Ex’s mum asking to take back gift to DD

[Newmama2222]

A bit of a complex one here but my ex partner has ramped up his abusive ways over the past few weeks as I rejected his proposal to reduce CMS payments through fake “petrol” costs.
We are joining mediation next week and in the meantime his pettiness is becoming mind numbing. He keeps dropping DD back without her shoes for example because he bought them. Is keeping clothes in his car so she doesnt get to wear them without him. Won’t let her bring her new toys home that he gave her for Xmas.

The latest iteration of this is his mum (a Christian) has asked for the cross necklace she bought my DD back despite the fact DD lives with me full time and we agreed to keep it in her drawer. We agreed she wouldn’t wear it for the time being as she’s too young (17m) but also as we have not agreed on her religion.

AIBU to say I go back and say I would like to keep it here until the above has been agreed? I am
aware already she rarely respects my wishes for DD (eg forcing her to eat spicy food which gives her diarrhoea, using talcum powder on her despite me explaining the NHS advise against it, etc) and over the past few weeks both his mum and him have been awful and I don’t really feel it’s fair for them to force her to wear a cross without discussing between us first.

(We are having mediation just bc he wants to fight, everything he has asked I have already agreed to so the whole thing is wild!)

Input much appreciated!

@Newmama2222 you need to set your own boundaries. It will be extremely tough initially but will be invaluable in the long run.
Make sure you have your own clothes and toys for your child at your house. Keep a spare set of clothes in the back of your car, in case your child is returned without shoes or coats.
Give back everything to ex at the end of each visit, so he cannot hold it over you including any gifts he buys your child.
Do not buy any gifts. This also means you will not get any gifts either. Instead create your own traditions. Once you child is old enough, get your DC into the habit of making a card for you and buy yourself a nice gift on special occasions.
Set up your own childcare and do not rely on ex or MIL. I can guarantee that they will definitely mess things up for you when you need them the most.
Keep communications between you and ex about child only. Block MIL.
Do not rely on child support received. See it as a bonus. Your ex may start to use finances as a means of control when you take your power back.
Enjoy time with your child and do not spend one minute thinking about your ex. Plan you life and live it. Your child will not remember what clothes they have. They will remember the experiences, the trips to the park, baking in the kitchen, finger painting etc.
You got this.

All the families I know who have the children both keep there own stuff at there own places apart from the clothes the kids wear when there swapped to a parent. The cross I would give back tbh

Cut any contact down to minimum. Don’t try to be friendly with these people; their allegiance will always be to one another, not you. I would not have brought a present from a baby for DF- unless it was a finger painting card or the like.

When they present a problem- always come up with the simplest solution for you- clothes, don’t send her in expensive clothes and explain that you know they like to dress her in pretty dresses they have bought.His mum
He doesn’t like leggings? Think ‘tough shit’

Do they feed her spicy food because that is the food they eat or do they go out of their way to bring in spicy food.

Does he pay maintenance? Who ended the relationship? I certainly would not go to mediation with a man waging a war of abuse at me with the help of MIL. Why are you going to mediation?

I would go somewhere where boundaries can be drawn up and agreed about access to your child.

I would send the cross back for several reasons.

1. his mother is clearly from the same narcissistic stable as her revolting offspring, and will use the cross (and anything else in your house even tangentially connected with her) as a choke chain for as long as she can. Giving it back is the only way to take the wind out of her sails

2. if you think this woman is the type to push religion down your child's throat when you're not around, you want your home and your relationship with dd to be completely free of those influences; dd stands a better chance of thinking critically and making up her own mind if the religious indoctrination is coming from only one direction. Having the cross in the house will give the impression that you are colluding with Grandma

Frankly I would want the bloody thing out of my house. Draw a clean line between your time with her and his/his mother's time with her. If it means buying more shoes, that's a small price to pay for having nothing to do with the fucker other than handover and the absolute bare necessities of information. A religious symbol is a dreadful present to give a child in any case.

I would send the cross back - your daughter won't care which house it is in. You are not together so you have no need to speak to the ex mil - he can facilitate her relationship with your daughter on his time with her. It would be great if you could get along with her for your daughter's sake but if she is going to be difficult just have nothing to do with her.

With the ex - I would ignore everything unless he was asking something specific and necessary - his comments on her clothes - I would just ignore.

The shoes things if he is not sending her back in what you sent her in - then I would send her in something inexpensive you are not going to miss if he sends her back in something else or shoe less.

If I was in a good mood, I might say something like "sorry MIL, daughter is too young for a necklace as it is a choking hazard. Necklace has been put away until she is older. Once she is old enough to wear it, she can decide where it stays, but until that time I decide and I have decided it stays in a box until she is older".

If I was in a bad mood, I would just say "you aren't my mil any more and I don't have to deal with you" then block.

Your ex is petty af. Who drops their child off without shoes FFS?

OP unless you need to stop contact for safety (because family court likely to fail your kids in that) but sounds like contact is happening? I say let him take you to court. FYI mediation is not advised in cases with DV.

Mh abusive ex took me to court. Different situations as I left cuz he hurt our child and wanted supervised contact. I lost that but it's worked out for the best. His new gf or mum look after the kids so are safe enough (because he never wanted to see the kids he wanted to punish me). Anyway now when he plays his games and tries to keep controlling me etc I just respond we will follow the court order and then don't engage with him. He fucked his own games up there. He spent thousands in court to punish me and he gave me a shield

Give the necklace back, it's not worth the aggro.

