What has happened to my exh?

[LittleMissFour]

Have NC’d for this as don’t want to be outed.

I feel like I am in a bit of a dilemma. Have 2 DC with exh. Been divorced 2 years now after a bitter and messy divorce (he left me for OW). After months and months of not agreeing on custody and access we finally had a court ordered arrangement put in place in May this year for him to have our dc from school pick up every Friday and returned to me 6pm on a Saturday each week.

All seemed to be going well for the first couple of months. Gradually over the summer though he would get his mother to return the dc on Saturday instead of him. I know that he takes the dc to see his mother on a Saturday for tea as she is on her own since ex FIL died a few years ago so I know she is quite lonely and loves spending time with the gc.

After about the third week in a row I text exh to ask if all was ok as he had not been dropping dc off. I had no reply. I sent an email the following week when his dm dropped them off, again no reply. I have tried to ask exmil if all is ok and why she is now dropping the dc back and not exh and she just replies that ‘he is busy’ or ‘it makes sense for me to drop them’ (admittedly she does live closer to me than exdh – but only 10 mins less across town.

Exh had the dc for a week in the summer holidays and again, exmil dropped them back. That was the last time exh has seen our dc!

The week after I had a call from exmil to say that exh was unwell and that she would pick the dc up from school and that they would stay overnight at her house as he was too unwell to have them. This happened again the following week. I questioned exmil the second week as to what was up with exh but she just apologised and said that she didn’t want to get stick in the middle and that exh would not want her knowing about his business!

In advance of the following weekend, when I hadn’t heard from exmil I text exh on the Thursday and asked him if he was feeling better and would be having dc that weekend. No reply.

He didn’t show up at the school to collect the dc on the Friday. I tried to call him but he didn’t pick up. I emailed him. no reply. I rang his mother but turned out she was away that weekend and didn’t know anything about exh not showing up at the school.

That was 6 weeks ago now! Exh’s phone has now been disconnected and my emails to him bounce back. The dc have now not had any contact from their father since early August. And have not done any overnights at exmil’s since beginning of September.

I paid for a solicitor to write a letter to exh last month, but that has not been responded to. Exmil has been in touch every other Saturday and has asked to see the dc, I have taken the dc round there a few times for the afternoon but I am now starting to resent that as I can’t seem to get any answers off of exmil as to what the fuck is going on with my twat of an exh! She just keeps spouting off the same crap that she doesn’t want to get involved, that he won’t want her to tell me all his business etc.

I am now livid. My dc have been hurt enough through our divorce and they are missing their dad terribly! They are 7 and 9 and getting very withdrawn and angry.

Selfishly I am suffering too. I started a new relationship 18 months ago and took it really slow to start with, this summer we have got closer and had our first family holiday together, me and my dc with him and his ds. It was all going to well and we had started to talk about him moving in with us at some point in the future. Since all this with exh has been going on my dp has really distanced himself from me. He has been vocal about missing our ‘us time’ on a Friday night / Saturday. We now have very little time together just us. I also think he has been struggling with my dc’s behaviour since all this has been going on.

Help, what can I do? Can I force exh back to court and make him keep his arrangements? Should I keep letting exmil see the dc adhoc? How can I save my relationship with dp? Sorry for the long post, I’m just so angry and frustrated.

A mental breakdown is the same for everyone though. Some people will manage some bits of their life better than others. It doesn't mean you are stuck in bed a dribbling mess which is the implication from some posters.
Especially in teaching. You might be a unable to teach but that certainly doesn't mean you can't give an explaination to your old family as to why you can't fufuIl your commitment.
Op at the end of the day you are a single parent now and you should act financially as one.

Wouldhave you appear to want to win an argument as oppose to actually make a valid point. I can't think of a single parent I know in real life who would think it was OK to stop all contact with their children for four months without a word

That's a really odd response to the simple act of answering a question you posed, and rather suggests you are guilty of what you accuse me of.

