It took TWO YEARS to find a place to live? That needs some explanation.
What do the kids want? Why the hell are the kids the last consideration in these situations (if they are ever considered)?

My advice for this person would be to consider what the kids have been through, and what is best for them, even if it’s at odds with what she thinks is best for herself. She leaped right into wondering what the court will let her do instead of wondering how she will be impacting the kids’ lives. I get so fed up with the kids being the absolute last consideration in decisions that will heavily impact them.

Yeah, here’s my advice:

Leave the situation alone. You are the one who left, who didn’t make other arrangements. Using your ex-husband as a babysitter for two years and then snatching your children from what sounds like a very stable situation ought to be enough to terminate your parental rights, in my opinion.

If you were thinking about anyone but yourself, you would consider the impact on your kids and your ex-husband and you would never make a comment like “there is no custody order so I know that I can go get them.”

If you weren’t completely selfish, you might say something like, “I wonder if I can work out a way to spend some more time with my kids in a way that will not wreak havoc in their lives more than my two year ABSENCE already has.”

How about that?

Just to drive home that point a little more…

Dads are not babysitters. Treating him like one doesn’t make him one. He’s a father, and a human being. Imagine how it would feel to you if he bailed on you for two years, you held down the fort, got it all done, and then one day he just waltzed back in and said, “I know I can take them.” You’d probably be livid, get some high-powered attorney, and crucify him.

Just for the record, that’s what I think he ought to do to you if you actually make a move to take those kids.

I want to find that father and tell him to file for custody immediately. The sad reality is that too often, the person who “beats the other to the punch” is the one that will get preferential treatment. If you’re a mother, that means you will almost always get the preferential treatment. If you’re a mother and you don’t file first… well… okay - you’ll still get preferential treatment.

This is a mistake so many fathers make nowadays. The path of least resistance is not often the smartest path in divorce and family court.

Too bad for him… because she’ll probably get her way and get paid at the same time while having the full backing of the federal, state, and local governments to push daddy down to NCP & ATM status.

~Mister-M

Aside from the problem that this woman thinks of her children as property and not human beings she does assume that she has rights that the dad might have to fight a little harder for. On the other hand she has probably already experience the judgmental bias of being a woman who left a marriage without the kids. It doesn’t happen very often and when it does she is reviled. Men can walk out without their children and are not treated the same way. it’s the woman’s fault that he didn’t take the kids. Of course its best for the kids to stay in a stable environment, usually the one who keeps the house

On the other hand she has probably already experience the judgmental bias of being a woman who left a marriage without the kids. It doesn’t happen very often and when it does she is reviled. Men can walk out without their children and are not treated the same way.

I’m not sure what planet you live on, but you’re sadly mistaken. Men are treated worse. Further, it’s very rare that women are forced out of their homes by a divorce and family court system heavily tilted in favor of mothers. It happens all the time to fathers. In far too many cases, a simple allegation of abuse (and false allegations are at crisis levels now) for a man out of the home, out of the money, and out of the children’s lives, often permanently without due process.

You won’t find too many women who have to endure that hardship.

When a women/mother has so many punitive tools at her disposal to wipe the father out of the family with a simple phone call and support from shelters and the court system - it’s no wonder so many do it and have the opinion of the mother in the above story.

The truth is out there and it’s not that hard to find. I can tell you it doesn’t exist in Jen’s post.

I know that there is always more to the story than you can type on one page… but it’s hard to hear being a single father myself. Everyone’s situation is different, but I raised my girls mainly alone and everytime my wife would want even some say in what they did or where they lived I found it so galling.

I would definatley talk to the father about shared parenting. No matter what the situation you are in, you don’t have a right to just snatch up the kids after he has been raising them this whole time.

Good luck,
Len

I’m kinda in the same situation. My son’s mother filed for divorce & custody 3.5 months ago; but left my son with me. Now she wants him to move several states over, but closer to the majority of our immediate family. Does a dad have chance in this situation?

What’s wrong with what she did? That’s what you do with pets, doncha know. We leave them with someone because we can’t take care of them and we let them love their new owners and get used to their new home and their new life, and then when we feel like it, we just go on back and pick them up again, along with their collars and leads and that cute little silver water bowl that their new owners bought for them.

*spit*

I hope the father includes his ex in parenting, as it seems he is already doing, but she’d better catch herself a little wake-up call if she thinks its okay to leave them and then ask 2 years later if she can ‘keep them’. Woman, they’re not puppies. Get real.

Ward, your sons mother left. She has established what the courts look at in EVERY single custody case - status quo. She left, the child has settled, why disrupt the ’status quo’. And a cheer to whoever just read that and has been through family court and recognised what I just said. Good luck!