Introduction

My husband and I have been in an ongoing family court battle over his daughter for almost four years now. What started out as what he thought would be an amicable divorce ended in lies, deceit, hurt, and an ongoing power struggle. I wish I could just put the whole story out here, but for legal reasons I cannot. Since we are still in pending litigation everything I say has to be anonymous. I am going to give a brief background. When my husband and then wife decided to separate four years ago they sat down and talked about how things would go. They had been together for ten years, and he thought he really knew her. He loved her, but things just weren't working. He couldn't figure out why the marriage was breaking down, but it was. She wouldn't talk to him, she would sleep all of the time, she just wasn't the person he married. He didn't understand what was happening, but he knew they couldn't go on that way. At the time they had a one year old daughter. He had major concerns about her care of their daughter, but chose to trust her. They had known each other since they were in high school, and this was the only serious relationship they had. When they first separated my husband agreed for her to stay in the house they were renting and to pay the majority of the bills until the lease ran out. She worked two jobs, but he felt it was his duty to provide. After all, he still loved her and his daughter. Initially she would keep their daughter more than he did because he was renting a single room with no space. He wasn't making much money and keeping little for himself. He would go and have lunch with her, take her to the park, and keep her some evenings. There wasn't a set schedule, but he didn't have a problem with that because he could see her anytime he wanted to. The agreement was that they would have her 50/50. After a short period of time he started noticing that his daughter was always sick, her mom was putting her to bed at 6:00 at night, and none of the bills were getting paid although he was giving her plenty of money. He also noticed her drinking and driving one night when dropping off her daughter's things. To make a long story short he found out his ex-wife had a 16 year history of drug abuse, and admittedly was using drugs while caring for their child. When he found this out he asked her if she would be willing to take a drug test. He offered to pay for it, take care of their daughter while she sought help, and to do anything to help her get clean. While this was going on she met a man on Facebook and became engaged to him after only 19 days of meeting. Don't let me forget to mention this man lives in another state 12 hours away and they had not met in person. He had not even met their daughter. When she went to visit this man she told my husband she wanted to move "and there was nothing that said she had to be the one to take care of their daughter". Her parents called my husband and told him he needed to take care of his little girl because their daughter was driving drunk with their grandchild, staying up all night, and they didn't think she could handle it. My husband repeatedly asked her to take a drug test and she just wouldn't do it. She even lied about taking one. He told her if she wouldn't take a drug test he would take custody of their daughter until she could prove she was clean. After several weeks of her lying and refusing to take a test he found an attorney and took custody of their daughter. While he was waiting for the temporary hearing his ex's parents picked up their child from daycare and gave her to his ex. so she could move to another state with her before an order was put in place. At this time plane tickets had been purchased, daycare had been researched, and all of this was kept from my husband. He called the police, but since there was no court order there was nothing he could do. A mutual friend on Facebook had seen where she had posted her plans to take their daughter to the other state and let him know. He was able to convince his ex to allow him to see his daughter. Once he had her, he had no choice but to keep her from her mother until they had a court order in place. At the time of the temporary hearing his ex agreed to give him primary custody. However, she then turned right around and filed for sole custody. After $30,000 and 18 months of having custody of his child the court awarded the mother SOLE custody allowing my husband standard visitation. Her reasons were "The mother had writed her boat" and "joint custody arrangements aren't favored when two people don't get along." This is just a glimpse into the start of this. What happened in the trial and what the judge said are things that I cannot even begin to understand. Trust me, I will get to that later.