Ah, thank you Unwritten and Brain Hurts! It really gives me a boost to read compliments like that. Even I am impressed with how the OC relationship has worked out. But it is a lot to do with his personality. The moment we went to get him to bring him to live with us when he was 3 years old, he attached himself to me and loved me with such passion that there was no way I could not love him back (despite the inevitable pain at the beginning). He spent the first year of his life with us obsessively drawing family portraits with us all together and pictures of me pregnant with him in my belly. He has never once mentioned a single word about his biological mother or expressed a hint of sadness or loss at moving country. He still gets incredibly upset if we happen to mention the time before he came to live with us and he can't look at any photos of his brothers as babies without collapsing into a heap in tears because he wasn't there to see those things. He has never established a close relationship with my husband at all, so I think it also helped me adjust knowing that if he had to make a choice between us, it would be me every time and that there is no relationship between them that would impinge on our other kids' relationships with their father. My other boys were also amazing in their openness to accept and love him. But that was partly because of my ground work teaching them that they had another brother right from the start of their lives. They have always known about him, so it has never been a surprise.

The only thing I am slightly anxious about is the point at which OC gets old enough to understand that he came into existence through something that was so painful to me. I think it won't be too many more years before he really starts to ask questions about why and how I came to be his Mum, especially given that he is black and I am white. But I guess I will deal with that when the questions come.

This simple description is really helpful!

Thanks Abrrba!

Answer each question with honesty when it comes. I'm adopted and the hardest part of an adoption is the lack of identity even though at that time (UK 1950s) adoptive parents/children were carefully matched.

How marvelous to be able to grow up with half siblings. Every adoption is full of pain but this makes it much easier.

He will test your love to the limit as a teenager. I was a terror.

Your children sound so wonderful, challncheese. That's probably because they have such a wonderful Mother to teach them.

Thanks Brain Hurts! They are really sweet and lovely - even if I do say so myself

I am feeling a bit down this week. I have been pushing so hard to make progress in several areas: securing all our assets (the car my husband has hidden is the main one); preventing WH from returning to the country now he has left (trying to cancel his visa); and trying to build evidence to justify a subpoena of financial records for OW and WH so that I can quantify the amount of financial support - and claim it back in the lawsuit.

But all this fighting is exhausting and this morning I feel as though I might not be able to prevent WH coming back next week. That means he will see OW, disturb us here, possibly get arrested (because I have a restraining order against him that prevents him from coming to the house, but I don't think that will keep him away) and take back control of the car, which he has hidden with a friend of his somewhere here.

I just feel like he somehow has the upper hand if he is able to come back here and it will cancel out all the progress I have made since he left.

The main elements of my plan are:
1) End the affair - exposure and follow up. Get WH to leave country to he is away from OW.
2) Clear the fog - Prevent WH from returning to the country. Try to cancel residence permit. Promote conditions to cause conflict in relationship with OW (follow up on employment consequences of threats, police, courts, nursing council, etc).
3) Promote maximum discomfort in his new life. Securing all family assets, pushing for large maintenance order, garnishment order (taking money directly from his pay check), obtaining full financial disclosure incl hidden assets in other countries, ensuring that court cases brought against me become a financial drain on him, committing as much of WH's money as possible to visitation (requires international flights, car and apartment hire twice a month).
4) Be the lighthouse. Never get angry. Be consistent, loving, honest and firm. No contact. Plan B.

I am on point 2 and doing preparations for point 3. Point 1 was successfully completed. Point 4 is ongoing.

If he retrieves the car, he will be stopped by the police as this was reported as stolen. Cool if he does not know that :-)

Yep! And he will also be arrested if he tries to get into the house - so I guess I do have alternative plans in place just in case i am not able to keep him out of the country. But I am not 100% confident in the police since they seem to take a lot of prodding in order to do anything, so I hesitant to rely on them as my main intervention plan.

Some good news this morning: the US Embassy has written to the department of home affairs, notifying them that my husband should no longer have a residence permit since his contract here is finished. Hurrah! Now I just have to do the leg work getting home affairs to issue a formal notification to embassies that his permit number is not valid. And then I might be able to breathe a little....

Good job chalkncheese.

I'm really stressed about the idea that WH might be here next week. Despite all my work to keep him out, I am worried he could still make new plans. He has told our mediator for our parenting plan that he will be available to meet in the neighbouring country on Wednesday. But I am worried that he is saying that just in order to get me to travel (the mediator appointment is 6 hours drive away) so I will leave the house unattended. And then he would be able to force his way in and take whatever he wants. The restraining order is in place but I suspect he will disregard it.

I have also heard a disturbing story that there might be a plan to stage a pretend hijack of my car so that the police will not be able to find it - and it will never be returned to me. The PI passed on this information on Saturday. He was able to find the car and took photos. But it is hidden in the army barracks about 20 mins outside of town.

I am organising for a security guard to come and stay in our house until we leave in June. I am quite anxious about our safety now.

