Help Angela with legal fees

To anyone looking from the outside in, we looked like a typical family. If you were able to see what went on inside of my home, you would see my children and I are enduring the ravages of my husband's (now ex-husband) psychopathology. What is not apparent to any outsider is my ex-husband suffers from a serious personality disorder, and has become increasingly more controlling and emotionally abusive over the years, to both me and our child.

 

My ex-husband's goal was to convince me I was worthless and powerless; he continues to this day. My self-esteem plummeted and hit bottom. I shut myself off from my parents, my siblings, and my extended family and from the world at large. Of course, my friends and family never gave up on me.

 

My family would come to see me when able to help me and my children. Or I would take my children and my husband (at the time) to visit family but he would threaten my family, my children and myself that we would never see my family for any holiday, ever. I was told over and over again by my husband that I was defective and deserved his malicious actions and words.

 

I have seen a therapist for years now. My self-esteem began to improve, and I came to see things as they really were. I also came to realize living with my husband was damaging my children, and this must end. Due to his abuse, my eldest son from another marriage left to be with his father. I reluctantly let him leave in the best interest of his health. At this point, I finally resolved to rescue my family from the constant trauma.

 

Divorce didn’t end the abuse. Over the years, I have endured my ex-husband's increasingly dysfunctional behavior. He is aggressive to my friends upon first meeting. He yells and talks over everyone with which he is in disagreement. He refuses to look for regular employment, claiming he is unable to find work thereby offering his services as a consultant. He hides all his financial gains from me to include his inheritance, and over the years used his lack of financial income to claim more child support from me. All the while having me pay for childcare during closures related to the pandemic, as I needed to be at work.

 

I now live on my own with my son but am bound to my ex-husband by law. I am forced by the courts to see him 3 times a week during custody exchanges and 2 times a week for video calls. Yes, family court put into a legal binding order that I am to have these unnecessary interactions. Prior to this all exchanges were done through daycare, I would drop off and he would pick up and neither of us would interact. But because of his aggressiveness toward the staff my ex was handed a cease-and-desist order. Therefore daycare exchanges are not permitted. This is extremely taxing on my mental state.