# Conidering ending it...visitation question



## arctic fox (Aug 30, 2012)

I am considering leaving my husband of 12 years. My only concern at this point is allowing him visitation with the children (10 & 8).

He is unpredictable in his emotional behavior with them. They never know if he is going to be loving, soft-spoken dad or angry, disciplinary dad. It is often inconsistent and depends solely on his mood for that day or even that hour.

What is more disturbing is his laissez-faire attitude on supervision. On our last vacation, I took our oldest for a walk & left the youngest on a playground with my husband. When we returned, my husband was texting his business partner with his jacket pulled completely over his head to block glare and my youngest had left the playground on his way to the other side of the park. Really, he had gone so far that he was a speck in the distance. Thank god he had on a bright colored shirt that day or I never would have spotted him. After I retrieved my son, I confronted my husband who said he didn't notice our child had gone off but that it was a "safe" park so it was okay. To me, no public place is safe to let a child run off.

Another incident was at a family pool party with his family. The swimming time was drawing to an end, so my husband assured me that he would watch the kids while I went inside to change. When I was done, my husband was inside playing video games with his brother and had left the kids in the pool. His reasoning was that there were other adults to watch them. But the other adults had young children too and were busy watching their own. It was not the other adults' responsibility to watch our children. It was his.

These incidents happen almost every time he is with the kids. He loses track of them or just figures they'll be safe on their own. 

He has also neglected to have the children do their homework on school nights that I had to be out of the house. He never even asked them if they have homework, but said if they did, then they had plenty of time to do it on their own before bedtime. Seriously, how many young kids volunteer to do homework w/o being asked? And at this age, they frequently still need help with questions they have about their assignments. I've had to wake them up early to do their homework before school.

Having said all that, my biggest fear of divorce is him having visitation with the kids. I'm afraid something awful will happen to them because of his lack of supervision while I'm not around. Thankfully, nothing tragic has happened yet because I've always been there to step in. I'm worried because what I see as neglect, the court may not or it will be conidered a case of he said/she said with no actual proof of these things that are going on. Of course, the one time that I had witnesses to this was at the pool party, but no way is his own family going to testify against him.

Does anyone have advice or experience with custody that can tell me what to do about the situation?


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