Genie3

Wish I could help, am going through the same myself and don't seem to be able to find any help. Am down to the last couple of hundred dollars in the bank and looking at having to go into a refuge and losing my daughters now as cannot afford to keep a roof over our heads, ex is up on assault charges and breaking trespass orders and yet being the one that is living in fear and being totally broke I still am being accused and losing everything around me.

Frenchy

Well said Colin!!! My experience completley... Life does get reconstructed with a huge learning curve

Dorothy

Maybe someone should have told my ex-husband who walked away with the house and all the furniture in our divorce. Me? I got to keep my car (which I had 3.5 years of payments left on).

Or maybe someone should have told my sister's ex-husband. He got not only the house but made up all sorts of lies about her so got her kids too. Oh...And he quit work so he could stay home with them so not only did she end up paying child support for 2 kids he poisoned with lies about her (he told them that mommy didn't love them and didn't want to see them), but she got the priviledge of paying him alimony as well.

But of course you're right. The guy is always screwed over.

And yes, I'm Canadian, divorced in Canada. (so is my sister)

Hawk13

i thought that may stir the pot. Just the house and furniture - that's just stuff. At least it's over then and you can move on. It's when kids are involved (like your sister) that it just goes on and on.

Sounds like your sister had the same experience I had. If you read the law, check with family services, check with the lawyers you will always get the same starting position: if the kids are young they go to the mum and the guy is luckily to get to see them on the weekends. And where the kids go so the money follows. Find it hard to believe that your sister doesn't at least get 50/50.

As for poisoning them with lies, I wouldn't worry about that too much as they always catch up with you. Mine is already starting to pay for her's as she did the same thing but my girls are now teenagers and the earlier lies are catching with her. The girls don't interact with her much anymore.

On the lighter side, a friend once told me how he dealt with paying his deadbeat ex and it went like this. As a divorce gift to yourself, pretend you went out and bought a brand new expensive car, say a Corvette. And then figured that you are such a great driver, you don't need full insurance. After a couple of weeks of driving and having a great time, you miss judge a corner, wrap the car around a pole, you are not injured but the car is a right-off.

You no longer get to drive the car but you still have to make the payments.

I'm sure there is the odd case of the woman getting screwed (sounds like there is at least two, lol) so I'll revise my "always" to "almost always".

ExKiwilass

make that three. Someone I know (woman) is in this situation and so far has lost her house and her kids.

Dorothy

Her children are now in their late 20s and still refuse to have anything to do with her or anyone in our family. My sister has not seen her son or daughter since they were 3 and 4 years old. Every letter she wrote them was intercepted, every phone call she made she was told (by her ex or his girlfriend) that the kids didn't want to come to the phone. Visits were cancelled repeatedly.

Kind of hard to fight that kind of brainwashing.

ExKiwilass

how heartbreaking. it's not at that stage yet with my friend but the ex is already refusing to allow the kids to talk to her when they're with him (they're 9 and 5 years old). Her son was apparently sobbing and begging but no dice.

people suck sometimes

Hawk13

Wow. . That's rough for your sister and family. It's probably a long story on your end but that's just plain wrong, nasty, etc. Can't imagine your sister's kids not wanting to get the other side of the story.

Thankfully mine were early teenagers when it happened and my oldest is now 17 and starting to take her mother to task and she just blows holes in all the ex's excuses and lies. I always figured that my girls had my DNA in them and eventually they would be smart enough to figure it out.

From most people I know (granted - mainly men) that lost access to the kids at an early age, almost all them now have a good relationship with them and some of them (after a lot of cash and effort), the ones with sons, found that their kids wanted to live with them when they entered their late teens.

No matter how nasty a divorce gets, I can never fathom how some people (the person that you fell in love with, married and decided to have kids with) can get so twisted to do that to their own flesh and blood.

BEVS

Without detracting from the divorce issues that the OP has.....

The refuge has family rooms. I know this . Not through personal circumstances but through others I know & from a talk given by one of the lovely ladies that run the refuge. Your children can enter with you. You should call them. They can give you the support you need. The refuge folk would do their best to liaise with others to help set you up in a more affordable/manageable way.

Isn't WINZ able to help financially ?

I'm really sorry to read this though. Last thing I read you were all thinking of returning to the UK. Did the strain/pressure of being here and struggling on boil everything up to exploding point.

just me now

Thanks so much for all your replies, sadly it seems that my fears are real and it's not just paranoia. Losing house and kids is a real possibility. Now I 'get' why so many kiwi women I know put up with the abuse, pop the happy pills and live in 'Stepford' - unbelievable!!!

Just a slight change of subject - can anyone tell me how to PM?

MrsFychan

Click on the person you want to PM name and you get options on how to contact them