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 10: The Preliminary Hearing

The preliminary hearing date arrived faster than I expected. Robert and I sat in family court on hardwood benches while the judge reviewed initial filings at her desk. Dale showed up 10 minutes late wearing a wrinkled button-down shirt that looked like he’d pulled it from the bottom of a laundry basket.

The judge leaned forward in her chair and looked directly at Dale with a serious expression. She asked him to explain specifically what problems he saw with the children’s current living situation and why he thought they would be better off with him.

Dale started talking fast about how I had replaced him with Robert and how I cared more about money than family values. He said I was teaching the kids that material things mattered more than love and that planning another baby showed I never really cared about our family together.

The judge interrupted him twice to ask about the children’s actual welfare, like their schooling or health or safety, but Dale kept going back to his feelings about being replaced. He talked about how he always wanted a big family and I had denied him that dream and now I was living that dream with someone else.

The judge’s face showed she was not impressed with his answer at all. She made notes on her papers and asked if he had any specific concerns about how the children were being cared for right now. Dale said they were probably fine physically but emotionally they were learning the wrong values from me.

Chapter 11: An Unexpected Ally

After the hearing ended, Robert and I walked out of the courthouse into the parking lot. I checked my phone while Robert started driving us home. There was a text from an unknown number that just said it was important and asked if I could talk.

It was Melissa. She wrote that she needed to talk to me about Dale’s pattern of behavior with their daughter and that she thought I should know some things before the case went further. I showed the text to Robert and he said I should at least hear what she had to say.

The next morning I drove to the coffee shop she had picked. Melissa walked in right on time and I recognized her from the photos I had seen years ago. She looked tired and older than I remembered. She sat down across from me and immediately started apologizing for believing Dale’s version of our marriage back when they got together.

She said after living with him and having his baby, she finally understood that I had been telling the truth all along about his refusal to be responsible. Melissa said she felt stupid for falling for his romantic talk about big families and true love when he had no actual plan for supporting any of it.

She told me that Dale currently owed her over $7,000 in back child support and the court had to threaten him with jail time just to get him to pay anything regularly. She said he only saw their three-year-old daughter maybe twice a month even though he was supposed to have her every other weekend.

Melissa offered to testify in my custody case about Dale’s financial deception and his pattern of not following through on parenting responsibilities. She said she wished someone had warned her before she got pregnant and she wanted to help protect my kids from Dale’s manipulation.

I called Hadley from the parking lot after Melissa left. Hadley said she was cautiously optimistic about having Melissa as a witness but warned me that Dale’s attorney would definitely try to paint her as a bitter ex-girlfriend. We scheduled a meeting to go over Melissa’s testimony and make sure she understood what to expect during cross-examination.

3 days later, my phone buzzed with a text from Dale that was full of anger and accusations. He called me and Melissa vindictive women who were teaming up to destroy him. He wrote that I was poisoning Melissa against him just like I had poisoned our kids against him.

I took screenshots of everything and forwarded them to Hadley without responding to Dale at all. Hadley texted back within an hour saying this was perfect evidence of Dale’s inability to take responsibility for his own actions.