For background, I recently made this post.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Divorce_Men/comments/v5pmpy/us_wife_completely_lied_during_her_deposition_and/ibc28th/

What a day. We had a hearing this afternoon. My wife filed an OP against me back in January, got me kicked out of the home I own, lied to the court in the OP to get temporary full custody, and has been slinging malicious mud ever since to both the courts, her family, and worst of all my, our kids. I have a fantastic lawyer. My step-dad's first wife (still on great terms) is married to a very successful divorce attorney. We asked for a recommendation and he sent me to 'Joe'. Joe practices both family law and criminal defense, including murder stuff. He immediately talked me into playing the 'long game'. He had me hire a GAL, and he immediately started working the GAL. We had the GAL contact every single person that's seen me be a good dad. Teachers, doctors, therapists, neighbors, etc. He got the GAL to subpoena all of 'our' medical records, which included a bunch of psychiatry stuff that my wife never told me about. Plan was to remain stoic, play by the rules, keep my hands clean, don't engage in petty accusations, and most of all 'follow the courts instructions' precisely. Essentially, let me wife look progressively more and more unstable while I sell myself as a intelligent, reasonable father able to remain civil, cooperate, and keep my shit together in the face of all my wife's maliciousness.

He's been right all along. I've spent the last 6 months keeping my head down while we let my wife continually sling mud and look like a witch. She's ignored multiple court orders and has basically engaged in completely overt parental alienation. I won't go into the details, but we let her make all kinds of accusations and claims all the while we were secretly rebuffing everything with evidence to the GAL.

The deposition I posted about in the thread above really, truly was the breaking point for the GAL. She already had a massive pile of evidence against my wife that she had seen, and rather than my wife coming clean at the deposition, she doubled down on her completely fictional narrative, even getting indignant in light of some of the questioning.

At the hearing today, my wife didn't even show up. Her attorney literally said 'she was too busy at work', to which the judge said 'how strange, doesn't she work from home?' It was a 30 minute phone conference and my wife couldn't even make the time for that. The judge specifically requested that be both attend on the actual order for the hearing. The judge immediately called that shit out. "Your client couldn't have scheduled her lunch around this?" Wife's attorney didn't have much to say.

Because of some of my wife's accusations and her refusal to follow a court order to bring the kids to my apartment for an weekly all day visitation on sundays, my attorney convinced me to let him file a motion for court ordered 'supervised' visitation. I basically had to meet a court appointed supervisor at various locations so she could watch me with the kids for 3 hours once a week. Which of course went absolutely fine. Plan being to use this as a means to establish with the court that I'm perfectly capable of managing my kids.

So not only did my wife not show up to court when the judge asked us both to attend (and not just our attorneys), when the already frustrated judge asked the GAL and the supervisor what they thought of me, the supervisor said "I have absolutely no concerns with dad" and the GAL said 'Dad's a smart man, clearly capable of being a responsible parent and I have no concerns about safety or anything'.

The judge essentially said it's clear I'm a good parent and immediately ordered that I get to see the kids 4 days per week, for 8 hours each day, and as part of the county standard step-up plan, if things go well over the next 90 days, she'll order a minimum of 50/50 custody at the next hearing. Literally said "I can see how dad could get at least 50/50 custody here" to wife's attorney, as if to tell him my wife has 90 days to adjust to the reality that I'm getting my kids back for at least half the time.

After, my attorney reinforced that if after 6 months of mud slinging by my wife, the ultimately decided to look past it all, the GAL and court ordered supervisor didn't mention a single thing she accused me of and framed me as a 'perfectly proper parent', there's basically no turning back. The GAL's reputation is important, and he doesn't want to come back and say he was wrong, and he already thinks my wife is bonkers, so there's a slim possibility that my wife can cry wolf to any success at this point. My attorney told me to just get through the next 90 days, get the court to confirm they're willing to let me have at least 50/50 custody, and then we can start making a case as to why my wife is the one who shouldn't have custody and needs supervision. And that's been the long game. If we convinced the court earlier on that my wife was unstable, it presented to the court that we might both be unfit, so we have to wait out the court to confirm that I'm good for custody, in which we can then attack my wife's position.

All in all, I felt like I got a huge win today, in the name of my kids.