Ex-wife Lied About an "Emergency" to Party With Her Friends, Leaving Our Kids Alone at My Front...

ex-wife lied about an emergency to party with her friends leaving our kids alone at my front door so I filed for full custody and everyone is cutting her off my ex-wife referring to her as Carol 36f and I 37m got divorced about 2 years ago we were together for almost 12 years married for 10 and we also have two kids a 7-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old son right now we are about to get caught in a custody battle because I'm fighting for the full custody of both my kids there have been a lot of reasons

but the most major incident took place recently that made me realize that I cannot trust her not even a little bit anymore so what happened was that I was on my way to a work event and it was her turn to have the kids according to our custody arrangement we have shared custody so the kids live with her for half of the month and spend the other half with me in case we have to go out somewhere and our sitters are busy we just ask each other to look after the kids if we are busy

but last Friday she knew that I had a work event hosted by my boss and I absolutely had to attend so I told her that I wouldn't be able to look after the kids in case she had to go out that day she had agreed at the time but then on the day of the event she started calling me while I was driving and I ignored it for a while but then I realized that she was calling me non-stop so I had to pull over and speak to her on the phone and that's when she

told me that she was standing in front of my house with the kids because she had an emergency to attend to and she couldn't take the kids with her she wanted me to come back and look after the kids because her sitter was unreachable that was not going to be possible for me because I had had somewhere to be and she had known it so she just couldn't suddenly tell me that she needed to be somewhere as well and expect me to deal with it but even while I was arguing with her she just hung

up and told me to come back home and look after the kids because she couldn't waste time arguing with me she had to leave and attend to the emergency that she had been called for earlier I tried calling her back several times but she just ignored it and with no other option left I had to turn back home so I could be with the kids because they have never been left home alone and I wasn't going to start now when they were so young it was really annoying as it is but when I got home

and saw that my kids were just standing outside our door looking lost it really hit a nerve the least that she could have done was at least wait for me to come back home with them and not leave them alone so I was really upset about that when I asked my kids when their mother had left them they told me that she had told them to wait outside until I came back home right after she hung up the phone call with me and since then they had been waiting alone I was appalled that she would

do something like this because the one thing that we could agree on was that both of us cared deeply for our kids but I guess I was wrong once I had come back home the kids and I went inside and they started doing their own thing I had to inform some co-workers about why I was absent from the event so that's what I did and I felt really upset that I was missing a significant work event because my wife couldn't be bothered to plan out her weeks and it wasn't even like last Friday was the

first time that something like this had happened it had started happening quite frequently since the last couple of months but it hadn't yet become a problem for me she would just randomly pop up even when it was her turn to have the kids and tell me that I needed to look after them because she had somewhere to be it was mostly just her hanging out with her friends which really annoyed me because I couldn't see a reason why she had to make impromptu plans and couldn't just keep me informed from the beginning since it would

make things easier for me I had even spoken to her about it several times but she just couldn't be bothered to care about anybody else but herself she had a babysitter and in spite of that she would frequently rely on me to take care of the kids even when it was not my turn with them don't get me wrong I love the kids and I love spending time with them but it was was just very inconvenient for her to randomly drop them off because it messed with my routine if I was going to have to

take care of them all the time I would just rather have them live with me full-time instead of spent half the month with her and then at least these things wouldn't come as a surprise I had just given up on her and then last Friday happened and it was probably the first time that I ended up missing something important just because she was not a good planner I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt because I thought that last Friday it wasn't because of her impulsive nature that she had to drop the

kids my place all of a sudden but because of some genuine emergency and after thinking about it for a while I was willing to forgive her for that but later on in the evening while scrolling through Facebook I saw this one post from her that changed absolutely everything I guess she had forgotten to hide it from me or something or maybe she just didn't care that I was going to see it either way I saw that post it was a picture of her and a bunch of her friends at the club and one of them

was hugging their partner and sporting a diamond ring on their finger in the camera so I was pretty sure that they were celebrating their engagement which was all great and stuff but definitely not an emergency that Carol absolutely had to be there for and she knew that if she had told me the truth I wouldn't have agreed to come back home and she would have had to take care of the kids so she decided to lie to me and tell me that it was an emergency just so I would miss my work event and she

would be able to go clubbing with her friends to celebrate an engagement it was just so unfair and I had already been thinking about how this had become a thing with her in recent times so I decided to do something about it I called up my sitter and had her come over within 15 minutes because luckily she wasn't exactly busy and I even offered her extra money since I was having her show up so unexpectedly anyway after she was here I decided to drive to the club that Carol was in so I could give her

