Ex-husband's wife sent this email during custody dispute, was it inappropriate?

[Kiwiana100]

FYI this happened a long time ago. 2015 to be exact. My ex and I were in custody dispute. He and his wife wanted full time care of my eldest girl (Rebecca). I had agreed to only 50/50. They felt that her autism diagnosis was wrong and that I was conditioning and enabling her. He had become highly verbally abusive and his wife (a trained counsellor) stepped in to try to negotiate. This is her email. I found it to be a huge boundary violation. I have changed the names.
Hello Hannah,

Thank you for your email. I acknowledge that you changed your mind about meeting next weekend, I find that a bit of a shame as actions toward better communication could be, in my view, really helpful.

Great that you agreed to the new schedule which is based on your revised wishes.

You hope that one day Rebecca will appreciate your decision to prevent Matthew from caring for her full time. I think it sometimes requires a lot of love and grandeur to let go of your own needs and try new things for the sake of the child. Assigning Matthew full time care for Rebecca would have been such thing. It would have been a chance for Rebecca. Why would it mean you give up on Rebecca? You had both girls in fulltime care for nearly four years and Matthew never viewed this as giving up on his children. I really wonder how you develop such views? You both, Matthew and you, have the same rights to care for the children. Hannah, that's right, time will reveal Rebeccas's views on this. I agree, one day both girls will form their opinions about their experiences with both of you. They will make up their minds what they found helpful, what not, what they liked and what not. They will do this as we all did it with our parents. Good mother or good father – at the end of the day it is for them to say what they think.

Please don't worry about the way Matthew portrays you. I am well aware of the fact that I hear only his perception. Please also know that neither of us are judging you. You can do what you want, have you own values, live your own life as you want, please don't worry about this. We never comment on things related to you towards the girls and we take our pride in this. We also have no bad intentions towards you, we both wish you all the best, why would we want anything bad for you?

But still Hannah, between both of you parents, it must be possible to raise concerns. If Matthew e.g. gets the impression that Sarah gets more attention than Rebecca he must have the possibility to raise this issue with you, would you not agree? This is in our view just a normal part of communication between parents. And btw, you do this too on a regular basis.

Since we don't see each other on the weekend, please let me say a few words about your (Matthew's and your) way of communicating. I am well aware that you despise Matthew for his bad communication style because he is sometimes getting very aggravated, aggressive and becomes verbally abusive. You are absolutely right. And I have seen him on a number of occasions finding it extremely difficult to stay calm when things are getting out of hand between you two.
But I think it is a bit one sided to point the finger on Matthew alone and see yourself as the victim. Its never right to blame just one side. As a person who witnessed you both communicating, I would like to invite you to hear my perspective of it. It can see that you still hold a lot of resentments against Michael. Your relationship ended nearly four years ago, and I strongly doubt that you reached closure. Maybe you disagree, maybe you reflect on this and find the right answer to this question for yourself. What I observe is, that Matthew never gets it right for you. In your books he is to blame for this, that and the other. Just recently for Sarah not wanting to eat at McDonalds (please see your last Thursdays texts) and in yesterday texts you even blamed him for you not having a good relationship with your daughter Rebecca. Within this framework you expect him to react friendly, patiently and respectful. Beyond that you often don't consult with him in parenting questions, you rather consult with outsiders, I suspect you don't view him as competent (??). And, I'm very sorry to mention it, you don't acknowledge his efforts and achievements with the girls. In contrast you even criticise him for that.
I can tell you that Matthew too loves his children and he actively helps them to reach their full potential, to improve their behaviours, gives them direction, guidelines, support and last but not least his love. Rebecca's improvements in math and her communication, for example, are remarkable. Both girls are happy around him. I must say, I admire that on him. I find is sometimes hard to watch how you criticise him for all that is possible while insisting to be respected, and not being criticised. Respect is of course preferable, it just has to go both ways. When we blame we should also see our own parts that we play.

I really hope that you give it a go and think about my words.

Kind regards

Katherine

I hope you told her to stick that email up her backside xx

Hi Hannah,
Yes, this reads as a significant boundary violation, and I think your instinct on this was right.
A few things stand out:
She's not a parent to Rebecca or Sarah. However involved she is day-to-day, she's not entitled to negotiate custody terms or critique your parenting directly with you. That's between you and Matthew. Her inserting herself into that conversation — especially at length, in writing, during an active dispute — oversteps what her role actually is.
She uses her counsellor training as leverage. Phrases like "as a person who witnessed you both communicating, I would like to invite you to hear my perspective" and the whole "I strongly doubt you reached closure" section aren't neutral observations — they're informal psychoanalysis of you, delivered with the authority of her profession behind them. A trained counsellor should know better than to diagnose someone's emotional state as a tactic in a personal dispute they have a stake in. That's not a professional opinion, it's advocacy dressed up as insight.
The "both sides" framing minimises abuse. You describe Matthew as having become highly verbally abusive. Katherine's email response to that is essentially "you're not wrong, but it's not one-sided" — followed by a list of ways you allegedly provoke him. That's a classic pattern: acknowledge the behaviour briefly, then spend several paragraphs explaining why you caused it. It shifts responsibility for his conduct onto you.
The tone is subtly coercive. Long, warm, reasonable-sounding language, wrapped around pressure to change your legal position ("I really hope you give it a go and think about my words"). It's not threatening, but it's also not the neutral, informational tone you'd expect from someone genuinely staying out of it.

