“The Fine Print”, by Michael Schrader
THE DARK SIDE OF DIVORCE
(Written and posted 01 December 2009)
When
I got divorced, I had to take a class called “Helping Children Cope With Divorce”. There
are two very important points that are emphasized in this class. The first of these is that a child has two
parents, and whenever possible, both parents will be given joint custody, which
means that both have equal access to the child and an equal say in how the
child is raised. The second is that no
matter how the parents feel about each other, the parents should never ever use
the child as a weapon against the other.
When
my divorce was granted, I was given primary custody of the children, which
means that they live with me. It does
not mean that I can do whatever I want with the children, regardless of my
ex-wife’s wishes, because we have joint custody. If I decide to move out-of-town with the
children, my ex-wife has every right to block me from taking the children with
me, as to move requires putting the kids in new schools, needing new doctors, and
living in a new environment; in other words, it would affect how my children
are raised, and I cannot make that decision single-handedly. They are my ex-wife’s children, too, and she
has just as much right as I do to say how they are raised. Although my children live with me, she has
just as much right to see them unrestricted as I do, as long as she gives me
the proper notice. While there have been
some rough patches since the divorce, all in all our arrangement is working the
way that it is supposed to, as my children see both their parents often.
The
hard part, for both of us, is restraining ourselves in the others’ affairs. From our split until I remarried, my ex-wife
and I couldn’t stand to be with each other for more than five minutes. After that, it inevitably got nasty and
hateful. We both felt betrayed and hurt
by the other; we both had our grievances, real and imaginary, against the
other; we both disliked each other’s new partner. I know that it would make my blood boil
knowing that my children were around “Him”, and I suspect that she felt the
same way about “Her”. I can only speak for
myself here, but I can see that “He” makes her happy, and when she is happy,
she is a better mother to the children, and since “He” is kind to the children,
then it is a win-win-win for all of us.
As painful as it has been, I’ve had to let go of my over protectiveness
and trust that she will do right by the children, even when I do not agree with
her methods. I pray that since the
status quo seems to be working well, that neither one of us let our emotions
get the better of us and screw it up.
One
thing I will say for my ex and I is that even when we
were married and would get into nasty fights, we always knew to stop before we
completely destroyed ourselves or the children.
I thought that every parent exercised the same self-restraint, but over
this weekend I found out that I was horribly wrong, and it will be a very
painful mistake to fix. My wife has a
similar joint custody arrangement with her second ex-husband for their
son. At the time of their divorce, he
had a better job than she, so he had primary custody. Except, in his mind, primary custody means
that he has total control over everything and that she has no say. In the sixteen months that I have known her,
he has allowed her to have her son four times.
He has moved, remarried, moved again, tried to move out-of-state, and
never has he let her known what he was planning; he just did it. She has tried to call, and he won’t let her
speak to her son. She has tried to see
her son, and he has refused, because he has primary custody and he has the
say-so on who sees his son. Forget about
what is right for the child; it’s all about punishing his ex-wife.
Right
after we got married, he asked if we could keep him until the end of the year,
as he was moving and needed to get back on his feet. We gladly accepted. For the past month, my wife and I have been
blissfully happy, as our family has been whole.
Over Thanksgiving, her second ex-husband was becoming obnoxious in his
insistence that he should see his son.
Being as we were trying to do right by her son by allowing him to see
his father, if just for the few hours he was passing through Oklahoma, we
acquiesced. On Sunday, we drove the two
hours from our house to
My
wife was hysterical when the police arrived.
She was so inconsolable, that the police asked her to sit in the
car. They talked to me, and I explained
the situation, that the boy has some medical issues that we are trying to get
resolved, and that we really need him back.
Twenty feet away was her ex-husband, with a snug look on his face. He basically told the officers to piss off,
that he had joint custody, and he was keeping him. When the officers relayed the information to
me, I explained that he was only in
It
was a long and sad two hour drive home.
My wife was pretty much catatonic the rest of the day. Monday, we went and explored our legal
options. We learned some things that we
would have wished we had known 24 hours earlier, for if we had known, our
family would still be whole. We have
been beating ourselves up the past two days for doing the right thing, because
if we had not, our family would still be whole.
My wife has now been forced to engage in what will be a very nasty
custody battle, one that she had to engage in with her first ex-husband, one
that he told her on Sunday night that he regrets. The problem with nasty custody battles,
besides the expense, is that it is a lose-lose-lose. Each ex-spouses loses,
as all of his and her dirt is exposed for the world to see. The child loses, too, as the child is forced
to be exposed to his or her parents’ baggage and warts, and can be
psychologically damaged for the rest of his or her life.
For
the life of me, I don’t understand why any parent would want to put their child
through a custody battle. A child is not
a piece of property to be fought over; a child is a thinking,
feeling human being who only wants to experience the warmth and love of both
parents. I know that my wife’s situation
is not the first time that this has happened, and it certainly won’t be the
last. It is still a tragedy, none the
less. It is a tragedy that a boy whose
smile brightens a room, who gets profound happiness out of simple things such
as riding a bike, a huge Thanksgiving feast, and throwing a football with his
step-uncle, must be subjected to this because of the selfishness and
spitefulness of one of his parents.
My
heart is breaking, and may God help us all!
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