DH is trying to make me move abroad...

[Flisser]

I'll try to keep it short but I desperately need advice. DH and I ave 2 DC's aged 6 and 2.6

DH is Australian and when we first met I made a point of telling him that I would never be happy living abroad as I hate the heat and love my large extended family...as well as my country.

He accepted this and said he lived the UK and wanted to persue his career here. Fast forward and we get married and have DC 1....he loses his job and when DC is 2 months old DH persuedes me to "Give Oz a try"....so I do...we take DC 1 to Oz...I ma in a bad way with depression and the after effects of an emergency c section. I spend 1 year of hell in Oz while DH goes out with his mates and generally regresses...he hardly worked and we had hardly any cash.

We return to the UK and he gets a crappy job and makes no effort to try for a better one...meanwhile I work on my own career and now am self employed and earning a respectable (not massive) amount of cash by working in the evenings at home.

I get pregnant with DC 2 and DH gets addicted to online gambling...we row terribly, he loses his job as he is up all night gambling and borrows masses of cash from his family in Oz....then last year he wins a few grand and uses it to visit Oz alone...for 2 months....he returns and informs me he has a good job offer from a family friend and wants to go back there and work. I say I am not happy about it and he tries to persuede me to go to..I am reluctant and DC 1 is now happy in her school and I have trouble trusting my DH due to the awful rows we had... He goes anyway.

Its 7 months before we see him again...he calls and skypes every day whilst he is away and puts lots of cash in my account...covers rent and bills etc.

He is now trying to make me pack up my life here and join him...he says it would be for 18 months whilst he saves and works....and then he will buy a house in UK and come back here to live...even though he doesn't want to.

I dont want to go. I have tried and tried to see it positively but I can't. I can only see the disruption to DCs education...the mess of packing out rental house up...the heat..the missing my family and I have the fear he wont want to return after all that.

Tonight I told him I had changed my mind and didn't want to go and he swore at me and told me to tell the kids he's dead...as he is so devestated I won't go. He said if I dont go then it is over anyway and he'll kill himself.

We have had this a lot of times since he went the first time..I should add he came back for 6 weeks in summer and all was rosy between us....had a great time...the kids miss him and I am angry he went in the first place when I was against it...I feel he is blackmailing me...and he also throws the money thing in my face...about how he has given me loads of money. I am so upset right now

Other than missing having a Dad about our kids are happy, well adjusted and DC 1 is doing very well at school...I feel sad...not sure where to go from here.

Flisser, so glad you felt a bit better last night. It's so horrible you're in this situation at all, but it's great that you're feeling supported by everyone on this thread :).

Thinking of you all again today. x

It doesn't matter if they have an Australian passport or not, what matters is where the children reside in. A child can easily be considered resident of a country if he lives there, goes to school there, and much more so if the other parent is resident and national of that country. And it doesn't have to be like that for years, a a few months living there may well suffice.

The battle to bring children back will be very long, incredibly expensive and most likely, will fail as by the court decide, the children would be considered to be "settled" in the new country and the court might be reluctant to move them again.

I have seen one of that battles at short distance and to be honest.... I would not risk getting into that even if my life depended on it.

I wouldn't be saying all this if you were in a very strong relationship, but considering the gambling, the "killing myself's" and the "twatness" I would say, that this marriage is already very damaged and unlikely to stand the strain of such move.

If this relationship is going to end, better for that to happen in a place where you have a network of support.

What a charmer.

I think you should carry on very calmly with the organised a nd settled life you have made for yourself and the dc and let him fling himself around in his am-drams in the background. It's up to him whether or not he wants to be a proper dh and father.

Don't go, please don't!

Your dc have a father (although his behaviour leaves me questioning exactly how he is enriching their lives).

You are settled here with your support network.

You are not being unreasonable - as someone else said, if everything else was fine, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that he had simply changed his mind but with all his other shenanigans it all sounds like bullying to me.

Don't go at Christmas until you've had some proper legal advice. I know you love him but if he pulls a fast one, are you willing to end up without him and without your children?

