- Pregnancy
- Baby & Toddler
- Parents
- Getting Pregnant
- Baby Names
- Product Reviews
-
Registry
- Community
-
More
Want a personalized experience?
Download the free app
Blended Families
What would you do?
Short backstory: My husbands ex wife got into heavy drinking and a heroin addiction 3 years ago. He left her and took their 3 year old daughter Dakota with him (she's 6 now). She was court ordered to go to rehab in Florida. My husband has full custody and she has visitation. She's been trying to come back into their daughters life but is unwilling to move back here where she lived her whole life because of her support system in Florida and she married a man named Justin that she met in rehab. She has been clean for 2 1/2 years.
She comes into town last week for a visit. Her 4th visit since she had left. This was the first time we allowed Dakota stay overnight with her in her hotel room. We tried to call to say goodnight to her and she didn't answer. The next day we call from a blocked number and a man answers her phone. We didn't question her then because we didn't want to cause a fight in front of Dakota so we just asked that she bring her home by 7:30. When she drops her off, the guy is sitting in her front car but doesn't come to the door. After she left we asked Dakota how her visit went and she told us some really disturbing things. These all came straight from Dakota:
1) Her mother Katy picked up Tom from the corner at the front of our neighborhood after she picked Dakota up. She never told us about him.
2)Her and Tom kissed a lot while they were together. Dakota questioned why she was kissing Tom when she is supposed to be kissing Justin(her husband)
3) Dakota slept on the sofa in the hotel room and had trouble falling asleep because she heard them "kissing" in the bed.
4) They threw eggs out of their hotel room window
5)Dakota saw her shoplifting from Target
6)When asked what she had for dinner the night she returned she answered "A whole can of pringles!" She also had sugar packets in her purse and explained that Katy and Tom let her eat the sugar" the whole time she was gone.
Katy recently took us to court to try to get more rights. We never went to court and just settled with an agreement that she could come and visit here in NC whenever she wanted as long as she gave us at least a 2 week notice. In the agreement it also included a schedule for days and time to allow her and Dakota to skype and talk on the phone.
With the recent events from the past visit, do you think this is enough to take her back to court and get her visitation revised? Perhaps to ask for supervised visitation? To me, all of these things, especially having an affair in front of Dakota, are reckless and damaging to a child? I don't think we can just allow her to come back for another visit and let her take Dakota knowing how this last visit went. All the other visits have been pretty uneventful leading up to this though.
What would you do?
Warning
No formatter is installed for the format bbhtml
This discussion has been closed.
Re: What would you do?
Yes, he questioned her via text message so we have all of them saved. She first lied about dropping her boyfriend off at the front of the neighborhood and then later in the conversation admitted to lying because she wanted to avoid conflict. She admitted that Tom did stay the whole weekend with them but he slept on the couch and Dakota slept in the bed. I know she's lying there but in that phone conversation she said "Dakota slept on the sofa bed and had a great night"
Absolutely. When she told me that she ate pringles for dinner I asked her about all 6 meals that she should have had with BM. She told me a few places they went on the first day and told me the second day they never went anywhere to eat, she just had pringles. When I asked BM, she told me that Dakota slept through breakfast, had mcdonalds for lunch and the chips and a salad for dinner. I asked Dakota about the mcdonalds and she said "oh yea! I forgot" but when I mentioned the salad she said she never ate a salad.