Its the only way i can describe how life is now,Today i find my self sad beyond belief, the house I worked so hard to buy and own over 20 years ago has now turned into a pig sty, since telling my wife i can no longer deal with her and her son's mental issues she's gone on total strike and does no cleaning of the home we are all forced to share untill it sells, a baby sitter watches my 8 yr old and a 5 yr old all day, they trash the place and leave at 5pm, my wife does nothing but step over the mess and go to her room,I still work 2 jobs and at mid night I'm still up trying to clean the place but its a losing battle, my spitefull wife watches as the trash overflows and she refuses to even pick up what falls out of the trash OR change the trash bag when its full, I cant believe she wants it to end like this, she seems to take great pride in trashing the house now, i just dont get it, even though the marriage is over you cant live in filth, but she refuses to pitch in and keep the house even slightly clean, she has not mopped the kitchen floor in over a month, today i'm taking my didgital camera home and taking pictures of the house she refuses to help clean, maybe I can use it to help win custody of my daughter,I'm thinking about mailing a copy of the photos to her father too, she paints me as some flaming jerk and cries the blues to her family about being dumped , I wonder how much the will think of HER when they see how she lets her 8 yr old daughter live so she can grind her axe at me....All through this i still refuse to argue with her and she cant stand it,
I cook for the house every night, but when I work late and I'm not home she refuses to cook, she takes my daughter out for fast food,it makes me sick that she's so lazy.

I see both sides of this situation and really what probably matters the most is the kids. You may have to hire cleaning help with the house until it sells and just deduct this off the selling price before splitting the profit with your soon to be x-wife. You don't say who asked for the divorce, but I am assuming that your wife is unhappy with the changes in her life and feels like why bother. She may have gone into a deep depression triggered by her new cicumstances and this could be why she is no longer functioning. There are cases of people who are so wrecked emotionally from divorce that they shut-down. Have you considered getting her to a doctor to see if there is some medicine that might help her or calling one of her family members? The scary part of what you describe is that it could be the tip of the iceberg and she may be suicidal if you don't get her help. The house is not nearly as important as the people in it. I know this seems like her being spiteful and maybe it truly is, but either way, it does seem like it is a bad sign and should be handled carefully. In the meantime, spend the extra money and and hire a cleaning lady until things are better or the house is sold. Good luck....I know how hard it is to work long hours and still have to do all the housework....I'd kill for a cleaning lady for my house! : )

Over the past few months, you have tried to have her son jailed, threatened to take her daughter away, and, it seems, complained constantly, if your posts here are any indication. I don't blame her at all for "going on strike." You are just as responsible for the state of the house as she is, and if you don't like the way she keeps it, it is your responsibility to clean it. Are you incapable of mopping? A decent father in this situation (aside from the fact that he wouldn't be in this situation) would stop "working late" so he could devote more time to family needs. If your wife weren't there at all, you would have to do 100% of the cleaning - perhaps she sees it as "This is what you wanted, and you'd better get used to it now."

Goes your wife work outside of the home?

Nellie, Trust me i've spent many late nights cleaning up, in fact i was up untill 12am cleaning last night,she seems to find it very necessary to clean well before she has her family over, but after they leave she walks away from it all again,why put up a front for your family?? She is part owner in the house, dont she have ANY pride in her surroundings? The problem my wife has with her son was brought on by her poor handeling of her son's mental issues and her lying to me about the extent of his issues, she was trying to hide it from all the professionals that worked with her son too,her son was running with a bad crowd and allowing minors to have sex in my house and smoke and do drugs in my house, all while my 7 yr old was up stairs with a sitter,the big picture is that she put us at risk for drug raids and law suits from other parents all to protect a kid who was thumbing it in all our faces and doing what he damn well wanted to in spite of being on probation,in my opinion she's as sick, if not sicker than her son,if that was MY son and she brought all this to light for me i would have removed my son from the home and allowed the system to deal with him, he was given his shot at making things right and staying clean and he blew it,why should the whole family be at risk for one bad apple?Do you cut ONE out or put 4 at risk??
what about our 7 yr old? Since she has to watch our family split, do you teach her to be spitefull and nasty, or do you try to make it a peacefull, easy split to reduce the trama? personally I think her whole game is spitefull, nasty and childish, In spite of my bad feelings for my wife I'm trying to put all that aside so my kids dont suffer, I wish she would do the same and for once think about our daughter first.
And as for work, I'm sorry but WORK is what pays the bills and keeps the lights on, so I work when duty calls, it just happened that a big job came up just as all this hit, the late stuff is about over, so I will be doing all the stuff my wife SHOULD have been doing, I'm not scared to stay up late and job out, I'm not LAZY like her, her lazy streak is nothing new, the house has been in poor condition for years,it just goes all the way down when she does nothing. Her new thing is everything in the house is " hers", she's hiding stuff and putting household items away, i told her dont worry, you can have it ALL when the house sells, since she didnt take care of any of it like most REAL women do its all trash anyway. I wish i could post pictures here, i would love for all of you women to see how she is, them maybe you would understand where I'm coming from, My mom worked full time AND raised 3 boys, our house NEVER looked like this, its discusting.

