Laying out boundaries.

[Asteria36]

I won't bore with a lengthy back story, but in a nutshell. My husbands ex has made some terrible choices, including substance abuse, that have had a catastrophic effect on our lives. Their children (dsd, dss - both teens) came to live with us (me, dh, my ds) a few years ago and she continued to cannon about whilst we picked up the pieces and tried to keep our family unit sane. All three of our children have had extensive therapy to help them deal with the destructive effects of her actions. I have been unable to work for over 5 years due to stress induced illness and dh has aged about 20 years and relies on sleeping pills to get through the night.
Now she has decided that she is going to move to our town, to be closer to her children after telling them explicitly over the last 2.5 years that she would never leave her current location - 70 miles away. Her relationship of 6 years has broken down again (he is also abusive to the dsc) but we have been here 3 times before and she has gone back after a few months.
I support this as being something she needs to do, however she has gone out of her way to wreak havoc on all our lives (my ds ended up self-harming because of the stress she caused) and now I will have to risk bumping into her whenever I go to bloody Tesco (other overpriced supermarkets are available!).
We cannot and would not prevent her from moving here, we have a court order that at least minimises the time she has to manipulate her children, but how do we adjust to this latest intrusion on our lives? My immediate concern is that I personally have very little of my life left that isn't encroached on and marred by her actions. Twice this week alone I have had to mop up tears and patch over stupid things that she has said to the chilren, and they don't even know about this latest bombshell yet. The dsc are so emotionally vulnerable and without her current support network she will lean on them (especially dsd) for even more emotional support than she already does.
How do we set healthy boundaries to protect dh, all of our children and myself now that she is going to be on our doorstep?

*typo - the dsc are tweens not teens.

Go back to court with the intention of getting contact stopped altogether based on their mental health still suffering.

I don't think that the courts would do that - and we wouldn't feel comfortable cutting all contact. She is making steps to right the wrongs of the past and we need to give her the chance to do this.
We just want practical ways of setting boundaries.

The dc have self harmed - no way would I be facilitating her contact for that alone.

My ds self-harmed, but he has no contact with her as he is not her child. The stress she brought into our home was the trigger, but we cannot stop the dsc from seeing their mother on that basis.
She is a monumentally selfish idiot with no grasp of the impact her actions have, but she does love her children and crucially they adore her. We just need help with boundaries.

Bump

My ex lives round the corner. We don't have a good relationship and I can count on one hand the number of times, I have bumped into him in Tesco or elsewhere.

Change numbers, minimise the contact. Surely the children can say no and you can too? Why do you need contact? No contact is handling it.

Fixed boundaries then time and date -return at XX and is on drugs etc - get a court to insist on testing. I wouldn't let some one drinking or on drugs look after my children.

She claims to have been sober for 2 years, reaching the final stages of the AA steps, so we have to give her a chance - although I will never trust her.
The emotional abuse of the children has lessened substantially in this time too. The children have evolved to a point where they are understanding of her limitations as a person and they still want to see her (she buys their affections). We run the risk of isolating them from us too if they see us as actively preventing contact - and she would tell them. If they were younger this would not be as complicated, but they are 11 and 13 so will be able to just walk to her new house if they wished to.
If we suspected that the alcohol was back we would stop contact. If the emotional abuse that previously accompanied the alcohol returned then we would stop contact. The courts have ordered that she must have them once a fortnight so we have to honour that until there is a more tangible change.

Perhaps I'm looking more for emotional boundaries than time/space

I understand what you mean and the situation will be tricky to handle. I'm not sure though what advice we can give on practical or emotional boundaries. You already have practical ones regarding contact which are court ordered. The emotional ones you seem to have sorted in your head - you know when to call a halt on current arrangements if certain behaviours happen.

IMHO the rest will come as you live the new circumstances. You sound sorted and attuned to the children's needs so that will be your guide. I wish you luck in navigating the new situation.

For future ref 'What would you do' doesn't seem to get a lot of traffic, so if you wanted more replies, I would choose a different topic to post in.