Hi everyone. I am so pleased to have found this site as I really need to vent and hope someone can offer me some words of wisdom. Hi. I desperately need some advice and would so appreciate any input any of you might have. I’ll try to be brief, which is difficult because it’s a complicated story, so please bear with me.

My DH, and I have been together for 8 years. We each have two children from previous marriages. All of our children live with us except for “Michelle”, my step daughter, who just turned 17. (She lived with us until 3 years ago.) With 4 kids between us, we had to establish rule and order in our home early on. While our kids have rules and lose privileges when they disobey and do daily chores for their allowance, we try very hard to be fair and kind and treat each child equally. Michelle, the only girl, had always been the “princess”, (Both my DH and Michelle’s mom admit they gave Michelle whatever she wanted and never told her “no”). She did not take well to the rules and has rebelled ever since.

Michelle’s mother, Sharon, on the other hand, has never enforced
any rules whatsoever with Michelle or her brother, Adam, 15. Sharon has always favored Michelle over Adam, but has been completely permissive with him as well. Examples? At age 12, Sharon took Michelle on a shopping trip for thong panties, fishnet stockings and high heels. While on court ordered visitation with their mother, she has allowed them to go on (unsupervised, at times) sleepovers with their friends, thus, they’ve both been introduced to pot, alcohol and sex. They have NEVER had a curfew. The past 5 years they’ve been allowed to come and go as they please via the city bus. They have unlimited, unsupervised, free reign with the internet. Michelle has met boys that she’s chatted with online. Adam has downloaded porn to his cell phone, etc. and destroyed her computers with viruses by doing so. She allows them to have friends over while she is at work. (Sharon is Single.) Michelle is frequently allowed to stay at home alone with her boyfriend. When they moved into the apartment they’re now living in, Sharon gave Michelle the Master bedroom and bath which includes a private door out to the balcony. You get the picture. Sharon has no respect for our rules or concerns or the way we are trying to raise the kids. Her only excuse for her permissiveness? “It’s too hard.” Throughout all of this, my DH has never “put his foot down” with Sharon or Michelle. He doesn’t like

Unsurprisingly, at age 13 Michelle announced that she wanted to go and live with her mother. We said no for obvious reasons. Her mother agreed. Michelle immediately began superficially “cutting” herself and threatening suicide. We took her to weekly visits with a Psychologist and a Psychiatrist as well as frequent visits with her pediatrician. We had her psychologically tested and she was diagnosed with Hypochondria, Histrionic Personality Disorder, habitual lying and stealing and the Psychiatrist noted that she met all the criteria for Sociopathic Personality Disorder but he couldn’t give her that official diagnosis because of her age.

This went on for over a year. During this time, every couple of weeks Michelle had unexplainable illnesses that resembled the flu. She always became ill when report cards or progress reports were coming out or she had a big test coming up. (Michelle has never done well in school and hates it.) All the while and unbeknownst to us, Michelle was taking overdoses of aspirin to make herself sick. Her pediatrician, thinking she was truly ill admitted her to the hospital on more than one occasion until I requested copies of her medical records (I’m a nurse) and realized she had extremely high levels of salicylic acid in her blood. I confronted her about it and she admitted that she’d been taking aspirin her mother gave her to make herself sick. She said she loved missing school and all the attention and gifts she got when sick – going to the hospital was just “cool”. After discussing this with her Doctors, they all advised that we put her in an Adolescent Mental Health Facility – her Psychologist went so far as to recommend we do this to “teach her a lesson”. So that’s what we did. It was a disaster. When we told her what we were going to do, she initially threw a screaming, uncontrollable tantrum, but she soon calmed down and was absolutely giddy with happiness on the way there. We soon learned why. The very first words out of her mouth to the Psychiatrist on staff were “If I have to keep living with my dad I will kill myself.” She repeated this mantra to all the mental health staff that evaluated her. Long story short, we knew right then that she would do or say whatever it took to get to go and live with her mother. Her next step would be to accuse my DH of abuse and although it certainly wasn’t true we could not put ourselves through that and risk losing our other children, so we relented and allowed Michelle to move in with her mother. My DH suspended visitation with Michelle and until recently, she has only visited with us for a couple of hours every Christmas. My DH, thinking he was being smart, did not go back to court and officially have custody of Michelle changed. According to their divorce decree, my DH still has primary custody of Michelle. Since Michelle’s brother “Adam” lives with us, my DH and Sharon agreed that neither would pay child support and that whether or not Michelle visited with us, Adam would continue to have twice monthly visitations with Sharon and his sister.

