. Okay that's still not horrible, I guess, but then they have now learned that all they have to do is say they have a...stomachache, headache, even dizziness, and she won't send them to school. Every single time those boys have missed school has been on Mondays when she is due to take them back to school. There have even been times where the boys claimed she couldn't take them to school because she "didn't feel well and was sleeping all day". Sounds like a hangover to me. ACS has been involved, they are still going to court, this time he is going for full parental rights. But I didn't realize that the courts have a bias that benefits the mothers. She owes now over a year of child support and does not buy the boys hardly anything, unless it's their birthday. She gets a groupon here and there and there is really nothing SO can say to those children to make them see their mom for the POS she is. She is currently trying to convince the boys to say they live with her so that she "doesn't go to jail". A part of me feels bad that the boys are stuck in the middle, but a part of me feels like they should know better, especially the oldest. It seems like every time he fucks up, he blames his mother, and it seems like its exactly what SO wants to hear. I have called SO out on it. We are going on 2 years together now and I respect and love my SO more than ever. But I feel like he is self sacrificing for the kids. Currently, he is not able to move more than 25 miles away as per court order unless ex wife agrees. I hate being so close in proximity to her. I hate that the boys come back brainwashed by her every fucking weekend. I just hate it period. It all boiled down to me telling him that sometimes you have to cut the limb to save the tree. In other words, he has to determine how much longer this is worth fighting for because I REFUSE to have children under these circumstances. I'm not even 100% ready to marry him right now, as ex wife stopped making mortgage payments, house is under foreclosure, and ruined his credit. I explained to him that it is difficult for me to see him go through this crap, at least 2 court dates each month (she keeps filing the craziest things). He wants to move too but I told him that maybe he should just move and do what makes him happy, and everything else will fall behind. The kids are now 14 and 8, they can sort of choose who they prefer to stay with. He should not have to be forced into staying within 25 miles of ex wife because he made the mistake of having 2 kids with the wrong person. She continues to use the kids as a way to get to him, even though they haven't been together in a relationship for 8 years. I can't imagine spending the rest of my life trying to figure out what she is going to do or say next, but I don't want to lose a man who I think is perfect for me over someone else's actions. I am wondering if any of you out there have thoughts on how you handle this (assuming you're even in this unlikely scenario).
Any advice is welcome. Sorry for the long post, but thanks for reading.