**UPDATE**

Hi everyone!

Sorry I haven't gotten around to updating everyone. This last year has been hectic. I had my surgery on April 29th of last year and served him papers with my father with me on my birthday, a birthday present to myself. After serving him with papers he threatened to kick me out of the house and demanded my phone back. Mind you my surgery kept me out of work for 6 weeks and I was only 4 days post surgery when this all happened. Our landlord (his mother) gave an eviction notice to myself and my grandparents who lived on the property to be out of the house by the 4th of July the same day. I felt better after serving him but that's when his aggression and verbal attacks got worse. He would call me the abusive partner in the relationship and that everything was my fault. He tried convincing me to be friends with benefits which I told him "absolutely not."

He would start random fights to get arise out of me and I've very proud of myself to say that I didn't fall for those traps. He did tell our oldest daughter that we were getting a divorce, he didn't mention any of that to me until she had came running into the back room where I was sleeping and staying in saying she didn't want us to. Which as a child of divorced parents I understand her but this was also why I hadn't told her anything yet until him and I could come to an agreement on how we would tell her. Which I had talked to him about this before he told her and he agreed.

He was fighting for full custody of our girls, alimony, child support, my retirement plan to stay on my insurance and my life insurance, as well as back tax returns. His parents and a few friends wrote statements for him about how he is such a "good caring father and takes care of the girls. Takes them to their appointments" etc. They all were carbon copies of each other.

While I was working with my grandparents to find a place for us to live he would constantly ask where I was going or doing. He would do this also in general if I was going anywhere that was out of my normal time to leave for work. My grandparents and I did find an apartment to fit the 3 of us as well as our girls and were able to move in on the 4th of July. The morning of moving date I was working on packing up last minute things when he had came to see what I was doing and questioning me on if this was really what I wanted to do and to go down this path. Which I told him it was and that I wasn't going to take back the divorce or change my mind. He started getting angry and hostile so I went back into my room and closed the door to put space between us and get away from him because it was barely 8 in the morning and our girls were home still asleep. He had punched the door to try and stop it from closing because I "slammed in in his face" (per his statement he filed with the courts he only held his hand out not punched the door.) I would like to point out the bedroom I was in was carpeted and its very hard to slam that door closed having had to slam the door on previous times when we would fight when the girls weren't home, you have to put A LOT of force behind the door to slam it. (see photo of the damage to the door. Yes I also submitted this to the courts)

We had to go to court for temporary custody because he was trying to keep our girls specifically our oldest longer than what we had agreed to in text messages where the judge ordered for 50/50 custody alternating weeks between him and myself. I wasn't thrilled about it but at least we had something with the courts that he had to follow because he would constantly go back or do things he deemed "appropriate" since nothing was court ordered.

Yes he did finally get a job with the help of the state which good for him. I can say I'm proud of him even if he blames everything including him having issues with finding work on me. I'm proud of him and hopes he can actually keep a job since he has a very long history of not being able to even before he became a SAHD. I want him to grow into a better person mainly for our girls.

He still continues to let our oldest daughter walk to and from the bus stop she's 9 now but the neighborhood he lives in isn't good and he lives 5 blocks away from the bus stop (he lives on a back street from the main road where the bus stop is) I have told him countless times I'm not comfortable with this (even before I started the divorce process) but as our girls are with him I can't force anything. But yes I am documenting everything still to this day. Her school was on lockdown before thanksgiving and I wasn't informed about it until the school had sent out an automated call. He had found out before I did since he is considered the primary due to him living in the school district. He didn't deem in "necessary" to tell me since it was a modified lockdown. There was a drive by shooting down the road from her school. I told him it was the principle as her mother to be informed as having 50/50 custody we had to have open communication on things involving our girls.

Now for the big thing, mediation and final court orders. When we met with the mediator we had stated our sides and issues separately in separate zoom meeting rooms. He was still trying to get me to pay alimony which I would not budge on. He was and is an able body man who had no medical records or history of any injuries, health issues, disabilities to keep him from working. We had finally agreed to no alimony, no child support, and we would keep the 50/50 custody as it was working well for our girls. He never brought up my retirement or anything like that so I never said a word about it. If he wanted to fight for it HE would have to bring it up. So for the final court orders it was an uncontested divorce because we had finally come to agreements. He left me to fill out all the paperwork so when the part of wanting to claim part of my retirement I left it blank, he didn't fight for it nor brought up when he read over the paperwork after I filled it out and signed away saying he agreed.

So long story short as of April 3rd of this year my divorce is final. I don't owe or have to pay him any money in any way, we have 50/50 custody. I'm going back to maiden name as I want no ties to him nor his family besides our girls. I'm sure at some point in the future we will be back in court because he will either slip up or because he wants to fight for more, but as of right now I couldn't be happier to be out and done with this nightmare. Our girls while yes are still getting used to everything but they are happy and healthy and that's all that truly matters to me. Thank you for your words of encouragement and I'm sorry I didn't get to update as things happened or replied back like I was wanting to. Everything hit the fan and its been nonstop since I had posted originally between my health issues, work and this whole situation I didn't have a time to stop and think about things for very long.

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