(Don't) Give the People What They Want

I always get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when any mail arrives with our lawyer's return address. (Sicker still when it's someone else's lawyer.) Today we got a bucketload. Ill, ill, ill. But I have to read it because it just gets worse if you don't know what you're in for. So I did. Turned out to be several court motions, mainly of stuff I coulda guessed at-- witnesses for the opposition, documents and other evidence planned for the trial, etc. However, a tiny little scrap of paper stuck among the others very inobtrusively held an intensely interesting detail.

Specifically, what the woman wants. Between the lines, mainly, but it's there. What the lines say is:

• We want to take our oldest boy with us when we move out of state (not very far, but an inconvenient distance) so my husband can finish his education.
• She ("Mommy") doesn't want us to take him anywhere.
• A highly respected psychiatrist who evaluated the situation recommends that we take the boy with us and send him to visit her quite often, at our expense.
• We say OK to this plan. Education is important.
• She says no.
• She says that she should get custody (after signing it away willingly 8 years ago) AND (this is where you should start paying attention) "the non-custodial parent should have the child for all except one week of his time out of school."

And now we know what she's angling for. She doesn't really think that she'll get custody; the odds are severely against it. She doesn't want it, anyway. She just wants to look good by pretending to want to care for her son, and the visitation clause makes her look reasonable when actually she's pushing for more for herself. More than almost all his free time, with him delivered to her door at our expense: She wants it all. Except the hard part. All the free time, none of the work. It's typical, but if I point it out, I'll look like the bad guy. Very clever, this mistress of evil.

My only hope is that someone else will point out that taking the boy away from his home for every bit of his free time is probably going to be bad for him in some way. The psychiatrist is on her witness list. I'm not sure whether she really expects him to help her case. She's also roped in the second-grade teacher she used to lie about, apparently to prove how involved with her child's schooling "Mommy" was two years ago. Yay for Mommy, good Mommy. Sheesh.