After reading our back story would you consider our situation to be protective or forced estrangement on our end?
I’ve been married to his father for 6 years and have been involved ever since. He refers to me as his mother and nothing less. I’ve been raising him as my own since he was just 4 years old. I’m honestly all he has known as a mother. I do everything a mother is expected and have been very devoted to him. He is happy and well adjusted to our lives. We don’t know the phase stepmom or stepson. He is simply my son and I am his mom.
He has solely lived with his father since he was a year old. His biological mother has been absent for the majority of his life and the rest she was extremely inconsistent. She was young and a ward of the state when she gave birth. She was placed in a home as a mother/child placement shortly after giving birth. However, a few weeks before aging out of the system she ran away from the home to live with an abusive boyfriend at the time and abandoned him with the foster family when he was only a few months old. He then became a ward of the state himself. It was at that moment his father took action to gain custody of his son. He was a year old when his father was awarded temporary custody with the agreement of his biological mother and she was awarded 1 hour a month of supervised visitations at his discretion. His father raised, supported, and provided for his son without any kind of contribution from her or child support for all these years. He has lived with his father full-time with very minimum visitation with his biological mother. She was inconsistent with her visitations and always had an excuse. She has never done anything for him, not even anything small, for his birthday or holidays. Actually, she has missed every single birthday, achievement, and milestone. Needless to say, he doesn’t much know her and does not consider her his mother. He has only spent a hand full of time with his siblings as well and does not consider them his siblings. She would disappear for years at a time and reappear demanding immediate unsupervised access. If denied she would become unpredictable, irrational, and never fail to verbally attack with threats to abduct him. Although she has rarely been denied access unless reasonable. His father tried hard to allow her to be as involved as she wanted until it become clear that it was affecting his son.
She even lost custody of her 4 children at their births not long after him and it took her until about 3 years ago to gain custody as they were living in a group home. During those 3 years she never once reached out to ask about him or for visitation. It was ultimately a blessing considering at the time it was unknown to us that she consistently has child welfare in her life, endless accusations, and several investigations.
It wasn’t until last year that she reached out wanting to build a relationship with him despite her past decisions. She shamefully deceived us into thinking she had better herself. She quickly showed us otherwise as it was incident after another dealing with her and every single visit ended in him being injured or taught something inappropriate. He even had to have staples in his head during a visit. I mean I could go on and on about all the terrible things she has done and said but I’ll be here all day.
We stopped her visitations completely and we don’t intend to allow her any in the future. He is fine with this and prefers it.
She was harassing me with threats for a while because she wasn’t allowed access but she also refused to be supervised. It has now been a year, she has not contacted us about him, and she has us blocked from contacting her.
Wouldn’t that be considered abandonment?
She recently had her children removed from her care during an active investigation for suspected sexual abuse but was given her children back because they didn’t have sufficient evidence to prove she caused or allowed the abuse to happen but there was enough evidence to determine they were sexually abused. I find it odd and personally believe she knows exactly what happened to them. She has a live-in boyfriend that we don’t know much about too. We found out during her investigation that she has untreated personality and mental disorders.
We were involved in her investigation because she attempted to accuse him of sexually abusing his siblings during the limited time he spent with them. It was proven utterly false. Her accusations to us are unforgivable. We do not want her in any way involved in his life ever again just like she hasn’t been in the past. He has a mother in me, a father, and his siblings that he shares his daily life. He has a safe home, a loving environment, and everything he needs. He is more than content.
She is accusing us of wrongfully alienating her causing the estrangement and is supposedly consulting an attorney.