I am still puzzled why you think it is impossible for a parent to be so ill that they are physically prevented from making contact. Sure, this man's family could say something, but IF he has been really ill he's hardly in a position to dictate what they do.

Teachers get full pay for at least 6 months if they are off work so he's been ill for a long time

It depends where they are working. That doesn't necessarily applying independent schools, academies and free schools.

Maybe because OP has already admitted she tried to stop his contact with his children I think it was because of moving in with the OW or marrying her I can't remember and so maybe he sorted it that his DM would look after the DC whilst he had his issues not expecting it to tale this long to recover so that she didn't try to punish him again by trying to cut their contact when he expected to be better more quickly.

I'm glad some kinder people finally came on this thread. I mean you, Finola et al.

Why should the OP care about this ex. My ex phoned me up one time telling me he was thinking of killing himself. I talked him out of it, but not for him, for the sake of my dd.

I think the ex is in prison actually. I'm so sorry, OP, that you and your children are going through this.

As for the pp who quite smugly said that she never had maintenance, I never did either, but taking a sudden loss of 450 pounds a month is horrible.

Its disgraceful that the OP wasn't told there was a situation concerning her Ex that would impact on the children, and the family finances a bit further down the line.

OP, you need to be more proactive in finding out whats gone on because there is way more to this than meets the eye and this is just the beginning of it all.

Aderyn

I'm not dismissing your opinion, however you have to remember that expecting the ex OW to pay the CS out of a moral obligation, because she helped break the family up, is flawed logic.

Because if she had any morals, she wouldn't have had an affair with a MM in the first place.

She didn't care about the children and the impact of a divorce on them before, why would you expect her to care now? Even if she's a millionaire, she's shown her morals aren't up there.

I don't think all the talk about taking him to court will help either. Take him to court for what exactly? More money? To get details of his illness? Or to force contact with your DC?

You've no right to the details of his illness, however his mum is clearly concerned about you taking him to court and I suspect (if she's financially able), that she'd give you some money for the kids to prevent that happening.If I was the MIL and I could help financially for my DGC, I would do so without hesitation.

MIL might feel her son can't deal with a court case or she may fear that more information will be revealed if you took him to court.

There may be a lot more to this than you've been told by MIL, but you have no way of knowing. You don't even know if he and OW are still together. Many affair relationships/marriages don't survive in the real world out of the affair bubble.

I do take your point about about the morals. You are right. I guess I was just thinking generally about what marriage is supposed to mean and I find it odd that if the OP lived with her dp (not even married him) his income would be used to assess how much support her dc would be eligible for if they went to uni, or even if the OP needed to claim benefits. Yet a spouse of a nrp has no legal obligations. It just irritates me that so many men get away with opting out of the family they created and some women collude with this by seeing their dsc as not their problem.
I recommended getting legal advice as I do believe that the OP does need to know about her ex as it has long term implications for the relationship her dc have with their dad and also her own financial situation.

OP what a truly terrible situation. I would be thinking exactly like you and the PP attacking you must be projecting wildly or are just simply unpleasant. Your children have been abandoned and, to rub salt in, after a huge song and dance made of not abandoning them.

The secrecy would be driving me insane. I do not care if he had a breakdown or not. My friend paid the child support for her SDC and her DH was unemployed because, well, she loves them and kids should always be a priority.

Your current DP does not sound particularly great either.

Yeah Karma, she just needs to suck it up
Everyone knows that the 'required' cs is nowhere near what it actually costs to support children. No wonder so many children and women are getting screwed over in our society.

OP in one of your earlier posts you said you might ring your ex husband's school and he would be embarrassed if the head teacher knew he had no contact with his children, but in a later post you say that you don't know where he works now as he changed schools when you split.

Wow so many different opinions.

I don't know the school he works on now pp but I was going to threaten exmil that I did and that I was going to call. I also wonder is the cms would tell me but it seems they won't.