Take some space and think hard, having obtained all the facts first.

Get a residency order for your DCs...

Information to get you started. You will need to involve your family in this process. You need to open up to them anyway. Yes they will have an emotional reaction. But you will feel better with their support once they calm down.

Please do not go to Oz for Christmas. It is very easy to take passports and burn them, and difficult to get replacements if you are in an out of the way, isolated place with a man who is clearly unable to see himself as others see him. If this man wants to see his children, and if he has saved money from working as he says he has, he will be able to afford to come over and see everyone himself.

Don't do it Flisser.

Seriously - he is trying to bully you.

Please tell your family what is going on so you can have their support too.

It is very suspicious - please don't do it.

MAth... can you get a residence order while you are still married and mostly living together?

Hope you are okay Flisser x

I understand it to be applicable in cases of either separation or divorce, and since the H here has already been living in Australia for awhile, it might apply. And it would preempt any attempt by the H to get one over there.

Savoy

Sorry to hear you're unhappy. Do get in touch if you want to.

Thanks Echt, you are so lovely. I am unhappy because I don't want to live here. I can see why it's lovely here, I really can, but I didn't decide to come here and it's just not me to emigrate. It's not in my nature! I don't feel as if I belong here.

Flisser's children won't have a Dad if he lives here forevermore. The time difference makes phoning awkward. Visiting costs a fortune and takes all of your holidays from work. You make new friends and then you don't tell people what is happening in your new life as it seems irrelevant to them and they don't know any of the people or places.

Believe me.

My DH is foreign, and although he has lived in the UK for many years, still has a connection to his hometown (not his home country). We are planning to live there for a year when DS (and any other child) is old enough to go to school.

I do speak the language, (not well, but I have a background in languages, so it's not impossible), but it is a small town that is not exactly interesting, and my friends are not exactly well known for keeping in touch.

However, I do trust DH to come back to the UK, and I do want my DC to learn their father's language and make friends over there, so they are always happy to go. Also, it is not that far from the UK, and travel from there to other countries is possible.

For me, it is not a difficult decision, or even a decision per se. However, I have detailed the above to highlight some important points:

1. I trust my DH.
2. I don't feel much for his hometown, but respect that DH does, and I do want my DC to feel what he does (there is a certain amount of racism and small-town small-mindedness, but I am confident the DC won't pick that up, as DH and his family haven't).
3. It's not that far, so it's not that big a deal.
4. The UK will always represent DH's and the DCs' best chances.

Your situation does sound very different.

Then there is the matter of your love for DH. Love is a difficult question to deal with, as no-one knows how another person really feels, nor how it feels to feel that way. Please think about the following points without prejudice:

1. Why did you not split up when your Dh went off the rails before (the gambling, etc.)? Was it out of love and a really strong relationship?

2. Have you a previous relationship which could give you some clues about what it took to break you up? Are any of those factors present?

3. What do your DCs say?

4. Have you spoken to a lawyer? (Excellent suggestion, upthread!)

5. Do consider that you have both been dishonest with one another: he with his threat to kill himself (I hope), and you with your agreeing to go to Oz just to get him to stop hassling you.

6. Is there any chance that your dreadful experience with Oz - when you were there with a new baby (which can be a pretty dreadful period anywhere) would not be repeated? That is, was the problem just the new baby? Keep in mind that DHs/DPs can go off the rails after birth, too.

I hope that list hasn't prejudiced you one way or the other, but has helped you think a bit.

Don't take any rash steps before you have spoke to a lawyer, but don't turn off the phone and skype either, or at least not without telling DH why you are doing so. He needs a chance to stop calling himself, and if he doesn't get it, he will probably be even more devious, out of resentment. You need to make sure your slates are as clean as possible with one another, in order to make this decision properly.

Good luck!

Surely the families are tremendous factors in this story? DH is only earning because his family got him a job. His mum knows he's an arse (but is his mum anyway). Flisser's strongly attached to her family here in the UK.

