My Ex-husband was just released from a rehab last week. He suffered a closed brain injury, 2 fractures in his neck and a compound fracture on his foot due to a motorcycle accident on March 17th. He expects to have his 13 year old daughter next weekend since it would normally be his weekend to have her. My ex has been pschologically evaluated with narcisstic personality disorder approximately 10 yrs ago. He believes there is nothing wrong with him and even now thinks that his brain is just fine. If ou know anything about that, he is not someone you can reason with and has no empathy because everything is about him. I have been told by his Mother (who has a strained relationship with him) that he drove himself home from the hospital with his wife in the car as a passenger. I am sure the hospital had no idea. His wife has no control over him. She submits to his wishes to avoid confrontations. I am very concerned about the safety of my daughter and need to know what steps I can legally take to ensure her safety. Please do not suggest I talk to the wife. She had me thinking that he was not allowed visitation during his stay in rehab just her since she was his wife. I had to find out for myself by taking my daughter myself after two weeks of this nonsense to find out we were lied to. She has insecurity issues of her own and is known to be untruthful at times. So she is not a reliable source.
Talk to your lawyer ASAP and see if you can get some sort of emergency court ruling, at least for the short term, until your ex can be declared healthy enough to supervise a minor child. Perhaps you can have something put into place where there are supervised visits in a neutral location.
Have you asked him for his discharge paperwork? Before going on the offense, I would just neutrally ask him to provide the documentation of his current status. He may be legitimately fine or his impairment may not be something that affects your daughter's safety. See if you can just get his documentation first and figure out if you even have something to worry about or not.
I really think that you should speak to your lawyer. While he may be perfectly able to care for your daughter, you don't know for sure and you have every right to ask questions and have reassurance that your daughter will be well cared for before sending her to visit.
You should probably have your attorney send him a "friendly" letter as to concerns about his ability to take care of a minor after his recent injuries and ask for the doctor's diagnosis as to his actual condition right now. If he's not forthcoming or you are still concerned, your attorney can do an emergency motion to suspend unsupervised visitation (and not count his wife as a supervisor) until receipt of doctor's assesment of his full competency. Best wishes and God bless!
That depends, what's the nature of the brain injury, or do you not even know that? The current diagnosis is more relevant than the old diagnosis to getting some safety assurances put into place. Does your daughter need to spend time with her dad to put her mind at rest, even if he is a messed up jerk? Do you usually drive her to and from visitation? Regardless of whether you need something done right away, or long term changes to the visitation, basically you need to call your lawyer or legal aid. If you're not going to get any cooperation or information from your ex or his wife, I don't see any other alternative.
I'd go back to court to have visitation shortened to a half day for each day of visitation or maybe supervised visitation?