I have been worried about your safety for awhile now too. I agree that your WH is not likely to follow any legal restrictions like a RO. He seems like a person who believes the law doesn't apply to him and will use any means necessary to get what he wants. He also seems to have friends in law enforcement and your country seems to be supportive of adultery and a woman being in her husbands control in general, so relying on them is not failproof. This is why I wanted to see you move immmediately instead of wait until June.

I think having security is smart. Can his company pay for or help you with that? They seem to be very supportive of keeping you safe. Where are you with your own plans to move?

Are you saying you have to meet him for mediation? If so that is ridiculous when you have an RO against him. Refuse to meet him for your own safety.

A restraining order is nothing but a piece of paper.
If will only work if you are in a situation, where the other party does not have much at stake and has a lot to loose when he violates the RO.

In your case:
- your husband has his whole family life and potentially his lifestyle at stake
- he obviously has friends in law inforcement, what should he be afraid for? They will not send him to jail for violating the RO and he can laugh about the fine, because he is emigrating anyway
- he has shown in the past, that he will not be deterred by fences and locks, why should he shy away from a piece of paper?

You are in my opinion in a dangerous situation for several reasons. Losing some property is the least of your worries.

Your husband is at crossroads. He is looking at a situation in which he will be paying for a family, that is no longer to his benefit. He will not see the children when he likes. He is not going to have a nice wife who cooks and provides sex. But he will still have to put up a lot of money for this family.
Also, you have made a fool of him in front of the entire community, you have and are threatening his manhood so to speak. To gain his self esteem and position in the community back, he may do things, that we would consider crazy, but that make perfect sense in his line of thinking.

You have seen that this is the way he thinks. What good does it do him to break into his own house, to spend an hour or two with his family? You have now seen to how much trouble he will go, stageing a carjack, just so that you won't have the car!
Sounds like too much hassle for most of us and not helpful in the situation. But if you see it from the point of view of a man, who has to prove to himself and others that he will not tolerate that a woman tells him wat he can and cannot do, it makes perfect sense.

In a best case scenario, he will try to keep the upper hand by harassing you through the courts and trying to limit your access to assets.
In a worst case scenario, he will kill his former family or have them killed and either get away with it or get 4 years and temporary insanity and will be free to start over without paying for a family and school and university.

In your case, it has been repeatedly shown that you are not safe in your home. You should move your assets to a safe place and live in a hotel or with friends for the next few weeks, if you want to be on the safe side.

The worst case scenario may never materialize, but if it does, you can whipe your behind with the restraining order, because it won't save you.

Thanks Unwritten. I think his company would pay for the security guard, but I will sort it out by tomorrow anyway and think about who covers the cost later. I really want to leave now. But I am waiting on residence papers in the neighbouring country for the OC. The rest of the kids and I have dual citizenship for the neighbouring country, but OC has a difficult nationality. My husband gave me the authorisation to travel with him two months ago, so I have the paperwork to get across the border, it is just the visa issue that is the problem. I was also waiting for my husband's company to confirm the details of the move because they are covering the cost. They have been waiting for my husband to tell them how much of the moving allowance he will use - but it seems he has been stalling and waiting until this week to try to take our family furniture. I could phone the only international removals company in the country tomorrow and see how quickly they could pack us up and move. I think I will do that.

I emailed the mediator this morning and said I do not feel comfortable meeting my husband and sent her the restraining order and supporting documentation. I am sure she can "mediate" somehow without me physically being there. She can even call my cell phone.

Hi HappyHeart, this makes A LOT of sense to me. You've really hit the nail on the head. Especially this bit:


Also, since I have now managed to get his residence permit cancelled, I have removed his ability to harass me effectively through courts (since you can only sue people in the place where you are ordinarily resident otherwise the court does not have jurisdiction) - which is likely to make him angrier than ever.

Police and army people are all for sale here. That's the problem. What I have achieved so far has been by doing things properly and doing the leg work to provide witness statements, evidence, and research for lawyers that makes their jobs easy. But my doing things right can't really compete with someone like my husband throwing money around. And you are right, he is making decisions based on ego and vengeance, which I find hard to predict and plan for. The only thing that should prevent him from being too stupid is that he is foreign here. He might have friends, but if you are arrested as a foreign african man in another african country it really is bad. And he didn't manage to get his girlfriend out of jail when she was arrested, so I know he can't do everything he wants.

Moving the family to a hotel for at least this week while he is in the country is a good idea - especially if I can get a permanent security guard here to prevent WH from coming in and stealing everything. I think he will arrive on Tuesday morning, so at least I have tomorrow to make plans. I will provide updates.

Thank you very much for this thoughtful and useful advice. I am really not emotionally intelligent at all and can't read people. It makes me feel like i have a kind of blindness. So I appreciate the insights of others who can all the more.

Moving to a hotel seems a good idea, especially, if you can do it incognito, so that he does not know where you are.
You cannot stop him from taking things from the house anyway.
As you have to move your posessions out of the country anyway, you could also rent a container and ship the most important ones already. He can then take aunt Sylvia's old sofa if he should break into the house.