Ok, will try to keep this short without too much non essential detail.
I have two dc with ex one has SN.
Ex has a drink problem. He does not drink during the day or anything. He is what I would call a functioning alcoholic, holds down a decent job etc. I would trust him on say a day out with the dc. However as soon as drinking comes into play and he and his family drink A LOT, he becomes incapable and will literally drink until unconcious. He drinks into this state almost every night. It was the main reason we broke up.
His family see no problem with his drinking. His Mum in fact is pretty obsessive with enabling the grown up drunk adults in her family to the detriment of dc. Ex H agrees this to be true. Eg one night ex disappeared from a family night out to go off on his own. She came home in tears and immediately jumped in her car to go and find him despite being very drunk herself. On another occasion she left my ds (2) at the time in the care of a passed out drunk adult to go and look for another of her children. I was unaware of this until afterwards. Another time ex woke one of my dc up for a drunken "chat", I realised and went into stop it and his Mum became quite angry with me and tried to make me leave ex H with ds chatting drunkenly in the middle of the night because she was worried that ex H would go out again if he didn't get his own way! Ie once again prioritising a drunk adult man over a child.
My questions are this, I stayed in the relationship for much longer than I should have as I have because I was too scared to leave knowing they would now have unsupervised contact with my dc once ex and I split formally. Is there anyway now that we are coming to divorce that I can insist that my children are not left unsupervised with these people? I do not want them to stay overnight or go away with them and this is something ex is insisting on? Has anyone any experience of a similar situation? Any thoughts please? What would a court or solicitor think of the examples I hav given here? Thanks.
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Relationships
Ex with drinking problem, his family and access to dc.
kidsplusexequalsnightmare · 20/08/2011 11:35
I'm sure alot alcoholic parents are great parents when they're sober, but 
that's hardly great role model for them and its not like they won't know what's going on. He can't be trusted not to drink when they're around even though he knows they're so young and he's already endangered them and he's also happy to let his mum take over knowing that she prioritises him over the dc's just as he prioritises himself and his drinking over them!
What criminal damage did he do to your property? Were the DCs there at the time? What was the story behind the ABH? Was it drink related?
If you really aren't happy with overnights, and it sounds like you have very good reason to be worried, then you need to make that very clear.
Can you talk to him at all about this or does he just shout you down or minimalise it all? Is it possible that he would agree to not having them overnight?
Ah hun, whatever you decide to do, get as much supporting information as you can. Work out all the incidents and dates and write them down..
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