Holiday Weekend Exchange and fear of abusive language

[stripes]

I

I've had a similar experience. My ex filed for sole custody and accused me of everything from being a drug addict to being a chronic masturbator.

I never bothered to stoop to his level. I would simply blanket deny pages of accusations from him with a one-liner in my response affidavit and move forward by trying to prove why I was a good parent. I never attacked him...it was unnecessary. As a result, I was successful in court.

Okay, I know this is off topic, but that just cracked me up. How on earth could anyone seriously put something like that into an affidavit? "She's too busy masturbating constantly to look after the kids?".

And as the ex-husband, wouldn't this be just the slightest bit embarrassing to acknowledge about your ex's level of satisfaction?

If this is the typical of the idiocy Pursuing had to deal with, no wonder she won her legal battles handily.

[arabian]

Okay, I know this is off topic, but that just cracked me up. How on earth could anyone seriously put something like that into an affidavit? "She's too busy masturbating constantly to look after the kids?".

And as the ex-husband, wouldn't this be just the slightest bit embarrassing to acknowledge about your ex's level of satisfaction?

If this is the typical of the idiocy Pursuing had to deal with, no wonder she won her legal battles handily.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Never boring on ODF!

[Pursuinghappiness]

And as the ex-husband, wouldn't this be just the slightest bit embarrassing to acknowledge about your ex's level of satisfaction?

I can tell you that my ex's affidavits were the source of a lot of laughter and joking among my family and friends.

My ex told me that if I ever left him, he'd make my life miserable. So his goal, of course, was to attempt to humiliate me and get me to cower and hide but my ex never knew me very well. His actions actually simply validated my decision to leave him. The first thing I did when I got that particular affidavit is to go show everyone (my mom first, she had a great sense of humor). For months, when my friends or family would call, they'd ask me to first take my hand out of my pants so we could talk and we'd crack up.

We live in a town where we still have the same bank, dentist and for some reason, he used the same real estate agent I did, etc. So he'd go around telling people loads of nonsense about my multiple sexual partners, my spendthrift ways, my drug use (I've never even smoked a cigarette and I'm a vegan).

I got one full affidavit accusing me of being a raging narcissist who spends hours a day looking in the mirror, working out, and doing my hair. It went on and on. If you knew me personally, you'd find this extremely amusing. Again, my friends and family had a good laugh and would make jokes about it.

I got cease and desist letters at one point from his male rights attorney telling me to stop letting the revolving door of men that I supposedly had around our youngest daughter. I've had one boyfriend in 5 years...we're now engaged.

I can tell you that aside from a lot of laughing with the people I confided in...I largely ignored everything else he said and did. Around town, I held my head up, enjoyed my life and didn't worry about anything anyone thought. It really never had any affect on my life. And I'm fairly sure there are a lot of people that think he's a loon.

In litigation, I did the same thing. He got so frustrated with his nonsense going nowhere during court or during our in-depth custody evaluation that he started blurting out things in the middle of our court proceedings...including once screaming out loud to the whole court room that I had been recently raped and then 5 minutes later that I had been molested as a child. It was the strangest thing you've ever seen...the issue was actually financial settlement so the judge was discussing financial data. The first time the whole room just kind of stopped for 5 seconds, then the judge just shook his head and continued talking...then with the second outburst, the judge got ticked off, admonished him, and then continued to talk.

Finally, he settled because he realized his tactics were useless and he was starting to get hit with costs for the stalling he was doing. He refused to show up for the last 4-way we had and I had to conference with both attorneys by myself. At one point, his lawyer was literally begging me to compromise on my final settlement number so we could get this over with and told me (and this is a verbatim quote) "that he was dealing with a crazy person." I refused to compromise, I had compromised enough...and he walked out of the room with my final offer or trial. Two days later, I found out that my ex signed the offer.

So like the OP, I also have had to deal with a lot of silliness...including a total of 4 hours of deposition under oath being grilled about things you wouldn't believe. And a year of a very in-depth custody evaluation where my ex was telling the evaluator a pack of craziness about what kind of mother I am/was. My lawyer did an excellent job of preparing me and showing me how not to react to it and I got through it.

I think I just took a different approach to it. This kind of stuff hurts you and your litigation when you respond to it at the same level. Its really important to learn to disengage. By all means, you can vent, laugh, cry, rage to your support group but save it for them. Don't expose yourself to your ex or to the court. I really feel good these days that I managed (with lots of help) to handle the slander that I dealt with with dignity.