Since going to live with her mother, Michelle was allowed to quit school 4 weeks into her freshman year and sit at home because she got into a fight with her best friend and didn’t want to go to school anymore. The next school year Sharon placed her in a public Charter school and she failed the school year. At 17 she is still a freshman and has to take summer school in order to pass. She’s been hospitalized 3 more times for what I’m sure were overdoses of OTC and / or prescription medication her mother allows her to have access to and has ran up thousands of dollars worth of medical bills. She has stolen Sharon’s debit and credit cards three different times (that we are aware of) and charged thousands of dollars worth of merchandise and continues to steal from Adam every time he visits.

Here is our current dilemma: Six months ago Sharon was fired from her job. Sharon’s dad, who lives 500 miles away, has been financially supporting Sharon and Michelle since then. Sharon has turned down several jobs because they don’t pay as much as her previous job did. Michelle, who only goes to school until noon everyday, has told us that it isn’t her place to work and help out financially because she is a kid and thus refuses to get a job, even to help out her mom. Meanwhile, she’s ran up thousands of dollars in cell phone bills which Grandpa has paid for, will not “let” her mother turn off HBO, Showtime or the Internet. Michelle now has her Driver’s License and Sharon has given her free reign with her car.

A few days before her birthday Michelle called my DH and told him she really wanted to have a relationship with us and wanted to know if she could visit. We told her she was welcome. The weekend after her visit, Michelle informed Adam that Sharon was going to move in with Grandpa, because he couldn’t afford to support them anymore. Michelle told him she was staying here and was going to live with a girlfriend because she did not want to leave her school or friends. Sharon supposedly spoke to the mother of this “friend” and confirmed that Michelle was welcome to live with her “indefinitely”. (WTH?!) We have never met this woman or her daughters and have only been told their names.

Needless to say, we are in shock, though we probably shouldn’t be. We live in Texas and the age of majority here is 18. While Michelle can emancipate herself, it evidently costs a great deal of money to pay court costs and Michelle would have to prove she can be self sufficient, which of course, she can’t. My DH sent Michelle and her mother an email telling them that we would not allow Michelle to live anywhere but with her mother or us because legally, he has primary custody of Michelle and is legally and financially responsible for her and her actions until she reaches the age of majority and therefore has a say in where Michelle lives. He told Sharon that Michelle should find a new charter school where Grandpa lives and move with her mother because Sharon’s permissiveness and Michelle’s complete lack of respect has made parenting her an impossibility for us. Sharon’s response? Michelle should be allowed to do what Michelle wants to do. It is her life after all. Sharon actually stated in her email that her daddy is “making her move home” (she’s a 50 year old woman!) yet, she doesn’t have the guts to tell her CHILD that she has to move with her. That is Absurd. Michelle’s response was for my DH to “stop the nonsense” and allow her to live with her friends because that’s the only way she can graduate “on time”, which is an obvious lie. She also said she would visit us frequently and “let” my DH look at her report cards if he would agree.

This is tearing my DH and I apart. I am absolutely terrified to force Michelle to live with us. I honestly believe that our marriage cannot take the stress of Michelle’s behavior. We fear for her well being of course, but also fear what will happen when she steals from her friend, gets kicked out, shoplifts, has a car accident with no insurance, winds up in jail, or OD’s on aspirin again? We know now that Michelle only initiated visits with us again because she knew her mother was planning to move and she wanted to be able to “use” us when she needs something. Doesn’t it seem that way? I am so angry with the absurdity of it all! Forfeiting custody of Michelle isn’t an option as it, according to the lawyer I spoke to, would cost a small fortune, probably wouldn’t be granted anyway unless she is supporting herself and would take longer to wind its way thru the court system than it is until her 18th birthday. I am at my wits end. What would all of you do in this situation? I want to confront Sharon and Michelle myself – my DH, while firm on his feelings on the matter, just will not “lay down the law” to either of them. He has told me to confront them, but as much I want to, I still feel like it is HIS place, not mine, to do so. Does anyone have any advice?