Hello. Looking for advice and context regarding what I experienced during separation. 

I’m late 30’s, one kid, own a home, married 8 years. Using a mediator. Consulting attorneys. Basic reasons: I would say irreconcilable differences. STBX is the initiator of the divorce. STBX has talked about not feeling safe around me (due to tone and anger). We’ve had a rough stretch. I deal with mental health issues that I’ve received a lot of support with. I think there are concerns around my stability: emotional, financial, logical, physical, etc. Some three years ago there was a morbid family trauma that greatly disrupted our family’s structure at that time. STBX wants more kid(s), not with me. 

I’m feeling overwhelmed, tired, and nervous. I want to be smart about how this resolves. I moved to STBX’s hometown. STBX has a lot of legal and community support. I mostly do things by myself; working on asking for help like now. Right now I’m feeling angry and invisible. I’m thinking of an approximately five week stretch of time.

I want to receive feedback about the nature of my experience during this time period. How much concern would you feel in a similar situation? How impactful would you imagine this having in a judge’s mind if they were to look at custody? 

At the request of STBX I agreed to move out of the house for a period of time. Things worked out such that STBX was in possession of child. STBX felt scared being around me. STBX said child felt scared being around me. I wanted to spend time alone with my child. STBX did not agree to this. Spoke to legal in my state and there’s not a way to require a parent to allow the other parent to be with child, except after filing for Divorce or Separation (same amount of bureaucracy and paperwork, less permanent). So legally there wasn’t an issue technically. I talked to legal. They said there have been cases in which Parent A has been precluded from seeing their child alone by Parent B.  And that Parent B has lost custody as a result; because that was an example of them not being fit as a primary caregiver.

Here are the details of my experience:

I went the emergency department on a night in November. Again, this was at the request of the STBX. I said sure and a neighbor drove me there. After that night I had an extremely difficult time (1) accessing my personal property; (2) seeing my child alone; and (3) acquiring safe & secure housing.

There were various attempts to find agreements which worked for the three of us to share the space together, which never came to fruition, frustratingly to me. The reality of what happened is that I bounced around housing for five weeks. I spent like a week at a stabilization support facility. I spent a weekend at a peer respite center. Four nights or so at a friend’s mom’s house. And some other places too. 

All throughout I was trying to spend time alone with the child, get safe housing (return home or something else), and access my personal possessions (I was not being allowed to come to the property). I talked to a variety of therapists and mediators throughout and am now feeling frustrated that no one said anything to an agency that would be concerned about the welfare of a child. It seems to me that from a child development & safety perspective this would be a concern.

In my state their’s a designation for a medical patient who is incapacitated in some way. It allows for more intensive medical and perhaps state interventions in that person's life. I never received this designation. If I had the actions of the actors in this story would make more sense. But there was no such medical concern, nor any abuse or neglect. 

Throughout this five week period various agreements were agreed to but they didn’t manifest nor return the primary desired result: me spending time alone with the child. Here  is a prime example:

We engaged in marriage counseling in which agreements were made about protocols. I hated how I could be at home one moment and then shortly after finding myself in a discussion “asking” me to leave (recent previous “ask” had resulted in police being called when the answer was “no”) . So we made an agreement about various steps that would happen before it came to that discussion again of me, from my perspective, being effectively thrown out of the house. These agreements weren’t honored, which resulted in me not having secure housing. Here’s a snippet:

“Me: I was told that I wasn’t going to go homeless again. Without intermediary steps! And then after our ‘sacred space’ here I was asked to leave the house; and by the way the previous time I had been asked to do something I didn’t want to and I said ‘no’, the police were called. So that’s where I’m coming from. 

Same thing that I was concerned about that I said all week long; that I was concerned was going to happen again. The exact thing I was concerned about happening. Yes. “

That’s all I’ve got for now. Is it normal for a community of therapists, mediators, etc. to not escalate awareness of this behavior? Does this series of events impact your view of if the parent should have full parental responsibilities?