My husband and I have a wonderful marriage and family. We have 7 children between us. He has 4 from an ex ex girlfriend, I have two from previous marriage and we have our child together. Everything itself is fine however we have had nothing but drama and chaos from his ex he had the children with, for the last 7/8 years. She’s a constant interference and likes to use the 4 children as weapons against myself and husband if she cannot get attention from him/us. She will refuse contact for no reason but then bring them anyway on the contact days. She will purposefully not send them with their correct school uniforms and will then send a text demanding my husband goes and collect from her. We have uniforms here for them all so we just ignore. To stop her going on and on she will be asked to drop them off herself for eg we are out as a family and to leave them on our porch or drop it to the school, she will become hysterical and abusive. when my husband left their relationship which is 8 years ago now, she took an overdose of pills whilst in charge of the kids. She has been obsessed with my husband for many years prior to their on-off relationship and after he ended it up to this day.We have had to have restraining orders on her for stalking and harassment where she couldn’t enter our road or adjoining streets. The courts awarded them both with joint custody of the children however he would like to have them full time.She was given a contact number in case of emergencies with the children only, that she abused repeatedly. His mother was 3rd party contact to collect and drop off the children originally but she found it impossible to continue as she herself would suffer abusive rants when collecting them and also text messages and phone calls. We had to change the court order to a contact phone only and not to contact my husbands mother anymore.
I tried to level with her as a mother and tried to help and be friendly to her to try and keep the peace and be a mediator with regards to the children. She would claim poverty many many times and demand money but instead I would buy her shopping essentials and drop them to her door rather than hand over any cash. I kept texts simple and straight forward regarding the children and any issues with the children in our care. I managed to keep that peace for almost two years with only minor issues.
Recently since September last year she has been becoming increasingly more obsessed with my husband even though he refuses to speak to her for all the stress she’s put the children through and allegations that he abused her and r** her whilst they were together, that she’s still together with him although he’s moved on since her and had a previous partner before we met and got married. I’ve had fake Facebook accounts set up in my name by her and she’s even gone as far as to message me personally after I had a miscarriage, to tell me she’s been having an affair with my husband and congratulated me for losing the baby. She was arrested after this and released on bail with strict instructions not to create fake accounts and not to make contact, stalk or harass us again or she will face prison. She’s had constant social services involvement with neglect and her drug habits that they are “working with her on”. She makes demands that my husband goes to her home regularly for silly things that aren’t needed despite the court orders For eg. The childrens PE kits. They don’t have PE on the days we have them but she will demand anything she can to make him acknowledge her and to go to her home. When I ask her to drop the PE kits into the school if it’s really necessary, she will go crazy and become unhinged.He doesn’t give in to her demands and no one can blame him for that.
She’s responsible for dropping the children to our home now her restraining order is over, my husband is responsible for dropping them to school.He works every day so that’s why she has to bring them to me. She isn’t allowed my husbands number and isn’t allowed direct contact with him which is in the court order. She has to use a third party contact phone. She will message or call constantly and If we ignore her she gets worse and vile and abusive via text where we have to switch the phone off. She will make claims that the children are seriously ill and require hospital care, we contact the hospitals to find they aren’t even there.She would sometimes refuse the children to come over as she cannot afford the taxi fare and demand that unless my husband comes back from work early to collect them from her we won’t see them. When she’s told that’s not possible she tells the children we don’t want them to come. She still brings them anyway but she likes to make us think we won’t see them.
Now our children are older we all have each others phone numbers and can contact them ourselves without going through her and the contact phone. Contact days and times are set in stone although she will always bring them a lot later, so the need for future contact via their mum isn’t needed anymore and with the daily and endless texts messages from her that aren’t even emergencies, just her starting unnecessary drama have become so bad we have had to block her number from the phone to stop it. She’s now doing it using our childrens phones to make contact with us directly and again it’s nothing urgent, just vile messages that we ignore. It’s unfair for our children being put into that situation. They are having a hard time living with her and two have asked to live with us. We don’t know how to handle this situation and me trying to be her friend just doesn’t work. I thought I could deal with her but I absolutely cannot deal with the way she behaves. She cannot handle being completely blocked and is spiralling out of control in front of the kids. They come over and tell us their issues and we inform the schools so the children can express their feelings to their teachers about home life so they are aware and myself and husband cannot be accused of putting ideas into their heads. We won’t speak badly of their mother in front of them and they know they have a happy home when they are with us.we don’t want yet another social worker in their lives they have had years of it with their mum but we are at a complete loss of what to do.she claims to have mental health issues but I’m not a dr and cannot say if this is true or not, even still she cannot treat us and the children this way and her behaviour does show that somethings not right but I cannot make that judgement. What would any parent do in this situation? She’s blocked currently and she would have to take the situation back to court to be judged accordingly if she should still have to have a contact number and that’s something financially she cannot afford. Any advice would be great. Thanks. Sorry it’s long winded.