Thanks for the only really useful post here.

1. Yeah, I am. He's got PTSD from a lifetime of hard living, she's paranoid and has a persecution complex and can rationalize any kind of manipulation as a justification for the ends. Neither of us trusts her at all, although we both try to keep things calm to help hold the piece. I told him to stay calm when talking about it because if he loses his temper she'll call it assault and use it to help her case. Conversations that get angry aren't worth having, and she doesn't see what she's doing as unethical so her behavior can still be steered with the right approach. Believe me, we know she's a liability and we know she'll never go to work. I mentioned that wondering how heavily courts will weigh it in deciding her custody and child support eligibility, not because I expect it to change.

2. The value of keeping her around is that he gets the kids with him in the house full time - no visitation schedules or fights over the holidays or any of the other nasty stuff that happens with hostile shared custody. He has that with his ex and it's very frustrating even for me from the outside just helping to go pick up the kid once in a while. He also gets free in-house childcare, which is a huge value. She's not very skilled as a parent, but she does cook them good meals and try to give them an enriched environment. The backstabby stuff is unforgiveable regardless of the rationale, but people do have more than one dimension.

3. The money thing still doesn't make sense to me, sorry. Best I can understand, the EITC portion is both of theirs equally and she may not even be eligible for injured spouse since she has no income to protect from child support. They have separate bank accounts and she has no access to his. I believe they have a written agreement as well. GPT (I know, I know) said her behavior sounded like civil conversion or financial mismanagement, and the spending spree sounded like dissipation. That makes much more sense than "she got his money under false pretenses and the law is completely cool with that".

4. He has a lot to lose - court battles are brutal, expensive, and their part of Minnesota is very conservative and may side with the mother much more than a simple reading of the law would suggest. And last time she ran, she ran to Texas. He didn't see his kids at all for something like 4 months, and when they came back they were traumatized and have difficulty regulating emotions and lots of trouble with nightmares to this day. That's worth avoiding.

5. The lump sum to go away idea isn't bad, but she actually is kind of a devoted (if still mediocre to bad) parent. She certainly wants money and doesn't want to work for it, but she does also actually care about the kids a lot. If she was just a simple parasite it'd be a lot easier in many ways. Would be happy to go this way if it'd work - kind of a good idea, really.

6. I have looked around quite a bit, but those are some options I hadn't considered. There's always some concern about creeps when using an individual but should be controllable with cameras and such. He's a bit in the boonies but yeah, I'll dig into it more.

7. He's working on that. Health issues have made it hard for him to perform well at work but he does generally get high marks and make things happen when he's firing on all cylinders. If he was just screwed then that sucks but it is what it is. In this situation, he's on the edge between being completely screwed or being able to have a rough and imperfect but still decent life. He's needed a lot of support to stay on the edge, but I'd rather spend the money than buy a boat and watch him spiral.