To AbuDrake
I am curious as to why you offered Taylor such a generous settlement for the divorce and how it appears she came out with so much less?
Also, why did she give up custody of your son? From the way it sounds, you have full custody, not shared custody? TIA.
I saw this storm coming and wanted to avoid it. I figured that money can be replaced, but time and good will cannot. I figured that I'd take the financial hit, and save either of us from losing money/focus/mental health. How I wish she'd taken any of those initial offers!!
We can only guess at what she was thinking when she sent Drake up here; I can only tell you what she said...and that changed after I went and got him. On 26SEP16, she sent an email (unprompted) entitled "Drake's living situation" and it said only "
I am going to agree to Drake coming to live with you for the school year. I'm done fighting. You win. There are certain things that need to be discussed between you and I. When is a good time?"
On the phone, she then relayed that they'd not been getting along, and that she thought it would be best if he came up to live with me instead. So I booked it down to Florida, picked him up the following day, and once Drake and I were back in my hotel room for the night she added a medical component to her story. (It wasn't credible then, and is even less so now.)
Adding to that is that she saw the writing on the wall about how the final court hearing would go. Because I knew that it would take a detailed understanding of the case to see the dynamics at work here (more than a 2 day trial), and that many people with relevant opinions about Taylor would be unwilling to testify in court, I had requested a private Guardian Ad Litem to do a detailed investigation, and give a report to the court. This is very important: she refused to meet with the GAL. She refused to even tell her side of the story, or to let the GAL see her interacting with Drake. Such a move was tantamount to conceding the custody battle. I still don't understand why. Her official reason was that 'she didn't want to see her son put into the system.' That's a pretty odd reason to give custody to the other parent, and I don't believe her. But I also don't know her true motives.
I do want to say that I respect the courage she displayed in sending him up to live with me. That took a lot of guts and humility, and really shows that she was putting Drake's best interests first. All subsequent actions to 'get him back' (to include her official story that she didn't intend to send him up to live with me at all) have been
pro forma and I get it...she needs at least plausible deniability of having given up custody. Our society is not kind to women who make that kind of decision; this is a face-saving measure. It's not fair - women shouldn't be judged for not being the primary caretaker of their children- but our society is still pretty damn sexist in that regard.