I wouldn't be astonished to find DH's family was putting pressure on him to bring you all back, Flisser. His mother probably thinks (wants to believe) having you around would 'stabilise' him or make him grow up. Are there any signs he's going off the rails again? It would be easy for them to think he's losing it because he misses you ... by the time they had to face the depressing truth, it'd be too late for you to come back.

Your friends & family love you, know you well and yet you're keeping them out of the picture? Why?

It might be instructive for your mum to have an in-depth convo with his mum.

Sorry to say I agree with Colditz. Be careful flisser.

My x and I are different nationalities. He has tried to have me ordered back to the UK. He only dropped it on condition I agreed not to pursue him for maintenance. He also thought about going down the route of portraying me as mad, chaotic, depressed and impetuous to win residency. He failed with that little stunt TG. Never think 'oh he wouldn't, we loved each other once, he wouldn't do that to me". don't ever be complacent and assume that.

Don't go to Australia. Stay here. He sounds like a man-child with a gambling problem who has changed the goal posts and won't see your pov.

'6) Is there any chance that your dreadful experience with Oz - when you were there with a new baby (which can be a pretty dreadful period anywhere) would not be repeated? That is, was the problem just the new baby? Keep in mind that DHs/DPs can go off the rails after birth, too.'

The trouble about this one (the crux of the matter) is that you can't find out the answer until you've taken the leap of faith and gone there and are living the dream, or living the nightmare, at which point it may be really, really difficult to extricate yourself.

The man is not going to change personality just because the scenery is different, is my tuppence worth here.

You don't want to go to Oz. He wants to be in Oz. What do the DC want?

My view of this is that it's a shame for your DH - he moved here thinking life would be great - it wasn't. He moved home thinking life would be great - it wasn't. He moved back here thinking ok life might be ok when the wife is happier - it wasn't. He's now moved back home and is thinking that life is alot better, and would be great if he could just have his family there too.

Boo hoo!

A shame is all that it is. He's clearly totally self centred. He doesn't love you enough to consider your happiness - as has been shown by his suicide threats, bullying, gambling away your security, pissing off to Oz like a gap year happy go lucky kid.

Tell him you love him but are not willing to move. You are willing to wait for him, and you are willing to take him back - but that is it. If you would struggle to say that to him, send it in a letter (do they still do telegrams these days? - showing me age there)

Take care of yourself, get the support you need - please involve your family.

I think you should take a look at this website, I personally wouldn't dream of taking my kids to live with a man who uses suicide as a threat/emotional manipulation, quite honestly!

Anyway, it's about getting kids back that have been abducted, there's a link for lawyers that are specialised in these cases, you could get some info on where you stand and there's a forum too.

www.reunite.org/

Wishing you all the best!

I've had something like this experience. Don't go- or if you do, don't take the children. If you take the children on holiday, get a lawyer to tell you how to ensure the courts would recognise it was a holiday if he tries to stop you from leaving. He's in a bad siuation to of course- he feels the same about Britain as you do about Australia, but he loses his children if he stays there, he's in a lose-lose situation; but it's you or him, and right now you're where you want to be, so he'll have to make his decision.

"get a lawyer to tell you how to ensure the courts would recognise it was a holiday if he tries to stop you from leaving"

The only way to do that is to obtain a residence order, BEFORE the children go anywhere abroad. I don't know how that would sit with him though, if they have not even started talking about the possibility of a break up.

Years ago I met with a solicitor whose specialism was international parental abduction. He put thing very clearly... the best way to avoid your child being kept in another country is prevention.

Law is one thing and enforcement of it, a quite a different thing and when two countries, two legal systems, and two parents have very different views on where the children should end up... you are in for a long and costly battle.

It's a he said/she said situation without that little piece of paper from the UK courts. And that means exactly what Biobytes says -- years and years and money you don't have.

my only advice for you is this

the best predictor for future behaviour, is past behaviour.

dont go.

How are you today Flisser?

Anyone who says 'if you leave me I'll kill myself' is a manipulative bastard who deserves to have their bluff caled at the earliest opportunity.