I'm a step mum

pinky · pinky on Thu Jun 11, 2009 2:55 am

I've been a step mum for 4 years now. SS is 6yrs old and we have recently been through court to gain 25% access to him.
BM is a difficult woman to deal with. Being a seperated BM myself I do understad the position she is in but sometimes she just goes way overboard.

Is anyone else a step mum? Do you like it or do you wish life was 'normal'

**Princess_Longbottom** · **Princess_Longbottom** on Thu Jun 11, 2009 10:27 am

Oh hon, I totally relate to you. I love my step son to bits... but life just stinks right now. He lives in the U.K. with his mum. We live in the U.S.A. We made the move in October of 2007, and for the first 18 months or so, contact was pretty good. She canceled a few trips on us, we were gonna fly her and SS out here to see us, but she refused last minute. We don't have the money to fly out to the U.K. at all because my husband would have to buy 2 round trip tickets for himself and one for his son, but if she came to the U.S. it would only mean one adult round trip ticket and one child.

She is bitter, and mean, and for the past two months has decided that my husband's son no longer needs him in his life (SS is nearly 6) and says that by moving we "Walked away". We have no money to fight it from here, and we don't know what to do. I see the agony on my husband's face at just the mention of my SS's name and it totally breaks my heart. In some ways I wish life were simpler, but I love my step son and seeing what a great father that my husband is to him is what made me love my husband even more.... so I wouldn't change the fact that I am a step parent, but would love if the ex wife was somehow nicer or out of the picture. Sad but true.

Ginny · Ginny on Thu Jun 11, 2009 4:50 pm

Welcome Pinky!

I too am a step mom and I do love it! It hasn't always been wonderful, but my ss's mom is really a sweet person and we get along well. All of us do, as she is also remarried. My SS is 9 and i have been in his life since he was 1. He's a wonderful boy and I love him lots!! I am sorry that your SS's mom is not so nice, because it really makes a HUGE difference!!!! I won't lie, there have been plenty of times that i wish i had a "normal" one family life, but as for having an extended family, mine couldn't be better! I do dread when blaine goes back home this august cuz thane is sooo attached to bubba. its gonna be sad Cry

thats the only part i hate Cry

btw...we used to have him 6 mos and she had him 6 mos and every other weeeknd for both us. since school, we have him every wednesday and also every other weekend during school, and then the whole summer he is with us except every other weekend, so its not TOO bad, i do miss him terribly though! he will always be my first baby. both of our famlilies try to go to all his extracurricular things, we have even ALL camped out together for scouts Wink

Like i said, i couldn't ask for a better situation Wink

pinky · pinky on Thu Jun 11, 2009 6:53 pm

It's nice ot know im not the only one with an evil BM !

You're extremely lucky Ginny, I wish my BM was like your's. Unfortunatley though, I know that will NEVER happen, even if she did get remarried and have more children.

I'm very sorry to hear about your situation princess. Have you been to see a lawyer or soli just to see where you stand? My DF wouldn't go see a soli until I threatened to leave him and once he did he was so glad I pushed him! He thought the soli would laugh at him and tell him to suck it up but it was the exact opposite. Laws in Aus say that parents are entitled to equal custody and care of the child and the courts are now pushing for more cases to go 50/50 or shared care so we had the power no matter what BM did!

I'll share a bit of my story so you know where I stand atm with the whole step parenting thing.
Df and I met apporx 5.5 years ago. My ex and I moved 12 hours north (which is about half of our country lol

) with our two young kids (2.5yrs and 6m) to get away from the snowy weather. Thats whe I met DF. My ex and I split up after just 12 months of living here and I started seeing DF. There was absolutely no infidelity (despite what BM raves) and we settled into blended family life rather quickly.
For the first 12 months of our relationship BM sent me about 10 texts a day saying she was still sleeping with DF and what was I going to do about it. She gave detailed descriptions sick

which would usually fit into the time line when DF was with her but I knew his level of dislike for her and trusted him all the way. When BM realised it wasn't going to work, she stopped DF from seeing their son. After a while she allowed DF to have him from 11am Sat to 2pm Sat then 11am Sun to 2pm Sun once a fortnight. It was a nightmare, I tell you. She made it clear that I was NOT to be around SS as this was 'father and son time' even thought DF was to feed SS and put him straight to bed during his visit.
Soon after I fell pregnant with BD2 and BM lost the plot. We were forbidden to see SS anymore because DF had a new family and life and didn't need SS.
It didn't last for to long though and were back to getting SS from 9am sat til 5pm then 9am Sun to 2pm. This routine lasted until we went to see our soli last November, approx 3 years.

