We have 90 months to go! I have been counting down for a long time. I cannot wait for the day that we are no longer legally obligated to deal with BM's and her abuse toward DH that the court seems to ignore and continue to allow. I also can't wait for the day CS ends and BM has to rein in her elevated lifestyle that she has been using DH's CS money to achieve. It will be so nice to have that money coming back to us so we can invest it for retirement. 

DH has said, on the day that the legal ties end (June 2030), he is blocking BM on absolutely everything and we are going on a long trip to celebrate. 

I feel like you will forever have to deal with them.  Weddings, birth of new babies, grandchildren birthdays, grandchildren's performances or ceremonies. I've seen my brother (half brother) dad more than i ever have since my brother's had kids

I had been counting down since sd18 was 10 years old. The only thing that stopped was CS. She still comes EOW because DH doesn't want to stop the visits. She was in community College and working at Starbucks... well she dropped out of her classes and I highly doubt launching will be anytime soon. Ss17 has 1.5 years to graduate... so there's a countdown for that. But I suspect ss17 will be worse off than sd18 because all he does is play video games and has no motivation for life. CS might end but BM has no job, and I have a feeling we will be dealing with them because she will not be able to afford to live without CS. 1200 a month for ss17... right now DH and I can't last a week without something happening with the kids. Last was we were woken up by ss17 saying BM needed an advance in CS for her dog vet bill. Dh paid up. I am convinced after 18 that things morph into something just as unbearable. Waiting till sd18 gets pregnant and loses her starbucks job... these kids have been watching BM stay jobless for years. BMs father STILL helps pay her bills. I think SD18 and ss17 take lessons from BM because they treat DH like an ATM. I personally think it's getting worse... the older they get, the more expensive the asks. I'm on the brink of divorce at all times, I'm tired of this life. 

We graduated from the CO nearly 12 years ago.  SS-30 launched at 18.  We were the CP household. So, we were on Skid raising duty 24/7 except for 7wks of visitation per year since the week before he turned 2yo.

That said, he was really not much of a problem to raise beyond fairly 'normal' kid stuff and a few rough patches during the teen boy brain fart years.  My parents cursed me/us to have a child 'just like you'.  And we did.  It was a closely run thing for him to survive making it to 18. The only thing that saved him was that when either his mom or I was ready to strangle him, the other one of us was willing to give him one more day.  one of us was usually at the end of our rope and were heading to the garden with the shovel to dispose of his body.  Figuratively of course. He/we survived it one day at a time.  That is how he survived childhood and his teen years.  That and two years of Military boarding school for his Jr. and Sr. years of HS.

He is kicking ass as an adult, a man, and as a professional. His mom and I are extremely proud of him.

The countdown, though a perceived end to the StepDrama, is sadly more often than not only a transition point from a kid being COd to be in your life, to that same kid perpetrating their childhood crap in adult format. Good or bad.

For us, it went from not too bad as a Skid raising experience to a level of significant pride in the man we raised and released upon the world.

I became his dad whe his mom and married the week before he turned 2yo. Even earlier actually, but that was the official start point.  He asked me to adopt him when he was 22yo.  We made that happen.  One of my proudest days was the day the Judge signed the adoption papers.

Our toxic burden was the SpermClan. When SS turned 18 and aged out from under the CO, hell ended for us because we could scrape the SpermClan shit off of our shoe for good.  Sadly, our son still has the periodic burden of their toxicity.  However, he learned as a kid to recognize their crap and to call them on their lies and manipulations. He knows the facts.  As he has since he progressively was exposed to the facts to counter their lies and manipulations as he grew up.  He has for the most part kept them firmly entombed under their slime covered rock at the bottom of the shallow and polluted end of his gene pool.  They do occassionally make a brief escape that hurts him.  A younger half sib going to prison, begging for him to send money, whinning that he never visits, etc, etc, etc... Fortunately, nothing that he can't keep in its proper place in his life.

So far at least.

We have been counting down for years!  18 months to go!  Then she will be completely blocked. Cannot wait. 

We finished when the youngest aged out at 19. I will always say the BM "made" him fail his senior year so she could milk out 2 more months of CS. When we realized he would fail, we paid the last 3 months in full and I added a nice note. <Since it's now clear SS will fail school and we're on the hook for CS through July, here's your FINAL payment.> Then she kicked him out in August. LOL We had about another 2 years of crap to deal with from her but eventually she got the message. The kid is 19; your money grabbing days here are done.

I will say this...just because CS ends and the kid(s) age out does not mean trouble doesn't continue. For most of us, it will. It takes on a different shape but it's still there. I disengaged from DHs kids way into their adulthood. And that is the only reason we have minimal blips these days. Should these assholes have stayed in my life, it would have continued. 5 years of mostly peace now. 

I feel like you will forever have to deal with them.

Nope, DH and I have not seen or talked to BM for over 10 years.

Until cms stops

I can see ss stopping visits a lot sooner than that. He doesn't seem emotionally connected to anyone these days ,not even bm ,and seems to do everything because he has to.

I've already decided that if he was mature enough to get married or have kids I won't be participating at all. I'd be busy on a solo holiday that accidentally clashes with anything of that nature 

5 months!! SS will graduate in 5 months!

Of course we are still dealing with some lingering things but I am hoping to have that all resolved soon!

We are taking an awesome vacation with our other kids the month before but it is all a celebration! 

18 payments to make, then block block block BM.

However I stress that SD16 wont hit those milestones, or it will string out past 18. Because she doesnt want to get a job or drivers license.