Unjust custody situation

[Helloworldz87]

What would you do? Long story short. Move in with husband and his family. Naive. Didn't know how controlling they were going to get. Get pregnant early on in the relationship. My father promises to sell his vintage car if we ever need it. Later renegs it. Won't explain why. Gaslights me. After the baby is born. Get Post natal depression. Husband's parents kick us out. Husband loses his job xand I couldn't get work. My parents go overseas for months. My parents eventually get back. My in laws use the legal system against me and file for custody of my daughter. Husband begs me back. Many empty promises of getting custody of my daughter back. Move in with him (without in laws) Many empty promises of getting our daughter back. Marriage becomes financially, emotionally and physically abusive. Move back in with my parents and baby. I feel like such a fool. But don't get any answers as to why my father screwed us over? Apparently if CPS was involved in my daughter case, this would've never happened.

Apart from anything else the car would presumably only have temporarily delayed the issue for a couple of months rather than solved it.

I dont find this very clear at all

How old is your daughter? Did you leave her behind when you left you PIL's house? Have you had another child since?

Apart from anything else the car would presumably only have temporarily delayed the issue for a couple of months rather than solved it

I suspect this is the crux of it. The father was probably just trying to wildly rattle solutions off when he was first confronted with the news. Then when he had time to sit and really think through probably thought, actually, they are STILL fucked after not so long if I do sell the car and give them the proceeds. This then makes the initial idea moot.

it is very common to get pnd with a new born but not to lose your baby because of it.
Once you become a parent your dynamics change your responsibilities, become your own.
It is your Choice to choose to lift yourself up and move on to provide and clean up your own responsibilities in life.
Welcome to the real world where you have your own life and your parents, ex, inlaws their own life.
Or stay in your resentful state and pity yourself.
30 yr olds now days are the worst for wanting it all for nothing!

You keep on saying CPS were not involved. Who removed your daughter from your care then?

Sorry for your struggles OP.

It sounds as though you have a difficult relationship with your father, ultimately your relationship with your partner became abusive and that you suffered from PND. Your child is with your in-laws and you think this was manipulative of them.

Have you recovered from your PND? Are you in a position to live independently from your parents and care for your child? Is this what you want?

I do understand being upset about being let down by your father, however I don't think it is useful to continue to focus on this. You can't rely on him and need to focus on coping independently of him.

Do you have regular access / scheduled contact with your daughter?

Have you been able to maintain any kind of a relationship with your daughter?

If not, why not?

Do your in laws withhold access to your daughter?

If you don’t have access or any kind of visitation with your child, this is the very first thing you need to remedy. If you need to go to court to do this, you can do this either alone (self represent) or with the help of a solicitor. You can contact and ask for support, enquire about parenting courses you can go on, whether you think you need this or not, do it anyway…it shows both willing and effort to the courts to improve yourself, your parenting skills and your situation. Do absolutely all you can to make your home environment a stable happy and healthy one as court will absolutely be taking into consideration your current circumstances.

If you don’t have any way to communicate currently with your child, create and email account that you can send emails to in which you can write to your daughter to tell her that you are thinking of her, how you hope she’s doing, commemorate special dates an events in her life and share what’s happening in yours, how you are fighting for her, how much you love and miss her etc. This is for you, somewhere for you to be able to talk to your daughter, and maybe, just maybe whenever she is old enough to understand and has questions about you and what you did for her you can give her the log in details and she can access the account herself and see all the emails you sent, how often you thought of her, wished her merry Christmas or happy birthday etc you get the idea and it will all be dated and time stamped and is a record for all the times you longed for her, cared for her, missed her, loved her.

I understand why you Dad is such a key part of all this for you (especially if he really is a narcissist) but honestly this is a red herring and not a useful or productive way to spend your energy. I understand that you feel he played a big part in the events of your life leading you to the path you must walk now, but directing your emotion towards his part in all this won’t change the situation for you or your daughter. Narcissist parent/child relationships come with a lot of trauma which I’m sure you’ve experienced and is also what clouds your judgement even now, that fog and toxicity is hard to let go of, even when you really really want to. For this I urge you to seek counselling to help you heal from the trauma you no doubt carry.

I absolutely understand how you must feel so incredibly let down by your parents and father in particular. How you ex and child’s father didn’t support you through PND and when you needed him most. How you must feel that your in laws used all of your hurt and trauma to rob you of your child. This is a lot of pain and hurt for any one person to carry, and I sympathise wholeheartedly. But if the goal is to re-establish contact with your child, or to gain custody going forward, you need to deal with the trauma that has plagued your life, so that can do what you need to do to fight for yourself and your child 💐

Then why wasn't he honest? Why did he expect me to look after him later on? He wasn't even a nice person

Finally someone who actually gets it. Also having my enabler mother and golden child sister.