I text exmil last night to say how angry I am about the cms payments dropping and how irresponsible exh is and how I cannot cope financially now. Her first response was a bit arsey and she snapped that seeing as I was the cause of his breakdown in the first place what did I expect!!!! Apparently the messing around with the kids access hit him hard and he got into debt to pay for solicitors bills etc. He's been off work since April apparently.

As you can imagine that totally pissed me off. She then messaged again 2 hours later and said next time she has the Dc next sat she will give me £250 so I don't have to worry about Xmas. I feel like telling her where to go.

I have also driven round to exh house and the Dc pointed out where he lives. I have done a few drive bys but the house always seems in darkness.

I did some more fb stalking of his wife's sister. seen a pic of smug wife on there. She ded did not look pregnant and still had her wedding ring on.

I'd reply to mil that if exh hadn't been shagging someone else, access to his kids would never have been an issue. Cheeky bitch!

Are you going to take her money? She is giving it to you when she sees the dc to make sure she still gets access.

You complain about your financial situation, so your Ex MIL offers you cash of her own. And you want to 'tell her where to go'?

Now you're chasing down his new wife's family to get a peek into their lives?

For god's sake, what do you actually want? It sounds like you've completely lost the plot.

Blackmail, extortion and stalking

OP, this anger really isn't going to get you anywhere. As I said before you have my sympathies, however he is not well. There really is nothing more you can do. You can't force him to get better. If he's not working, he can't pay

Surely it's in your best interests that he does go back to work eventually? So you need to lay off the anger directed toward the exMIL as that isn't going to help

If she has offered £250, that is a massive help and I would snap her hand off. Please try to think of your DC in this. Contact with their DGM is important and if she's the only respite you get, stop taking your anger out on her. Yes she should have told you. Yes the OW should have told you. But they didn't. So you have to start looking forward

Wow - you've got the children to show you where they live?

I wonder what went on in the past that forced him to go dark on the OP. I don't mean since his breakdown, but the fact that he's kept his address and work details deliberately hidden from her. That, added to her rather bizarre attitude on this thread, leads me to suspect she has not exactly conducted herself well in the past and is now reaping what she sowed. She thinks it's perfectly acceptable to stalk, lie, blackmail and use her children as bargaining chips. It's not, regardless of what she is trying to achieve. Some people may make excuses for her as the victim of an adulterous XH but then, if she was anything remotely like she is now when they were married, she may well have been a major contributor to the breakdown of the marriage.

HE IS ILL, he hasn't chosen this, he hasn't just fucked off without a backward glance - HE IS ILL

So ill that he cannot even write a letter or email to his dc's to explain where he is? So ill that he had to drop them like a sack of spuds and not say a word for 5-6 months? And is his wife who had a relationship with his dc's as well also too ill to drop them an email explaining why their df is ill? If she has the time to organize her dd's birthday party, she has time to send an email to his dc's...

The OP is furious and lashing out, and we don't like that. We like women who are meek and worry about their ex's being poorly so that we can say "Don't you realize you're probably getting played here you silly thing?" But if you were 99.99% sure you were being screwed over by your ex and his wife, and that they were happy to emotionally damage his own children to spite you, wouldn't you be angry?

OP, you sound as though you are spinning. What are you hoping to acheive through your actions?

I think most of us would sound a bit like the OP if our children's dads went from being involved to disappearing off the face of the planet and no one would tell us where. And if we suddenly had to manage on £500 a month less, when we desperately need that money to support the kids.

I was going to threaten exmil that I did and that I was going to call.

I don't think his employer would want to get involved in his private life. It sounds about right if he's been off since April that his pay has dropped, but it would drop to half pay., not nil pay.

You should get more from him if that's the case.

I'd be rather peeved with your MIL as well actually, after that comment.

Use whatever weapons you can to get the info you need. I think considering his health is affecting the relationship with his kids, you need to know.

And if he's broke, well that's on him for being a cheater really. Some would call it his karma.