a little surprise it was just a couple of minutes away so I reached there pretty quickly and I got lucky because even in that crowd I was able to spot her and her group of friends within the first few seconds then I walked over to them and that was finally when Carol spotted me all of them were drinking but hadn't gotten drunk yet so I knew that people would remember this for sure Carol looked really nervous when she saw me and she tried to smile and stuff and tell me that she knew that what she

had done was not right but she just needed a way to get me to come back home since she really wanted to be there for her friends and she hoped that I would understand but I didn't care about any of that I just turned to her friends and told them that it was really nice of them to invite her along and it was great that she had formed such a strong bond with them that she was ready to give up time with her kids to be with them since that's exactly what had been happening for

the past couple of months ever since she started working at this new company with new work she had new new friends and her company had changed her because now her priorities in life were different for context all these women that she has been hanging out with recently just after she quit her old job and started at this new company are all under 30 and obviously they don't have the same kind of lifestyle that she does and I guess she has forgotten about that anyway I then went on to tell her friends that not only had

she been spending less time with our kids but that day she had actually lied to me and told me that she had to attend to an emergency just so she could spend time with them she had dropped the kids at my my house and not even bothered to wait with them for me to come back home because she was so eager to be with these women even though they were pretty young and I'm just glad that we live in a nice neighborhood because otherwise there's no telling what might have happened with them I congratulated them

on becoming the most important thing in her life and I could see that all of them were looking really uncomfortable because presumably none of them had any idea about any of this carol didn't even say anything she just hung her head in shame and continued to look down after I was done venting I got back into my car and drove back home once I was home I felt slightly better and I started thinking about filing for full custody but before doing so I decided to talk to my kids and I'm very lucky that I did

because if I hadn't done so I wouldn't have found out exactly how they had been treated at their mother's house in the past couple of months when I asked my kids really casually however if they had been living with their mother for the past couple of months and if they actually enjoyed spending time with her so I would get to know how they felt about it and if they had positive feelings about their mother I wouldn't file for full custody however however to my surprise my kids told me that it didn't make much of a

difference when they were living with their mother because she was hardly ever around in fact the way they made it sound it felt like they spent more time with their babysitter rather than their own mother she was always out either for work or just to meet her friends and most of the time it was their sitter who would stay with them she was a student so on the days that she wouldn't be able to make it Carol would drop them off at my place which I already was aware of so according to my children they

hardly even got to see their mother after she had started working at that new place and had found new friends for herself the entire point of having shared custody is so that she gets to spend time with our kids but if she wasn't interested in doing so I think custody would be the way to go because it would be convenient for all of us I was already pretty upset with her and after speaking to my kids I made up my mind that I was going to file for full custody so I contacted my lawyer that

night itself and in a couple of days we filed the petition yesterday she was served and for some reason she was shocked she really should have seen this coming because after I showed up at the club to expose her to all her friends she hadn't bothered to reach out to me at all the only thing that she had done was remove me from all her social media which didn't make a difference because I was already aware of what she was up to but there had been absolutely no apology and even though it was her turn

to have the kids with her she hadn't shown up to take them with her either it was very obvious that she couldn't care less and so I didn't think that she had any reason to feel shocked that I had decided to file for full custody of our children however after after she was served she decided to finally call me and started bickering with me she told me that she had just decided to take some time away from us to cool down after what had happened at the club the other night which was really stupid of

her to say because of everything that happened she somehow felt that she was the one who needed to cool down because she was the one who deserved to feel angry but anyway she believed that just because she had taken some time out for herself she didn't deserve this and I had no right to file for full custody it was then that I went on to tell her that I had spoken to the kids and I knew that she had hardly been spending any time with them I was also aware of the fact that her priorities

had changed and I don't know if she was having a midlife crisis or something but I couldn't let our kids suffer because of her what had happened recently was the final nail in the coffin for me and now I was going to make sure that I got the kids to stay with me and if she was lucky she might get visitation rights when she realized that I had spoken to the kids and I knew that she had hardly been at home with them for the past couple of months I guess she realized that she was

done for and she wouldn't pretend to be the one in distress anymore she immed mediately switched her attitude towards me and instead of bickering and sounding off she started trying to reason with me and her tone was very different after that she told me that she was really sorry that she hadn't been spending enough time with the kids but she just wanted to have some fun before she got old when she started working at this new company she met all these wonderful young women and got a bit carried away which meant that she kind of