If you're looking at this now because it's relevant again (custody review, something with Rebecca, anything current), a family solicitor would be worth showing this to — not because one email decides anything, but because a pattern of a third party pressuring you outside of formal channels can be relevant context.
You weren't wrong to feel uncomfortable reading it.

It would be very aggravating to receive such a letter. There is white-hot anger in it overlaid by an attempt to sound even-handed and reasonable. The letter comes across as patronising too, as others have said, and more unkind than helpful.

However, for me the important thing would not be whether the letter was inappropriate - it was - but how your two girls now feel about that time in their lives and the way all the adults behaved.

My autistic daughter (Rebecca) is hugely resentful towards both of them and chooses to have no contact. My non autistic daughter is very closely aligned and continues to defend them.

That message does nothing but make her look like a brain-washed, interfering imbecile.

She seemed not to want to make the situation better but to want to shame you.

I thought that too. She's so verbose and completely mangled in her sentence construction that it's difficult to unravel her point, half the time. I hope she speaks better than she writes when she has a counselling client sitting in front of her.

If I had received that email at the time I would have been incandescent with rage and would have reported her. I appreciate why you didn't.

This is 100% AI generated. Why have you bothered to respond if you don't have an opinion of your own on it?

There's nothing wrong with asking AI, I just don't understand why you would post it without at least saying 'this is what Chat GPT thinks.'

Btw, she is not a native English speaker, but the excessively verbose style was still incredibly cringeworthy. I am an English Language teacher and wanted to offer to help with her grammar. It's like she is desperate to show that she is my intellectual superior, but just exposes her own lack of emotional intelligence and plain common sense.

Using your name repeatedly really grates. Like she thinks she’s educating you? Does she have children of her own?

Illiterate and a bit silly. Glad you got DD back.

It sounds like one of the reasons this is still a live issue for you might be the ongoing fallout from the two girls having different memories of that time and different takes on what constitutes the reality of the situation. Maybe a way forward would be to help them find a way to be less polarised in their views - or at least for each to see why the other might feel differently?

Rebecca has autism and very black and white thinking. Sarah has her own raft of psychological issues as well. I have to ignore the elephant in the room to have any kind of relationship with her.

Hugely inappropriate email! Can I ask,why did you let you daughter go to them full time in end? Did both daughters go?

After 11 years. Why are you letting this live rent free in your head.

It was shared care, then I had full-time care of my eldest from 2017.

I think I have addressed that already. 😊

I'd say she'd been on the wine.

Oh, so very cringeworthy. It absolutely reads like 'I'm the professional here, let me educate you'.

She was right about one thing, the kids will grow up and make their own assessment of what happened. They have and it sounds like one has gone each way. These sort of reflections happen in all families. But, adults looking back at their childhood, still don't have a full understanding of why some decisions were made at the time. Even the best intentioned reflections aren't always accurate either.

I've got 4 adult children and they can all have very different memories of the same thing. They all get along really well, but will disagree over these memories (lightheartedly in our case) too.

The main issue here is why are you even giving this any thought 11 years later? She's living rent free in your head. Toss her out!

Everything else aside, she comes across as a smug, manipulative, condescending and interfering idiot.

As you had only been split 4 years she can’t have been around very long at that point either which makes it even worse.
The arrogance and superiority of it is palpable, how dare she talk to any mother like this, let alone the mother of her step children.
i say this as a full time step mum with a very problematic mum in the picture that I never nor would never share my thoughts with directly.

Even if the elephant is being studiously ignored, it is probably still capable of stomping around and breaking the chinaware from time to time. You don't have to agree with Sarah, she might be wrong in absolute terms, but could you come to the point of understanding why she might have developed the perspective she has? This is something you could offer her. If you show her you are capable of seeing the nuances in a situation, she might feel less defensive and concede that it has been very difficult for her sister - and for you.

And to reiterate, that letter was aggravating. Anyone who sets themselves up as the Sensible Person is a liability!

Yes, I hear what you are saying. This particular email was part of a whole stream of very manipulative and abusive communication, which took place over a long period of time. This was the only one directly from her, but I am convinced that she wrote later emails sent from my ex because the style and wording are very similar. For years, I couldn't read them because they gave me such bad PSTD, but I have recently been able to go back from the vantage point of hindsight, and be able to detatch and analyse them. I am simply interested in other points of view, because I was too traumatized at the time to share them. One of my lasting regrets is that I didn't report her. She was working for a women's counselling centre and then went on to work for a men's centre. It is appalling to me that she worked with abusers and abuse victims with this mentality and I feel like her employer's should have been aware. I just assumed they would defend her and the backlash would have been horrendous. From what my daughter tells me, she doesn't practice anymore. She doesn't bother me. I am interested in feedback, nothing more.

I think it’s healthy to revisit and reprocess past difficult experiences with the benefit of time behind you.

I am working on positive communication with her. I guided her toward counselling a while back, which didn't seem to help her much, but I think that is still her age and level of maturity and denial about the root causes. She is only 20 and has lots to learn about the world. The moment will come in its own time to have that discussion. 😊