PAS: Infringement On My Constitutional Right to be a Parent

Let me start out by saying that my situation is not as bad as some people that I have spoken to or spent time with but nonetheless is an infringement on my constitutional right to be a parent.

I am a very able and fit parent that gave birth to two beautiful baby boys. I spent the first five years of our oldest son’s life and the first two years of our youngest son’s life caring for the majority of their emotional and physical needs. I potty trained both of them and selected the school in which they attended when we were divorced.

During our divorce I vowed to make the transition as smooth as possible for both of the boys. I vehemently refused to fight over material possessions and ended up walking away from 10 years of work and homebuilding with an S-10 pickup truck and a bag of clothing. My only point of contention was that I would continue to be an active part of our children’s lives. We agreed on joint custody with my ex husband as the custodial parent. Our joint parenting agreement was very vague in its wording and was written by an attorney that I thought was representing me and my ex. I discovered later that my naivety and lack of knowledge caused the first of several mistakes that I made along this path.

During our marriage I was the primary provider for our family. I worked long hours and at certain points carried more than one job in order to get this done. My ex had a habit of changing jobs every two years or so and receiving citations from his employers for lack of motivation and job failure. The job of feeding and housing our family rested heavily on my shoulders. That’s not to say that I didn’t also care for our children. I bathed them at night, I made them breakfast in the morning, I packed their bags for the caregivers every day and I comforted them at night when they woke from nightmares or were ill.

After our separation, I continued to provide for my family, sometimes with whole paychecks as I was living with my parents. Within three months I had a place of my own and our child support amount was set. I saw the boys every weekend without fail. Every single weekend in addition to days during the week should they have had a doctor’s appointment or activity at school. I paid for their medical expenses including insurance without asking the ex to provide the required 50% that our custody agreement stated. I provided them with every single winter coat that they have had since we separated in addition to the hundreds of hats and gloves that kids need and eventually lose. I provided school supplies every year in addition to new school clothes all the while keeping a full set of everything at my home so that no bags would need to be packed each week and the boys would feel secure in both homes.

Without fail, my ex would drag me into court every two years for an increase in support. At one point he wanted to take the average of my last three years salary as a guide when he saw that I made a substantial income for a one year period due to increased sales in my field that year. The courts denied him this and required that I continue to pay him the same amount that he had been receiving for the last two years.

Seven years have passed since we divorced and I have seen things happen to my children that no one should. I have listened to my children beg me to please let them stay with me. They have cried and pleaded to not go back to dads. Each week I sent them back knowing what would happen to them. Knowing all of the emotional abuse that was heaped on me was now being thrown at them because they were voicing their opinion to their father as to their preference for custodial parent.

After the ex went through several relationships with women that became transient in nature many of them caring for our children in lieu of their father or myself despite numerous attempts by me to gain more time with them, I filed with the court for a transfer of residential custody citing a substantial change in circumstances and the wishes of the children.

He counterattacked with another request for increase in child support citing that if I was able to pay an attorney I should be able to provide more for the children. We have been in litigation for over two years with our trial finally looming on the horizon. We have seen evaluators, mediators, GAL’s and every other court required professional and all have deemed me the more appropriate parent but fear that a transfer of custody would upset their father so much that it would not be advantageous to the children. Basically I have been told that an adequate, unstable parent is better for our children than a well adjusted, exceptional parent. At one point during litigation, since our joint parenting agreement was so vague and there was debate over when I should or shouldn’t be “allowed” to see the children, the judge ordered that we follow the standard visitation schedule as set out by the county. This reduced my parenting time in half. Status quo was not taken into account and the alienator was given free reign by the courts to start his campaign of degradation.

In an effort to solidify his position as the custodial parent, my ex has engaged in severally undermining and manipulative attacks on me through our children. He has told them that I left them because I don’t love them, that his health is failing because of what I’m doing to him, that he will kill himself if they leave his house, that I won’t pay for extra curricular activities because I don’t care even though I have and still do cover all of these despite attempts by him to cease and desist this practice.

My younger son is not buying into this and is seeing his father’s actions for what they are without any guidance from me. In fact he did not discuss this with me until one of his counselors brought it up in a joint session. He stated that he loved his dad but he didn’t like him very much. He very simply stated, “but I love my Mom, why can’t I tell her”. However, my older son is buying into it with everything he has. My ex saw right away that he would be his ticket to a victory. He started showering him with gifts and privileges that he normally wouldn’t have gotten. My son started to request not to come over to exercise our parenting time together. He started going through my personal papers and listening to my phone conversations. He would speak to his father privately after gleaning information from my residence and would scream at me to respect his privacy when I would go into his room for laundry or to change the sheets that he urinated on in the middle of the night. His personal hygiene started to decline because he was no longer required to brush his teeth or shower if he didn’t want to. The four days a month that they were in my care were not enough to counteract these issues. My younger son became depressed and withdrawn, begging me and later his father, to let him stay with me for the week.

In closing I would like to say that parental alienation and more severely, parental alienation syndrome, have degraded and removed our constitutional right as parents to enjoy an unobstructed healthy, loving relationship with our children. I have seen a loving and caring son reduced to a spy in my home all because of a selfish whim by his father to retain control over not only them but myself as well. As a non-custodial parent, no rights are given to help protect the precious gift that is our children.

Please help stop this abuse of our children and the preserve the sanctity of parenthood.

Sincerely,
Kim

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