forgot that they did not have the same kind of responsibilities for kids and families as she did but now this recent incident had been a wakeup call for her and she had decided that she was going going to try and get better so she could be a better parent to our children and I told her that was good for her that she definitely should try to be with her parents but until then I would like to have them with me and get full custody because clearly she was not going to be able to devote the

same kind of time to them like I was and Not only was it inconvenient for me I don't think the kids were enjoying themselves either so I told her that while she tried to go back to her old ways it would be for the best for us to stick to a full custody arrangement with me if she wanted she could have visitation rights but that was about it wasn't going to trust her anymore after this at that point when she realized that trying to reason with me was not going to work because I had made

up my mind she started crying and told me that this was happening all at once and it was quite unfair Apparently after I had shown up at the club the other day and told all her friends about how she had lied about having an emergency just so she could party with them and it even left the kids alone in front of my house since then her friends have been very distant from her and some of them have even stopped speaking to her because they could not be on board with this kind of behavior they had

started to think of her quite differently and well rightfully so what she had done was quite messed up so I don't blame them especially because I keep saying again and again that Carol is much older than them because I don't think any of them are even over 30 and she has responsibilities of her own that she can't just Sherk off so she can have fun she told me that it was kind of my fault because even if I was mad at her I should have at least waited until the next day to confront her about

it and let off some steam now on top of that I had also filed for full custody and it was just too much to handle for her she felt like I was punishing her too much for just one tiny mistake and it wasn't fair at all because not only had she kind of lost her friends but she was also at risk of losing custody of children now she told me that I needed to think about her situation right now and at least try to be a little kind to her apparently she thinks that she has

already learned her lesson and she's not going to repeat this kind of behavior so I need to give her a second chance but honestly I don't think that I can take a chance with my kids so I had to tell her that I had already made up my mind and I wasn't going to change it it was not easy for me either because I knew that custody matters are particularly difficult for the kids and they had already been through our divorce so I didn't want to put them through something like that again but for their

own good I had to I tried to break it to her gently when I realized that she had started crying on the phone but even then she refused to listen to me and then she started throwing a tantrum on the phone she started screaming at me saying that I was ruining her life and that I couldn't punish her so hard just for wanting to have some fun all she wanted to do was feel young again and that's why she had gotten a bit carried away and she admitted that it was not a good thing to

do that she had made a mistake but she definitely deserved one more chance I felt like she was being childish so I hung up but then she started texting me and telling me that she was really sorry about everything and that she really would try to get better now she was not even going to be in touch with her friends anymore so she would definitely be spending more time with the kids and would never abandon them the way she did again since yesterday she has kept sending me messages periodically and it's making me feel really

bad about what I'm doing because I know it's probably good for the kids and more convenient for me but now that I think of it I don't know if it's a good idea to take them away from their mother for something like this I do agree that Carol messed up but as parents don't we all mess up sometimes the only question is if her mistake was worth forgiving or not or if there's a chance of it ever happening again if I'm being honest I'm very confused and even though I've spoken to my lawyer and my

parents about this I don't know how to feel I just have no idea what to do and my only intention here is to do what is best for the kids but I don't even know what exactly that is right now so I'm here to ask for advice from your guys Ida for filing for full custody of my kids after my ex-wife lied about having an emergency so she wouldn't have to look after them one evening edit hey guys there has been a lot of speculation about why exactly my wife and I got divorced and well

it's not what you guys think no neither of us was having Affairs it was honestly just because we fell out of love after we had our second child our son we kind of started drifting apart when we realized it we tried to make it work with couples counseling and stuff but even that didn't help much after some time we just had to agree that our relationship had run its course and it was really devastating but getting divorced was a much better alternative than staying in a Loveless marriage and hardly speaking to each other anymore our

divorce was quite amicable and I know that in my original post I made it sound like our post has been quite terrible for the kids but I just meant that in the normal sense all of a sudden their parents were separating and their mother was moving out and stuff so that my might have been a bit difficult for them to come to terms with and that's what I meant when I said that they had already been through something like this so I didn't want to put them through a custody battle also some of you guys

wanted to ask why exactly we did not approach our parents to look after the kids and babysit them when our sitters were not available especially my ex-wife so my parents live in the suburbs which is quite far away and I hardly ever ask them to babysit the kids because it's not very convenient for either of us and as for Carol's parents they live out of state so asking them for anything is out of the question people were also asking whether Carol had been having some sort of Affair or not and honestly I don't know I

