v., my husband has traveled several years in all (most) of latin america before we met and he moved to switzerland to be with us. about 1 1/2 years back, he found out he had a son he'd never known about. that would be i., who's now 2 1/2 and lives in mexico. since we found out, v. has been in contact with i.'s mom, a., sending child support and saving up to go visit. and that finally happened a couple of weeks ago. there has been a lot of bullshit from a., their contact never went much beyond "thanks, i got the money" and we were really unsure how and if v. was actually going to meet i. when in mexico.
the good news is, he did get to meet i. and spend a lot of time with him. he saw him nearly every day for long hours, and i. even stayed with him for several days. so he got a lot of fathering time, he fell deeply in love and i. knows him and loves him, too, and calls him papa. it's still a sad situation altogether, having this distance, but v. feels he got the most out of their time together and is hopeful they can deepen their relationship over the time.
a. was very acommodating and friendly during v.'s stay and they talked a lot, contrary to our previous impression through e-mail. she isn't ready to talk clearly about her ideas of what v.'s involvement should be nor is she actively encouraging it, but she seems to be accepting of whatever level of involvement v. is hoping for.
i. is not living with a., and mostly hasn't, but with her parents. she "visits", and i. loves her, but she's not raising him.
and i guess that's a good thing. she has dropped out of college and lives as an artesana, traveling around mexico mostly. she parties. she drinks. she did when v. and her met, and didn't seem to change. she spends all her time with friends who do the same. she's talked about a lot of things that involve i. that range from scary to downright abusive. that he needs to grow up quickly so he can drink beer. scary. leaving a small child alone in a tent while going to a concert and getting so pissed she can't remember how she got back. living and sharing child care (for a short while) with a person who then loses custody of her children because of drug abuse. her friends, that she travels with on the few occasions that she is with i., are mothers who think it's a good idea to blow smoke from joint into the face of a few months old baby to get him to sleep. though not to the five year old, he gets his own joint. getting drunk (a. and two of her friends) and dropping a heavy tool on said baby's head.
there's a bunch more of that stuff, and they aren't rumors, but her own words. she thinks v. is a europeanized loser not to think it's funny.
it's ok. it's not ok, but there's nothing we can do about it. and i. is with his grandparents.
the grandparents didn't know about v.'s involvement nor that he was coming to visit (nor about the child support payments incidentally), and she didn't want to tell them or v. to have contact with them. they found out soon enough, as seemingly they wondered why a. was spending that much time with i., and i. started to talk about papa at home. and it seems they were fine with i. being with v.
that leaves us with...
we've now got their home phone number (giving us incorrect numbers was some of the bullshit), and v. wants to call i., he wants to hear his voice and keep up the contact now that he knows him (though he's too little to hold up a phone conversation, heh), so he'll likely be talking to the grandparents soon. we've thought about that, and honestly think we are justified in going against a.'s wishes. v. wants to be involved in his son's live (and that is basically ok with all of i.'s family), so it's only logical that he deals directly with the persons who are raising him. we will also try to make child support payments to the grandparents from now on (if they agree).
what would you do?
Has he thought of pursuing custody? I'm not sure how to go about that since he is in Switzerland and I & A are in Mexico, taht could be tricky. If the mother is unfit, or just doens't want to do the mother thing at this point in her life, he should be able to get custody.
I think its really good that the grandparents hes living with are so willing to let V. have open involvent with I. I think it would be a good idea to form a trust relationship between you, V. and the grandparents so that if V. did want to pursue custody they would be more willing to easily let him be with his father instead of feeling like they will lose all contact with him. I mean they are raising him and obviously love him but his father has rights to him too ya know? Totally send the support payments to them and not A. it sounds like all shes into is her partying and some of the things shes said are really scary and not appropriate for children at all which leads me to believe shes not using the money V. sends for I. shes using it for her partying which is just wrong. I wish you the best of luck with this though PM me if you need someone to talk to further.
I see nothing wrong with directly speaking with the g-parents and sending them child support if they are in fact the ones supporting i.
what a hard situation, good luck.
thanks!
you know, i feel weird about this because i feel like i'm on the wrong side. i want to support a single mama! sisterhood and all that, and now i'm on the side of the (not willingly, but factual) absentee father.
we've went into this assuming she was raising the child and doing a good job at it. and we've tried to get a conversation going, to be very respectful of her, we tried to make it very clear that she was the primary parent and we'd respect all her decisions, that we wanted merely dh's involvement, that we wanted to develop a relationship based on trust and friendship with her, that we would never enter into any kind of fight over i. and only wanted what was best for him. she just wasn't ready for any kind of discussion with us. regarding dh's involvement, her attitude is very much "whatever". she let's him do his thing but doesn't care much.
the real difficult thing about talking with the grandparents, is that in a sense we're starting all over where we began with a. a long while ago. we have no idea if they want to have any contact with us or what they think about dh. we don't know if they'd want to receive the child support. meanwhile, if they are not ready to talk to us, a. might get pissed off and cut off contact with us. as far as we know, she's still got legal custody of i., and she could pretty much dissapear with him, and keep us from ever seeing him again if she wanted. so that's hard.
i've always wanted to get a relationship going that's based on honesty and trust, and everything is full of lies and sneaky-ness, and that includes a. and us. now, we're thinking dh will just start calling the grandparents to talk about i. and get to know them, and later he'll just mention the money he's just sent - and see how they react. also, dh has promised her he'd never sue for custody. and he would. it's a very last resort thing to do for us, but if i. is unsafe or if he wanted us to do it, we certainly would go to court. we have been thinking about that, we're worried since the grandparents are rather old, and the might not be around or up to raising him forever, and if a. doesn't change her ways until then (of course, i have no idea about international custody cases, i think it would get damn complicated), we'll see.
dh has actually asker her if she wanted to get a brazilian passport for i., and she's agreed. and he only did so to cover our asses in regard to paternity. we want to establish paternity as quick as possible, so we would not have to do it in case of a legal battle, and we want to do so without having to do a paternity test (she's made conflicting statements regarding paternity to dh and other people, so while we think i's probably dh's son, we don't really think we can trust her - and dh has clearly fallen in love and wants to parent i. regardless of the bio issues, and is afraid he'd lose him if he was not his bio son).
so. there's a whole of things to freak out about, but i guess we'll just try to take it one day at a time. and right now, things don't look too bad.