single317dad, thank you for finding those threads and reposting them. When I deleted the first one, it was because I was nervous that my scandalous ex would somehow find them and be able to use them against me in court. I thought that there was a soft delete option, it said something about being able to recover the post after deleting it, and I planned on doing that if I needed to repost. However, it appears that I was mistaken. I appreciate you finding my old threads for me. I was in too much of a hurry on Sunday to re-explain the whole situation with everything that was going on. I did contact my lawyer on Sunday as well, but he is in the middle of moving offices, and I wasn't sure if the email I had for him was valid after last Friday. I hadn't heard back, and I thought maybe someone else could weigh in.
As an update:
On Thursday we went to court again. She came without the lawyer she'd requested time to find and spent the ten minutes before court started lying straight to my lawyer's face. She told the judge at a past hearing that I signed over my rights, then she told my lawyer that I told her to never contact me again, and that she'd never kept my daughter from me. There is proof via texts that she sent to my cousin that this is not true. She also stated several times that her significant other was our child's dad because he provides for her (she cheated on me with him and let him slide right into that role--that was never my choice) and that the four of us (them, myself, and my fiance) needed to sit down and work this out outside of court. First of all, neither my fiance or her fiance were there when our daughter was conceived, so I really don't feel like anyone else gets a say. Second of all, when I tried to have mediation with her, she said she wanted to and then refused to contact me again. She also told him that she was going to file for child support, but she would drop it if I would drop this "visitation thing". My lawyer actually laughed at her at that point and told her to go ahead, because we weren't dropping anything. When we requested her contact information, she told the judge that she would give it to me, but I was ONLY to use it to talk about our daughter. I've had her phone number from a police report I found for about the last four months but I haven't used it because of her past issues declaring me a stalker and abusive. I don't know why she thinks this is all some ploy to get her back.
He requested interim visitation until our trial in late August, and it was granted. I get to see my daughter for two hours a week, every Sunday, supervised by my cousin at her home. The court order states that she will drop her off and my cousin and I will drive her home. She wanted to stay the whole time for the first visit, which I was against because I felt like I wouldn't get to spend any REAL time with our child. The court also told her no when she asked them. She also doesn't want me to be in the car when we drop off our daughter because she isn't ready to have contact with me (again, I don't know why this is all about her....our child is almost seven, she can walk up to the door alone. We don't need to talk). I told her that what is written in the court order is what needs to happen.
The visit went better than I could have ever imagined. Thank you all for putting so much time and effort into helping people (even ones like me who have a lawyer but need confirmation on things). Her mom actually ended up leaving 15 minutes earlier than she had to and spent most of the time talking to my cousin, so I really got to focus on my daughter. We talked, played monopoly, colored, looked through old photos of us together (some of which she even remembered). She's so pretty and smart and funny, and I am so sad that it took me this long to do things the right way. If you're here trying to decide if you should go through the courts to get your rights established...just know that it is a long, tedious, time consuming and expensive process...BUT it's totally worth it. I am sad that I missed out on so much of our daughter's life, but I am so relieved and happy to know that I have the documents backing me up--my ex doesn't get to determine when I get to see her and when I don't. I know that next Sunday, she has to be there, she can't decide to wait six months or a year to bring her back to me, and that is worth everything I've gone through since January.
Of course, nothing is perfect. My daughter told me that she has two dads, me and my ex's boyfriend. I would love to see what my ex would say if our daughter came home saying she had two moms! That nonsense makes me so angry. She is also posting all kinds of things on facebook like "A step dad is better than a real dad because step dads step up when real dads step down". I guess the revising history part of it will never go away. As for me, I'm trying to stay disengaged from the drama and focus on what's important to me--building a strong, stable and permanent relationship with my little girl.
The trial is in August, and if visits continue to go the way that they went on Sunday, I'm hoping we can come up with a graduated plan to get to the normal Hamilton County visitation schedule. Does anyone know if that's usually how the trial portion works?
Again, I really appreciate all of your help, and I solemnly swear I'll never delete my threads again! I wasn't trying to be misleading, I just didn't want the wrong person to come across them.
