Well, here we are at accusation number 4 which is again holding up the latest court date to get even a very temporary custody order in place. This now going on approaching a year and half since my ex got almost complete time/control over our daughter on an accusation which was shown to have no merit in court along with the help of a 2 ignorant mental health professionals. While I am fortunate enough to have a court ordered therapist working with my daughter who was able to figure out the accusation had no merit whatsoever, my ex has definitely figured out the magic words “Child Protective Services” will cause the judge to get worried and order another mental health professional to get involved. It’s also another $1,000 in fees from the therapist. It is a minor inconvenience to my ex but an extremely difficult amount for me to come up with. But the choice is do it or risk losing all custody of my daughter.
As I have said before and will probably say many more times- document, document document. When I went for an initial interview with this latest professional I brought a binder documenting my ex’s pattern of behavior, including the “coincidental” timing of accusations or incidents that have happened right as an evaluation of court date was approaching. These patterns of behavior are predicable. I another post I will go into one of the most used and devastating ones I’ve had to deal with since this started but without a doubt, knowledge is extremely useful in dealing with this sort of stuff. It has empowered me to remain calm in situations where I might have likely gotten very upset in the past.
What I did this time in addition was give her a copy of Dr. Childress‘s Professional Consultation. I was a little scared, as I don’t know what her reaction will (or won’t ) be. But, as some I respect said many years ago said- when faced with depression or anxiety you’re almost always better off going with anxiety. I can see where not doing something different is very likely going to end up.