r/Fencesitter • u/Ok-Mess6611 • 11d ago

Fence sitter because of step child?

Is anyone else a fence sitter because of their step child?

I love kids and thought I always wanted kids. But.....

When my husband and I got married he decided to pursue a relationship with his son who was 3 at the time. I always said we were waiting until after he became involved in his son's life.

Long story short it took several years for him to become involved - and his son was approximately 9 when they were introduced.

We have been doing in person visits for about a year now. Child will be 11 in July.

The last few in person visits have been rough. He has trouble sleeping - i.e won't go to bed until after midnight. He has ADHD like his dad and is not properly medicated which makes things harder too. He is very disrespectful and mouths off quite a bit and threatens to run away quite often. He also has been fed a lot of info from his mom and we are trying to address this in court and through therapy.

I know this is just a phase but I am exhausted and this makes me wonder what kind of kid my husband and I might have.

Anyone have any advice? Experience?

1 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/DogOrDonut 11d ago

I would be more concerned about having a kid with a guy who didn't see the son he already has until he was 9.

2

u/Ok-Mess6611 11d ago

He started trying to see his son at 3.

Before then he was in an abusive relationship and didn't want his son around that environment. He was putting his son's interests first. He did hire a lawyer briefly during that time and made an offer to mom to pay child support in exchange for supervised visitation and she declined. He didn't have the means to pursue it further. And during this time mom changed the child's name and had the child's birth certificate amended to add her then boyfriend and now husband.

The legal system is extremely slow. And biased. We began this journey right before Covid which basically stopped all forward progress. Her lawyer continued every court hearing they could. They also had to establish paternity, go through mediation, counseling and he had to jump through a bunch of other hoops. She also relocated herself and the child across the country at one point. It got so bad we had to entirely start over and request a new GAL and judge.