It was my in laws who separated us.

I have recovered from PND. I don't know if I can get her back. It was all about them controlling everything from day 1.

You sound like me, except it's my XH I was trying to figure out with all the whys and the how could a person who supposedly loved me do this. It is who they are, you will never get an answer that can in any way heal the hurt or repair the damage. What you can do is get therapy and go low contact on no contact, put this behind you and focus on what you want for the future. If you're in Australia see you GP for a mental health care plan, get some therapy but outside those times try not to engage with these thoughts, they're only causing more harm.
What is your living situation now? You mentioned a baby? If you could change one thing in your life to make yourself happier now what would it be? If that's contact with your daughter focus on achieving and put your energy into achieving that.

Yet he'd be verbally abusing me if I had done the same.

All abusers do things like that. You're not going to get anywhere going around and around about your Dad's behaviour. How long have you been stuck in this loop? Do you want to still be posting things like this is 12 months time? I remember a thread a while ago that was very similar. While my heart goes out to you there is no point in going over and over your Dad's behaviour. Get some counselling, go low or no contact and find a way forward to seeing your daughter again.

The past is done and gone, you can't change it. You can change the trajectory of your life going forward. You can try and work towards seeing your daughter or you can stay stuck here trying to blame everything wrong in your life on a shitty Dad.

I have recovered from PND. I don't know if I can get her back

Okay, then surely this should be your focus and nothing else. You shouldn’t be focussing on your father and a car, forget that entirely, you should be focusing on getting your DD back.

Your posts are not clear. Do your in-laws just have your child and refuse you access with no legal basis, or did a court grant them residency with you having no access?

If nothing is court ordered, then make sure your life is at a point where you can provide adequately and safely for your DD and go to court asking for a return on a transitional basis that will be healthy for her.

If her placement with in-laws was court ordered, go back to court, show them how you can now provide adequately and safely for your daughter and would like to start with visitation with a view to shared and then full custody if milestones are met.

The crown prosecution service removed your children in Australia? How?

I’m in Australia and broadly work in this space. Putting aside the fact some of the post doesn’t make a lot of sense, it’s probably time to put the past to one side and focus on the future and what you want now.

The first questions would be, so you want your daughter back in your care AND are you realistically in a position to achieve this (i.e secure housing, ability to provide financially, stable mental health, adequate support). If the answer is yes, then contact Legal Aid for legal representation and start the process to rebuild the relationship and work toward her coming back to your care. If the answer is no, then work through what relationship and level of contact you want and can reliably manage. Again, contact Legal Aid and start working through the process to achieve that.

Things you can do to support a positive outcome include being able to demonstrate stability in things like work or study, complete relevant parenting courses (such as circle of security), and engage with a psychologist to demonstrate your commitment to maintaining your mental health. It will be a slow process through the court, but there is a lot you can do to proactively start working toward whatever your goal may be. Focusing on what your parents did will definitely not help you achieve what you want.

I think she meant child protection services. She said they weren't involved.
Apparently if CPS was involved in my daughter case, this would've never happened

It's court ordered.

Okay. Then you need to go back to court, showing how your situation is now different, and you can independently and adequately care and provide for your daughter (if this is the case), and proposing a plan for her to transition back to your care. This must be your focus, not anything else as the court will not be interested in anything else (and nor should they).

So you have had a second baby that you ve moved back in with your parents to raise. Tbh it doesn't sound like the money from a vintage car would have been enough to put you both on a stable footing to raise a child - it may have put a deposit on a house but how would you have paid the mortgage (or is it a really rare car that would have actually bought a house outright?)
And none of that would have changed the abusive relationship you wound up in, things seemed to get markedly worse once you were living together out of the in-laws home.
Just focus on what you need to do to get your child back, stop tying yourself up in knots over the car, what's done is done, you need to focus on fixing the situation you are currently in, not on how you think you got there.

You were an adult who chose to get married and chose to live with your in laws. And also chose to have a baby.

And it’s your Dads fault he didn’t supply the money for you to not be in the situation you put yourself in.

You lost custody of your child, which didn’t happen just because your in-laws wanted it. Got back together with an abusive husband and had another baby.

Had you have a bought a house and your husband lost his job and you suffered PND you would have probably lost it anyway.

Your parents took you in after you had another baby with him, you haven’t fought to get your eldest back and you believe it’s your Dads fault. Even though you likely would have lost this mythical home anyway?

Are you still living with your parents?

Is OP in USA?

I'm in Australia

Obviously if I knew how controlling and psycho the in laws were going to be, I never would have lived there.