At lunch I received a text from my soon to be ex-wife where she states her intentions to take our daughter out of state tomorrow. The claim (and it is likely true) that her mother is very ill, and doesn’t have long to live, she is in a nursing home and has severe dementia. I understand my soon to be ex-wife’s desire but there isn’t a pressing need to take our daughter with her. And seeing that the reason I filed for divorce is the first place was to remove her threat to move our daughter out of state my response to her text was that she did not have my consent to take our daughter out of state, and that I would be contacting my lawyer about the subject. Not that I’m heartless, just need to be careful.

Before I could even get past the first paragraph in my email to my lawyer my soon to be ex-wife shows up at place of employment with our daughter in tow, and tears streaming down her face (my soon to be ex must have ran every stop sign in town to go pull her out of school) then she says “someone wants to talk to you”

I agreed and suggested that we go to my office were we could have a private conversation, this was something that my soon to be ex-wife would not allow. This was a clear attempt to leverage the public setting of the lobby of my place of employment in an effort to force me to concede to letting her have her way. This is a tactic that she has used before, and is so manipulative

In this case all I wanted was a bit of time to consult my lawyer and to properly think about things. There was no need for my soon to be ex-wife to drag our daughter into a public spectacle in order to try to bully me into submission. It tore me apart to have to tell my daughter no, but I didn’t see an option, clearly this was set up by design to make it a “lose-lose” situation for me.

The plan that my soon to be ex-wife put in the text was for them to leave tomorrow and come back on Wednesday. We have “Psychological Evaluations” set for next Thursday and Friday. But considering the stated situation I would seem somewhat likely that their stay might be extended due to changes in the situation. Really don’t know the best course of action to follow is and I have asked my lawyer for guidance. The last thing I want is for this to become an interstate custody battle. Yes my soon to be ex-wife will swear up and down that she would never move out of state, but once she is physically there I don’t know what would happen. It would be easy for her to insist that she has to remain in there to settle her mother’s affairs and then keep our daughter with her, weeks could stretch into months.

I know that our daughter would like to go, that but I also know that she has been coached and prepped on this, and my soon to be ex-wife used the public setting of my place of employment to maximize the impact that her manipulation of Maggie would have, yes it did break my heart, but it also whatever the outcome will have a long term negative impact on our daughter to have been used in such a manner.

There is no good solution to this issue. Just feel that it, like so many other situations, could have been handled in a much better manner than what my soon to be ex-wife has done. Not that I’m perfect but I do go out of my way to keep our daughter out of things, and she LOVES to put our daughter in the middle of things and use her as a weapon at every opportunity.