haven't been seeing anybody seriously ever since the divorce happened and even though I've been out on a couple of dates since the divorce it's been nothing serious as for Carol I know that she has been seeing other people but I don't know if she has found someone who is dating if she has she hasn't let me know and she kept it a secret but now that the petition for full custody has already been filed I don't think she's going to come clean about any sort of relationship she has because clearly her friendships and relationships have

negatively impacted their relationship with her children so it's definitely going to come into play in the custody battle if I decide to go through with that at the moment I still have no idea what I'm going to do because my friends and my family are kind of divided on what I should do next but I'm still holding out on a judgment from you guys update 1 hey thank you so much for all the comments and I have finally made up my mind about what I want to do so I'm going to go ahead with demanding

full custody because no matter how much she apologizes she's not going to be able to take back what she did she's not going to be able to win back my trust until she proves that she's capable of handling raising our kids I have also had to sacrifice a lot of fun times with my friends for the sake of our kids and I would never feel any sort of regret for it if given the choice to do so again I would choose my kids in a heartbeat and it's very worrying that I am not sure if

she would do the same how can I have shared custody of our kids with her if I'm not sure of it because that's what parenting means making sacrifices when you need to and if she doesn't understand that I don't think it's the right time for her to be a parent to our kids right now besides I just can't get that one incident out of my head because she literally left our kids alone standing at my doorstep so she could Frolic with her friends I mean that's completely unacceptable and I cannot think of any parent in

their right mind who would be fine with something like that it's been 3 days since I last spoke to her on the phone and today I decided to finally respond to all the messages that she had been sending me relentlessly and I told her that I'm really sorry about everything but I'm not going to be changing my mind about demanding full cust of the kids and I think it's very unfair to try and blame me for this situation because if anything she was the one who created it now she's going to have to suffer the

consequences of her actions it's pretty simple and there's no reason for her to be so stressed out if she doesn't think she hasn't done anything wrong because I'm sure that if the matter goes to Family Court the judge is obviously going to decide what is best for the kids so ultimately what really matters is what the law thinks and not what she or I think update two I had sent Carol a message telling her that I was going to stick to to my decision of demanding full custody a couple of hours ago and just a

few minutes back she replied to it saying that she had spoken to her lawyer as well and she was ready to fight in court she also said a couple of things about how she had realized that just because she was a woman she was not allowed to have any fun and how mothers all around the world have had to sacrifice so much while fathers get to do whatever they want and that might be true for other cases I don't think that's true for our situation since I have sacrificed just as much as she has and

I'm not some absentee father who doesn't care about our kids so I don't understand why she was trying to play the victim card and completely Dodge any sort of accountability because she thinks she can justify her midlife crisis and incessant need to be liked by everyone around her by trying to throw me under the bus for things I haven't even done for instance I have never abandoned my kids so I can go party with my friends but she has so I think she should read her own message and apply it to herself but whatever it

doesn't even matter because we're going to see each other in court and make sure that we deal with this update three hey guys so it has been a couple of months since I logged in here but now that I have let me give you guys a couple of overdue updates first thing first I managed to get full custody of my kids and Carol does a visitation rights but so far she hasn't used them it makes sense because she got completely annihilated in family court because our kids had a lot more to add apparently not only

did she not spend time with them but she had also scared them into not speaking a word of it to me when they went back to me for the rest of the month not just once or twice this has been happening ever since she joined her new new workplace and our kids had been scared to bring it up with me because they were scared of the consequences that they would have to face with their mother but when I started insisting that they tell me everything these things finally started coming out and people hadn't been wrong

about her having an affair but I guess it was worse in her case because it wasn't just one man it was multiple men I was right about her having some sort of midlife crisis which is why she was going out every night with her and my kids told me that they had occasionally seen her come back home really drunk with some guy with her on those days the sitter would get them to bed early as soon as their mom came back home but they had already seen whatever they had to see the things that we

found out about Carol it was just very disturbing and it was quite an easy decision for the judge to make that it was going to be better for the kids to stay with me until Carol got her life back in order after the verdict Carol quit her job and skipped town and from what I know she has gone back to live with her parents ever since the proceedings even started the kids have been living with me and they seem happy enough they do ask about the mother occasionally but let go soon enough we are happy

together and I'm very glad that I decided to file for full custody no regrets