Gents, I am in need of advice regarding a custody situation with a psycho. 

I am getting divorced in MI. I kept waiting and waiting for my wife to file for divorce but she never did so I finally did it. I was having an affair and my girlfriend was getting antsy that I'd never leave my wife so it had to happen. So my ex is not going to give me anything in the custody fight because she feels justified in her hatred of me. Plus she never respected me anyhow which is how we ended up here in the first place. We have one child: 14 year old son. 

I insisted on 50/50 custody as is MY RIGHT. My ex says I can have that as long as I support my son's figure skating "career" by taking him to all his practices and events. This is a nonstarter. I obviously do not support his figure skating and will never take him to figure skating practices or events. He has figure skating practices and events literally EVERY DAY as well. 

First you need to understand there are some cultural issues at play here. My ex is Russian. She moved to the USA when she was 26 for a postdoc and we had our son when she was 27. So she always raised him in a Russian style. Unfortunately she has a PhD in engineering so she makes a lot of money, which means I can't stop her from putting our son in whatever activities she wants or pretty much doing anything she wants in general. 

Her grandfather was a professional figure skater so she doesn't view figure skating as a gay thing. She put our son in figure skating and gymnastics from a young age. To be fair, she also put him in other sports including basketball and soccer when he was younger, but she felt he took most to figure skating. Unfortunately he is a very effeminate boy, as a result of her parenting choices I believe. He now figure skates at a high competitive level, apparently doing pretty good in the most recent national competition (although he did not win anything....). 

I have always been strongly opposed to him doing figure skating. I don't want my only son twirling around in sparkly outfits, for obvious reasons. But my wife has never cared how I feel and she does whatever she wants. Clearly. 

Last year my ex pulled my son out of school to let him focus more on figure skating. He does the school district's "online school" now. I was distracted last year trying to hide my affair and that's my bad. Now that I don't have to do that anymore, I told my wife I want him back in normal school. She said no because he is doing well in online school and that lets him do more figure skating. Just what he needs. Not!!! This is INSANE. 

I will admit that it's probably going to be hard to argue she isn't making him do school because she has always been a slave-driver when it comes to academics. She always thought the American school system was a joke so she had that kid doing 30-60 mins of math, 30-60 mins of Russian, 30-60 mins of English, and 30-60 mins of music instrument practice (plus sports and art classes and chess classes and all kinds of other shit) after school everyday from the age of 7, and more than that on weekends and summer break. She schedules every moment of his life with academics or figure skating. He has always been academically advanced because she never lets him goof off. So I'm sure his grades are great. But I never gave my permission for online school, so maybe I can still use it in court???

Basically I want to argue that he should go back to school and for my right AS A FATHER to decide NOT to take him to figure skating (which will put an end to it altogether if I have him 50% of the time). I'm viewing this divorce as an opportunity to finally take control of my son. 

My crazy, "scorned wife" on the other hand is saying if I don't sign something agreeing to support his skating "career", I can have visitation ONLY AROUND HIS SKATING SCHEDULE. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous?

I think she is engaging is parental alienation. Evidence:

  1. She usually speaks to my son in Russian even around me, knowing full well I can't understand it. She speaks English perfectly fine so it's a choice to alienate me. She has done this his entire life and he often speaks Russian to her even when I am around too. Proof it's alienation. 

  2. The one time I took my girlfriend to the ice rink to try to meet my son (who has been avoiding me), he looked at my girlfriend and said "you should be careful because when my mother was your age, my father strangled her and broke her nose." I know I'm going to get shit for this but I did ONE TIME lose my cool with my wife and she did end up with a broken nose. It obviously wasn't that bad because she stayed. This was years ago. If you ever met my wife, you'd be impressed it only happened once. Anyhow, my son was 6 AT THE MOST when this happened, so he wouldn't remember. So if he knows, obviously his mother told him about it.  That's alienation, right? She is not allowed to do that. 

  3. My son seems brainwashed like he has stockholm syndrome or something. I told him he doesn't have to figure skate all the time just because his crazy mother says so, he is 14, he should be having fun. He told me he likes figure skating and he does have fun. He claims he has lots of friends too. Bullshit. I'm sure he doesn't have any friends because of how effeminate he acts. 

One good thing is my ex probably won't flee to Russia with my son because she is very outspoken against the Russian government about Ukraine and "LGBT rights" and other crazy stuff. They'd probably literally murder her if she tried to move back. Thank God for that. 

And no I can't call ICE on her because she is unfortunately an American citizen (proof our immigration system is broken because a psycho like her never should have passed LOL).  

I have a meeting with a lawyer coming up. So I'm hoping you can give me advise about what to ask the lawyer and make sure I get what I want. What I want is to get my son out from his mother's grasp before he is too effeminate to be fixed. I'm in for a fight because my wife is used to always getting everything she wants. And my son is brainwashed by her.