📷r/AmItheAsshole•Posted byu/SadDefinition15 hours ago

AITA for seeking child support from my ex?

đź“·

So I was married to my wife (now divorced) for 6 years. Before we were married. I had a 5 year old boy. We dated for 3 years before getting married (she knew him when he was 16 months old). She never officially adopted my son (who is from another woman that has now passed).

Anyways, after we dated for around 2 years, we moved in together, combined finances and I proposed shortly after that. Our marriage was great for the first 4 years and during that time, our lives were intertwined. Then, my ex-wife developed some mental health and substance addiction issues and our marriage fell apart.

She was very much a mother to my son for around 5 years (1 year after dating, and 4 years of engagement+marriage) but she lost her job, refused rehab, and would come home inebriated on drugs. Several attempts at managing our marriage as divorce is a last option for me. Marriage counseling, individual counseling, addiction counseling etc. My ex-wife has never gotten over her addiction during our marriage. Looking back, I have some regrets as to how late I was in protecting my son over this... but I was stupid and in love with who I thought was the best woman I could ever have and overlooked a lot of unforgivable grievances and tried to fix things instead of abandon someone.

Shortly after our equitable divorce, my ex-wife checked herself into rehab for 2 years paid for by her parents (not by me). She got clean, tried to reconcile but I was no longer interested. The amount of abuse, neglect, and not knowing whether she would come home that night or if I would find her passed out on the kitchen floor at 7 am ruined everything for me. The constant yelling, hiding credit cards that she opened that ruined both of our credits, missing money from our safe, and overall neglect to both me and my son was too much. The second last straw for me that initiated my divorce was when my son said "Why does mom not love me anymore? does she still love you?".

After that, and a discussion on how my wife needed to get more help and I would support through everything resulted in her screaming and throwing kitchen knives at me and then driving off to who knows where, I consulted I lawyer to start divorce proceedings which she didn't fight me on. I got the marital house that I owned before she moved in and one of the cars and she got most of the liquid assets. Then rehab, then clean and now starting a new chapter of our lives separately.

Because of her being a mother to my child for 5 years, I decided to seek child support from my ex-wife which was granted because she did have a motherly role for the majority of my son's life and then abandoned him. She used most of the assets from the divorce to start fresh in a new city and her parents are now calling me to tell my what a horrible person I am for taking money away from her for a child that isn't hers, and they will have to continue to contribute financially for their daughter. Am I an asshole for looking out for my child?