Let me give you a quick back story:
My husband and I have been together for 7 years. He has two children (18 and 14) from a previous marriage and I have one child (9) from a previous relationship. We have one together (3) and one more on the way. For 7 years, our family has been very close. We do everything together. We have movie nights, go on vacations, eat dinner together, etc. His two older children have always lived with their mother. My husband and his ex-wife do not get along well. I will try to say this without sounding petty. She is very hard on him and puts him down all the time. She always has since they have been divorced for 11 years. He can never do enough. He has paid support faithfully and always gotten his kids. We used to get them every weekend, to every other weekend. We took her to court a few years ago to get more time with them but she fought it so hard, that we were not allotted any more time. Over the past 1-2 years his kids have drifted away from us. We thought at first it was just them getting older. His 14 year old son just didn't really want to be around us that much at all. Then about 7 months ago, his oldest got into a physical fight with her mother. So she came to live with us. We went through a lot with her. Drugs and other things but we tried the best we could. Over the summer she wanted to go spend the night with her mom and she never came back. We didn't hear from her until she called asking about papers she needed from school. She came to get some things and when she did, she brought her phone we had given to her and it was completely destroyed. My husband was so upset and told her that she couldn't get anything else out of our house. Let me also add, in April my step-son told my husband he didn't want to be a part of our family anymore. We have always been a close family like I said, we never said we were step or half anything. We were just family. I'm not going to say we were perfect, far from it but we are pretty good. What has happened is, my husband's ex has filled their heads with so much bitterness towards him that now that's basically how they see them. It tears me up so much. I tried to reach out to my step-daughter (her and I have always been very close) and she thinks it's just because his ex is taking us back to court for money. We need advice! I just want our family back.