I'm in your boat.. I tried to interact minimally with our whack job BM and it backfired and we ended up having a nasty spat and since then I won't speak to her (unless I have to like at SS soccer game say "hi") she did apologize to me for being offensive, I told her fine. But I still have no desire to hear her annoying voice, see her creepy face or anything in between because bottom line, I don't trust her now and also she is not someone I would be friends with even if I didn't know hubby/SS. I think it's better for all involved in my situation... I let hubby deal with her crazy @ss.

I'm not so much nuts about the irritating skid. But I will do pickups (alone) when needed. We all (DH and I, and BM) live in suburbs east of the city. DH works near home. BM and I both work IN the city, me on the west side, her on the south side. During the summer, if skid went to work with BM (she works for her parents, so can just take skid with her), it made a heck of a lot more sense for me to pick up the skid (maybe 10 minutes out of my way) than for DH to go pick her up (well over an hour round trip.)
Sometimes, it's just easier for everyone if I'm willing to deal with BM. Otherwise, I'd be delighted to leave it to DH, believe me!

I don't get it either honestly-I mean bf and I aren't married but we leave interaction w/the exes for ourselves. Less interference the better IMO-if experience on this board is any indication it's definately the route to do.

I know for some women they chose to be involved and have the "my partner and i do/decide everything together including stuff about skids/exes'/communications, etc...we work as a team...well to each their own but I see those couples are the ones with a million issues and drama. Part of it is just being of a controlling nature I believe. They can't trust/allow their partner to do their bsns. It could be they don't respect their partner, or dont' have faith, or see them as immature or irresponsible and try to make up for those "faults" by taking over or butting into relationships w/the ex. But again-I just think it creates way too much drama and unecessary strife to your life, the kids lives, the exes' life. The control is never worth it.

I'm w/you Torn. Not after the beginning. It became clear at the beginning that she would love nothing more than to see us break up and that she continually tries to control DH's, Skid's and myself's life. I give her absolutely no access to me and it drives her absolutely crazy. It's so wierd what she tries next. Talk about control freak :? The way I see it, is it would be another door to drama opened. Nope, I love my life smooth and drama free.

Not to mention, I'm not sure if I could control myself and not knock the dog s&$*t outta her! She would have me arrested so fast and DH and my career's would never survive it.

No contact with BM here. She keeps trying to make false domestic violence allegations against BF so he is also no contact. Or limited contact. Email only. We're currently pushing to get SD3 into a fulltime preschool program and we hope to do the exchanges through there to minimize contact. If that fails I'll encourage BF to ask in the temporary orders hearing for custody that all interactions be videotaped due to BM's history of frivolous and disruptive false litigation.

Personally I agree, it's better to just let the bio's handle their own interactions and stay out of it. If they are on good terms and BM isn't nuts then it's reasonable, but seems like for most people on this site BM's are not typically reasonable. With high conflicts you can't engage in the conflict so it's best to stick with no or little contact.

I'll answer as a stepmother who has a very limited amount of contact with my stepkids' mother.

First and foremost, we are custodial. The kids live with us every single day. Their mother sees them for maybe a total of two weeks out of the year. A week at Christmas and maybe a few days during the summer. We live about 600 miles away from her.

Second, my husband has a job that requires him to be out of the state or the country for weeks and sometimes months at a time. When he is away, he is often unreachable. I have no choice but to contact her if one of the kids gets really sick or seriously injured. Or about important school stuff, travel plans, ....Stuff like that.

But I would never engage in a text war, phone calls back and forth, ridiculous facebook drama, or any of that nonsense. I have a business relationship with her just like I do with my ex-husband.

Honestly, I really believe that many of the stepmoms who have the most trouble with their husbands' exes invite a lot of that drama into their lives.

I don't

Since he (SS )was 1yo I have gone to nearly every Parent Teacher Conference, football game, swim meet, baseball game, soccer game, tennis match, band concert, parade, school trip, all of the Family Weekend celebrations while he was at boarding school for a year and half and I went to his HS graduation. None of the SpermClan has ever attended any of his activities including his HS graduation.

Not that participating in his life has been all that difficult for me. He is after all my son (SS) and he has lived with his mom and I his entire life (except his brief life before his mom and I married.

As for my communication with SpermDad and the SpermClan. I don't ... except when they are getting shitty with my wife and I pick up the phone and threaten to take every asset they will earn for multiple generations if they do not shut up and do what my wife tells them to do. They know that we have no problem taking them to court for every sliver of deviation from the Custody/Visitation/Support order if they are being shitty. When they are pleasant, we are pleasant.

We never call them. They only call us when they are making travel arrangements for an upcoming visitation.

We like it that way.

If they were reasonable we would have no issue co-parenting with them. Since they are toothless, manipulative, entitlement morons ... I have no use for them.

Best regards,

I have 3 BMs to go with 3 skids. We have full custody of 2 of the kids, and 50/50 custody of the third.

I DON'T communicate with BM1 and BM2 at all. I don't need to. We don't co-parent. I parent. DH parents. BM1 and BM2 get visitation and do fun things. They don't have any responsibility so they don't make any decisions.

BM3 and I live around the corner from each other. She has SD3.5 week on week off. We go Friday to Friday. She has another BS(10) from a prior marriage. He lives in an adjacent town, about an hour away, and she does not get along with BS10s father. They also have 50/50, but he doesn't give her anything but a hard time. So I communicate with her in an effort to be accomodating with the schedule so she can have both her kids at the same time. I communicate with her because she has my SD3.5s best interest at heart, and doesn't try to just screw with me or with DH or our life. And because when she does make a bonehead error, it's usually because she's a little self absorbed, and didn't realize it was dicky. If we had full custody, I wouldn't communicate with her either. But since we each have her half the time, it's best for SD3.5 if we keep it consistent between the two houses as much as possible. Otherwise the kid will be a train wreck, and that doesn't benefit either one of us.