Hi everyone,
this is my first time using this platform. I hope I get some answers because I am so confused..
i have a 5, almost 6 year old son. Since his birth his father and I have been in a pretty nasty custody battle. My child’s father is 7 years older and when my son was born he had accessibility to a lawyer and I did not. He ended up getting temporary custody of our son when he was 4 months old after he kicked me out and I moved back home to a different state with our child. During our agreed exchange he filed paperwork under false accusations of me abandoning our son because I left the state. The agreement was 2 weeks on and 2 weeks off. When I find out I went to court and regained custody after text messages proved that was never the case and we had an arrangement.
He ended up taking our son 3 more times for 3-5+ months each time. The problem was that I allowed joint legal/physical custody when he was born because we were together. When you do this a parent can take a child and not be under criminal investigation because it is then considered a legal matter. Please, never allow joint legal/physical unless you’re married.
Each time I would go to court with texts that prove against his claims. Our judge was a known misogynist who favored men over women; he even had a petition for removal that received over 3k signatures. Needless to say my child’s father was never penalized for taking him, he was only asked to return my son.
It happened again during an agreed transfer. I drove with my mother over 6 hours to get my son and was asked to arrive at some festival he was djing at. My son was with his father since April of this year at this point. I had him consistently since 2020. His father moved away from his home state to Florida with his new family and couldn’t do the agreed arrangement. I was fine with that. No court involved. Just texts. I had him for 2 years so I was okay with April until the school year.
A few weeks leading up to my son coming home I started feeling signs that “it” was happening again. Mothers intuition, possibly, but he’s taken our son so many times that I’ve started to recognize the signs. Things were getting familiar. I’d call and have to wait days to hear back. I asked him since day 1 (April) to help me get his birth certificate so we could put him in school, as agreed, in Chicago. Nothing. My son was getting more and more distant on the phone. Signs of him in his ear? Not sure. And that gut wrenching feeling that something just wasn’t right.
I’ll add here that my child’s father is a dj and has several other kids who he takes care of. 1 other biological and 3 step kids/fiancé. He has a huge family and travels often. My son genuinely enjoys being there. He doesn’t have much money though and esthetically his home is quite disgusting. He lives in the worst part of Detroit MI but recently moved to Florida with his fiancé. He now stays in Florida throughout the year but spends time in Detroit to make money as a dj. Without his summer gig he has no job. My son still loves it there. He even asked to stay.
I know someone must say “oh but he’s 5”. That’s true but not your typical 5 year old. He’s highly intellectual and very in tune with his emotions. His ability to verbalize how he feels is beyond me. He is beyond his years and I try to give him his own platform to express his feelings + respect his decisions. This one hurts though. To live with his dad? After all I’ve been through to get him here?
Anyway I live in one of the best parts of Chicago. I take home 70k a year. He’s soon to enroll in one of the best elementary schools in the city (waiting on his Bc to arrive in the mail). I don’t have anyone here though. There’s no siblings, no cousins, no one to play with. He’ll be in school the first time but it’s just him and me. No traveling the country. It’s the amount of people in his life that he enjoys the most while at his dads. With me he feels like it’s just me and him. He always asks where’s his brother or his step dad. It’s sad because there’s no one else and probably never will be. That’s why he prefers his dad. There’s just more people to love him and more people for him to love. I guess he wants more at my home than just the two of us.
So when I arrive to Detroit and approach him he grins and says “hi” but honestly he didn’t look happy to leave. He was in the middle of some party and asked to say bye to his dad. I nodded and he went. His dad approached myself and my mom, looked at me and asked where I was taking him. I was dumbfounded because he knew we were coming and where else but Chicago? I said that and he said he wanted to bring him to Florida. I said no fuck you and he told our son to go back towards his uncles. My son began to walk and I picked him up and started to walk away. He began to pry my son out of my hands. My child’s father is a boxer and he is really strong. I tried to run and he put another hand on my bag and threw it to the ground. When I picked up my phone to call the police he grabbed it and put it in his pocket. I tried to grab my son and oh the fight began. Right there in front of all of my child’s fathers friends and family. My mom tried to grab them off of me and I tried to run to the car but he tried to stop us. He kept hitting me and refusing to let me in my own mothers car. My mom was frazzled and didn’t know what to do. I was being attacked with my son in my hands. He kept saying that he’s not letting him leave when he HAS to. Long story short I ended up arrested. Me. I couldn’t call the police, my mom didn’t record because she was trying to stop it. It was their word against mine and I went to jail for domestic violence and he took my son. All while my son was grabbing for his dad.
This was honestly the most heart breaking thing that I’ve experienced. I’m so angry. He has no legal right to keep my child from me and yet again here I am having to go to court to see my own son. I’m a great mom. An amazing mother. I’ve missed out on so many moments because he’s stolen them by keeping my child from me. Sometimes I feel like giving up. It’s a constant battle and I never know when it’ll happen again.
Im finally in a position where I can afford a lawyer and I’ll be hiring one as soon as possible but it’s just all so much. I’ve never tried to keep my son from my child’s father and a lot of this is because he doesn’t want to pay child support. He feels like if he has to pay child support he should just have him full time.. I keep explaining that it just doesn’t work that way. Anyway.. if you’ve read this far god bless you.. I’d love to hear some thoughts on this. What should I do?