It is NOT true that REAL women clean house. It is clear that you think that raising children and cleaning house is primarily the woman's job, whether or not she works full time outside the house. You only have one young child - even though I am sure that she and a 5 year old can make quite a mess, there is no reason to have to stay up till midnight to clean the house to reasonable standard, unless you don't start till 10 or 11.

No, I would never "cut out" any of my kids. Your evidence of her son's activities stemmed largely from overheard conversations in which he was bragging to his friends, the content of which one should take with quite a few grains of salt, and I suspect the mother's side of the story would be quite different. You have made it abundantly clear that you have long been filled with hatred for the boy - I can not believe that you actually b**ed about his not being dry at night when he was 3!

Don't make the mistake of claiming that your daughter "has" to endure a broken home - at least be honorable enough to admit that YOU are the one choosing to break up her home.

I guess the parts where i mentioned her HATREd for my ADHD son who i redially admit is a hand full went mostly overlooked, HUH? SHE KNOWS he's ADHD and does everything she can to play on HIS weakness and start arguments with him, she's even went so far as to attempt to provoke him to hit her, my # 1 rule with MY son was and is he will NEVER strike women,even though they could use a pop now and then, ;] { sorry, just knew you'd like that :] }
I really love how women have ran the other way from the " traditional" values of the past EXCEPT where it fits their needs best, Like on dates and such, you want everything 50/50 but you'd withc when i didnt open a car door on our first date, right? If it was 50/50 and thats the way you want everything you would open your own door...:]
YUP, i didnt like her kid, but I did my best to deal with him IN PEACE, sadly she didnt give me the same peace with My son, she walked around WITCHING aboit everything like a spoiled child..

Why did you marry someone whose child you did not like, especially when you knew you would be living with him? That was incredibly cruel thing to do. And why would you marry someone who didn't like your kid?

And btw, of course I always open my own car door.

Nelli, I didnt dislike her son when we met, what i did notice was he was very strange,I really tried to take to the child,I had kids the same age and i was very active with them and spent lots of time raising them,I also had friends with kids this age and mine were very "normal", compared with the other kids,mine were potty trained,could dress themselves, etc, very independent,my step son was as backwards as the day was long and it was very hard to get used to, the kid couldnt even wipe his own @ss, thats sad, and most of that was his mothers fault, she babied him.... I was young and stupid, the child had mental issues then, mostly fear of a drunken father and depression traits passed on to him from his mother,I didnt know what was up with this kid,I found this out a few years ago,I took classes to learn coping skills for my ADHD son and my depressed step son. The classes were very informative, they were sponsored by a mental health group called NAMI, { dont know if thats the proper spelling}. You paint me like some over sized jerk for walking away from this problem, but you didnt live it and watch my SICK wife LIE, reason and justify the whole problem and down play everything, the fact is My step-son did no wrong in her eyes, and he put all of us at risk, and that dont work for me.I COULD have helped her gain controll of her son, but ME dealing with him made him SAD, and that didnt work for her,my reply was, TOO BAD, my kids sad too when someone steps up and makes him toe the line,she was SOOO scared the kid would end up back in a mental ward she walked on egg shells and allowed him to do what ever he wanted,MY thing was, so what happens when he has to deal with THE REAL world where no one cares if you snap out when you dont get your way?? MAYBE she was just postphoning the last SNAP that landed him in a nut house, I didnt see that helping the kid, In my opinion We needed to know where the kid was with his mental state and deal with it head on.

He was what, 2 or 3 when you met him? I am so glad for you that your kids were toilet trained and able to dress themselves at that age - I have never met a 3 year old who could completely dress him or herself, and many kids don't toilet train till past three. A huge percentage of boys (including my son as well as his father) are not dry at night for many years after they are dry during the day. There is absolutely nothing abnormal about that.

You horrified me with your statement awhile back about the father "having another life across town" and just about everything you have said since then has confirmed my opinion.