Hi there,

I'm a soon-to-be legal stepmother of 2 beautiful young girls, ages 9 and 6, who my fiance just got custody of early this year after 5 years of battling the court system. The girls' mother is one of the most infuriating people I have ever had the displeasure of knowing long story short, she is incredibly selfish, immature, and quite possibly on drugs or has a mental illness, tho never proven or diagnosed.

I have been with my fiance for over a year now, and when he and I first started dating last september he hadn't see or talked to his girls in a year. shortly after we started dating, the mother (we call her Godzilla because she likes to stomp around, aimlessly destroying things) calls my fiance out of the blue and says "the girls need to see you." she dropped them off will all of their stuff with no indication of when/if she was coming to get them, and a few days later told him to keep them and that she didn't want them back. He made sure to file neccessary paperwork through the court for a modification of custody, and after about 3 weeks (after buying school supplies/clothes and enrolling them in a new school), Godzilla obtained a writ of assistance and a sheriff was sent to retrieve the children, and she did not allow the children to have any contact with their father for another month until after it was ordered through the judge. Oh, friends, this is just the beginning of MY story! She had been pulling things like this for several years. In fact just a few weeks ago I sat down to try and document everything I have witnessed from her in the past year, got about 4 pages in, wasn't even half way through and gave up because I was bored of it!

Fast forward - the mother and my fiance were (and still are) seeing a judge who is very educated and experienced in custody cases (who stated the first day this was the worst case she had ever seen). They have regular hearing status checks every few months, and in the beginning the parenting time was set for him to see the kids every other weekend. Earlier this year is when it got really nasty - she violated the court order based on a story my fiance's sister told him about shooting a gun in the house (??!!) and decided that was evidence enough to keep the kids from him again. The judge caught wind of this and moved the next court date up as soon as she could, which wasn't for another month. She immediately lost full custody and since then has been more of a pain than ever.

She says and does anything to make my fiance out to look like a monster (stating that he beats his kids with a belt and leaves marks - which she shows no proof of obviously!, says they hate being at our house, they come home crying, never want to talk to him on the phone, blah blah blah). The last court order stated she wasn't to bring the kids around he (now ex) boyfriend because of his history of violence and abuse towards the kids - not only did she violate this court order, but she was instructing the children to lie about it as well. She now has a new bf who she has moved in with (third bf she has moved in with in the past year after only dating for a month or less). The last court order was put in place befor the summer, so parenting time was a week-on, week-off basis, which we expect will change with the next hearing due to her geographical location. However, she filed a motion to disqualify the judge (which went nowhere), pushing the original court date back. So while the children are in school and should have stability, they are still with her and her bf every other week driving 20 miles to and from school during the week.

Since the last hearing status check back in june, Godzilla allowed 3 hours of visitation on Father's day (which fell on her parenting time, but made my fiance drive 20 miles to pick them up, was late dropping them off and late picking them up), put purple streaks in both girls' hair 2 days before picture day, borrowed and has not returned (and from what we understand also damaged) their brand new nice dresses we splurged on for the school year, taken them up to northern washington several times during her parenting time (and then claimed she had no money to help with school clothes and supplies), told the youngest that their dad beats up all his girlfriends and I'm going to leave him, and attempted to take them to Canada (thankfully she couldn't legally get passports!!) And most recently, her youngest daughter's fundraising money went missing out of her backpack after the friday she was supposed to turn it in - the same friday they went back to their mom's (and yes, she has a history of having sticky fingers)

On a positive note, the girls are both in counseling. The oldest just started and opened up very well to the counselor... told her things her dad didn't even know. However, he doesn't want to bring those issues up in court because he doesn't want to violate his daughter's trust.

SO!!! That's my story!! And it's only been a year so far.... sooooooo much more to come. My only hope and prayer is that the girls will grow to realize their mother's manipulative ways. The older one already sees it, but the younger one is still too naive to realize what he mom does is not ok. I'm glad I found this forum, because as you can see, I definitely am in need of a lot of support from other step parents!!!!