I can't get on board with people who won't let their child wear their own clothes and shoes at the other parent's house.

Unless the other parents regularly loses things or lets things get damaged all the time (not dealing with stains or letting them roll around in mud in a white coat for example) then it should be seamless for the child.
They should be able to wear the clothes and shoes that belong to them regardless of the home they are staying in. Life is bloody hard enough for them.

I know someone who has their children 50/50 with their ex, and they keep entirely different sets of everything at each house, nothing transfers between them. When they divorced it was nasty and stayed that way until they both met new partners and really moved on. It’s much better now, but so there was no ground for arguments, they just stopped sharing anything. It worked for them I guess.

@Newmama2222

Give the cross to the mediator when you see them, and ask them to open the package as proof it exists and the condition it's in and for the mediator to record they've handed it to your Ex. This way you avoid being hounded by your ex and his mother in future with them saying they never received it or it was damaged. 🌹

Going forward buy your DD shoes and clothes to wear at your house and get your ex to do the same. Hand DD over wearing clothes you bought her and tell your ex you expect her to come back wearing the same clothes. She can wear the stuff he buys at his house. Your DD should have toys at both your house and her Dad's house to play with. Hand back cross to his Mum but reiterate your DD is far too young to wear it ATM.

@PurpleBugz this sounds stressful for you so I am glad there has been a silver lining to it! So today I handed back the necklace and reminded him it isn’t not his mums decision to decide on DD’s religion anyhow and that I will raise in mediation. He came back saying “if you do that, you won’t be taking dd on holiday as I will block it” and “I will then go for 50/50 in court.”

Do you mind me asking why the courts denied your ask of supervised contacts when there was harm involved? I am still very scared of the idea of court as my ex is SO clever and so so manipulative

So today I handed back the necklace and reminded him it isn’t not his mums decision to decide on DD’s religion anyhow and that I will raise in mediation. He came back saying “if you do that, you won’t be taking dd on holiday as I will block it” and “I will then go for 50/50 in court.”

I'm glad you've got the necklace out of the mix.

You have to stop engaging him with chit chat. You are just proving to him that he's getting to you.

He's playing a game with you and you are giving him the reaction he is looking for.

Your response when he says these things needs to just be "ok, you do what you feel you need to do." He's saying these things because he thinks it holds power over you.

He would have to apply for a prohibited steps order to stop you going on holiday, and no judge is going to tell you that you can't take your daughter on a holiday. The more he pisses about with court the worse he looks, the courts even have the power to stop him being able to make any more applications.

Just rise above it.

@Newmama2222

My ex is very charming and comes off well. Typical abuser trait that is. He got unsupervised because of many reasons I never reported the abuse, when the neighbours called the police as they could hear it I lied said everything is fine (I was a state and ex was calm and collected and told them I was mentally unwell so that's what their incident report said). I'd also been to the gp for my mental health as he gaslit me into thinking I was crazy (im not crazy I now know it was him doing that to me). Anyway I left suddenly when he hurt our child and had no evidence of the abuse, he said I made it up I'm crazy, we had a court battle and the judge decided I was lying. It was a terrible experience. I had a fair bit of evidence things like messages I'd sent friends saying can't talk now he home and others where I said I'm scared etc but judge believed I was delusional. You don't need to worry about that happening to you though unless you are trying to limit contact because of abuse or insisting on supervised in which case you need to prove he's a threat to the child.

I had slot if support from woman's aid and people online who gave advice. I read a lot of books on family court to represent myself etc so if it ends up going to court message me I'm happy to point you to resources and let you rant the stress out if needed.

Rightsofwomen have a free legal helpline manned by solicitors and barristers. It's very hard to get through used to take me an hour each time but it's free legal advice! And I'd recommend getting the book family court without a lawyer by Lucy reed- it explains everything it's really helpful.

"He came back saying “if you do that, you won’t be taking dd on holiday as I will block it” and “I will then go for 50/50 in court.”

Do you have this in text/email? If so that's brilliant evidence he's only using court to abuse you.

It's comments like this you need to get in writing. That why you must never speak to him verbally always always in writing. It shows you are being reasonable so defends you against his accusations and shows his abuse and manipulation so he won't win 50/50

I’m so sorry this experience sounds so stressful @PurpleBugz. To have the judge believe you were lying about something like that is really hard to imagine. But I know how men like that are, my ex is the same. He’s very smart and has an excuse for anything, he’s always blame free and it’s always someone else’s fault, but as he’s so charming externally it’s easy to believe if you don’t see the other side of him behind closed doors. If you don’t mind me asking what did the judge grant in the end given he thought you were lying? Did your ex have a lawyer or were you both said representing?

And thank you for so much great advice, I have a feeling we will end up in court as he always wants to one up. And money isn’t an issue for him - he’d rather keep getting one up on me over and above anything else it seems.

I have a message from him from when DD was 10 months old and I am telling him she is throwing her food on the floor a lot as he asks how her eating is going, he responds “if she does that with me she’s getting the beats” - yes it’s a “joke” but after many conversations where he told me he believes in physical punishment it wasn’t something I took lightly. Having raised this with him recently he responded by point blank saying he’d never said anything about it and saying that i was trying to get excuses up my sleeve in order to block him if we ever go to court. I’m not sure how seriously court would take those sort of messages especially if he maintains they’re a joke, and there’s no evidence of him hurting dd, but I am genuinely still worried about it as I know he has a very mean side.

I’m buying the book now!! X

@PurpleBugz sorry to clarify I know your ex got unsupervised but what split did the courts order is what I meant?