My Ex Left Me For Refusing To Have A Third Child While We Were Broke. Now That I’m Rich And Happy, He’s Suing For Full Custody To “Save” Our Kids. Is He Delusional Or Just Greedy?

Chapter 8: Social Media Warfare

The next morning I checked my phone while getting ready for work and saw that Dale had posted a long rant on social media. He wrote about how the family court system was completely biased against fathers and how mothers could just move on and replace dads without any consequences.

He claimed that men who actually wanted to be involved with their kids got pushed aside while new boyfriends took over their role. His friends filled the comments with support saying things like, “Stay strong brother and the system is broken and fathers have no rights anymore.”

Nobody knew the actual story about how Dale had chosen to work part-time for years while I struggled to pay bills. Nobody knew he’d abandoned me with two kids and all the debt when he moved in with his younger girlfriend. Nobody knew he’d been paying minimum child support while claiming he was too poor to contribute more.

They just saw his version where he was the victim and I was the villain who’d moved on to someone with more money. I screenshot everything like Hadley had taught me, saving each post and comment with timestamps. My hands shook a little while I did it because seeing Dale twist reality into this story where he was the wronged father made me so angry.

But I didn’t respond or comment or engage in any way. Hadley had been clear that his social media rants would actually help our case by showing his poor judgment and victim mentality. She said judges saw through this kind of performance, especially when someone was more focused on public sympathy than their kids’ actual well-being.

Robert came into the kitchen while I was staring at my phone and asked what was wrong. I showed him Dale’s posts and he read through them with this tired expression. He didn’t get angry or defensive like I expected. He just said Dale was scared because he knew he was losing, and scared people lash out.

Then Robert told me his business partner, Miguel, had offered to testify as a character witness about Robert’s stability and how he’d watched Robert integrate into our family over the past year. Miguel had seen Robert leave work early for Travis’s soccer games and heard him talking about helping Addison with her science project.

He’d watched Robert plan our finances to include college funds for kids who weren’t even biologically his. Miguel wanted to tell the court that Robert wasn’t trying to replace Dale but was genuinely committed to being a positive presence in the kids’ lives.

Chapter 9: The Discovery of Hidden Income

Hadley called me 2 days later with news that made my stomach drop and then immediately fill with hope. Her investigator had discovered that Dale had been working additional under-the-table hours at a friend’s construction company for the past year.

He’d been doing weekend work, cash jobs, and side projects that he never reported for child support calculations. The investigator had bank deposits, witness statements from other workers, and even tax documents the friend’s company had filed showing payments to Dale.

This meant Dale had been deliberately hiding money while claiming poverty. He’d been telling the court he couldn’t afford higher child support payments while secretly earning probably double what he reported. Hadley’s voice was excited when she explained that this completely destroyed Dale’s credibility and gave us grounds to file a motion to recalculate child support based on his actual income.

We could request back payment for all the unreported earnings too. She said this was exactly the kind of evidence that judges hated because it showed intentional deception and disregard for legal obligations. We filed the motion within 48 hours.

Hadley prepared everything with her usual detailed organization, including copies of bank statements showing regular deposits that didn’t match Dale’s reported income, statements from three different workers who’d seen Dale on construction sites, and the company’s tax filings that listed him as a contractor.

The motion requested immediate recalculation of child support, back payment for 18 months of unreported income, and penalties for fraudulent reporting.

Dale’s attorney tried to claim the construction work was just helping a friend and not real employment. He filed a response saying Dale occasionally assisted with projects as a favor, that the payments were reimbursements for supplies or gas money, and that it wasn’t consistent enough to count as income.

But Hadley had bank deposits showing regular amounts every two weeks like clockwork. She had witness statements from other workers who described Dale as part of the crew, not just someone helping out occasionally. She had tax documents the friend’s company filed listing Dale as a contractor with his social security number and everything.

A week later, Hadley called to tell me that Liv had completed her home visit to Dale’s mother’s house. I’d been nervous about what that visit would show, worried that maybe Dale had made the place look better than I remembered. But Hadley said the report was actually helpful for our case.

Dale was sleeping on the couch in the living room because the house only had two small bedrooms and his mother used one while his younger brother used the other. There was no private space for the children to stay overnight. The neighborhood had crime rates significantly higher than ours with multiple break-ins and car thefts in the past year.

Dale had told Liv he was temporarily staying with his mother until he could afford his own place, but when Liv asked about his timeline or savings plan, he’d been vague and defensive. The report noted that Dale had been living there for 3 years since Melissa left him, which didn’t suggest the arrangement was particularly temporary.