Once we went to court, Bm acted as though we were the worst parents in the world. Each time we got an agreement written up she would pull out saying she didn't trust us with his allergy (which is really an intollerance and we don't think it exists anyway) and didn't want us to have him. The mediator saw her twice before sending her to a lawyer! He was ment to be the best mediator in the region and had a success rate of 99%!

So now, finally, we have court issued orders to say we get SS EOW and 1/2 SH. It's a start and we are estatic but it's exactly that, a start. In about 12 months time once we're married and have moved, we're going for 50/50 custody. Hopefully by then BM will have a partner herself and won't have all the time in the world to focus on us.

BM is a nasty bitch. Manipulation is her only amo and she uses it very well. I just wish she would think of SS for once and not herself. It's him that is going to be damaged in years to come, not us.

**Princess_Longbottom** · **Princess_Longbottom** on Fri Jun 12, 2009 1:06 pm

Pinky.

I am so sorry for what you have been through with BM.

She sounds very similar to my husband's ex wife. They started the divorce process in January of '05, but had been separated off and on since before the birth of my step son. The downfall of their marriage was her addiction to pain killers which we believe has fried her brain and made her not all there, and also her inability to separate herself from mummy and daddy's money and cut the apron strings. As a last attempt to save their marriage, my husband took a job outside the U.K. in Hungary where he was originally born, and it was good money. She was supposed to move there a month after he started his job and found them a flat, and she never came. Instead she said she wanted a divorce 110 percent. So my husband just got sick of her crap and all her years of accusing him with affairs, and her paranoia from her pain killer addiction. He filed for divorce.

Mean while, about 3 months after they started the divorce process, we met online through a Christian singles site, and started emailing. We emailed for months and months and never thought we would meet in real life. We lost contact several times, I had a boyfriend and then was again single, but after a while, he was coming to the states from the U.K. on business, so we decided to meet up for lunch or whatever. They were one week away from having their decree absolute in the U.K, and all hell broke loose. She broke into his email and found out that he had been writing me and planned to meet up with me. Out of spite, she didn't want him, but didn't want anyone else to either.... she contested the divorce and dragged it out for 9 months. It was ridiculous. She made up stories about the fact that we had an affair so that's why they divorced. I stayed away during all that turmoil. When the divorce was final, we started properly dating. We got engaged and were married in September 2006.

It's been 5 years since they split up, 4 years since the divorce. While we were both in England waiting for his green card to America, I became very involved in my step-son's life. BM would call the house, make up lies about my husband coming onto her, try and say they had slept together. We paid her child support in cash for months, and then one day she decided to file with the child support agency and they garnished DH's wages for child support for practically the whole year, so we paid double child support for the year of 2007.

Since the move to the U.S. in 2007, she has suddenly made up this lie that the last time DH dropped off SS before we moved to the states, that my husband tried to rape her. When he reminded her that his brother was with him during that last visit with his son before we moved, she changed her story and said that he asked her to sleep with him one last time and she declined. Then one day she even said she made it all up, and she doesn't know why she lies like that. Now recently, she has reverted back to the rape story. That woman has issues.

She was good about contact at first. My husband spoke to his son several times a month, once or twice on the web camera. It seems like when she broke up with her fiance at the beginning of this year, she just snapped. All of the sudden she was not answering the phone, or allowing contact. She recently told my husband that we walked away by moving here in her opinion, and that his son doesn't need him anymore.

We are starving students at the moment, we have no money to hire a solicitor, and my husband doesn't qualify for legal aid in the U.K. because he does not reside there.

I can totally relate to you, Pinky. What a mess! DH and I have a 14 month old daughter together, and his ex wife also says as did your husband's ex wife, that we have a new family, and don't need access to my step son or whatever. It's so frustrating.

DH won't finish his masters degree until October of 2010. He can get an amazing job, a very specialized one once he finishes, so we will have the money to fight this by then hopefully. But that will mark exactly 3 years since we left England and since he has seen his son. It's a nightmare, a living nightmare.

I wish the U.K. laws allowed rights for fathers, but they don't. That is something that desperately needs updating, the custody laws are over 100 years old.

Thank you for sharing your story, it gives me hope.

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