GIF89a GIF89a Co-Parenting - Malfeasance https://www.malfeasance.io A Cautionary Tale from the Family Court System Mon, 13 Feb 2023 04:24:16 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 Safety / Welfare of the Children https://www.malfeasance.io/safety-welfare/ Fri, 11 Nov 2022 16:10:32 +0000 https://divorce.paynefamily.io/?page_id=938 email_after_convo_re_sleeping_arrangement.pdf https://www.malfeasance.io/document/email_after_convo_re_sleeping_arrangement-pdf/ Mon, 09 Aug 2021 23:19:06 +0000 https://doc.bradpayne.org/?post_type=dlp_document&p=435 Email from Kim on Dec 27th 2019, asking that we go to Dr. James office to discuss details around moving to MN, among other references to Dr. James office being a “safe space.” The very next session is on Feb 14th, and when she gets caught trying to insert this new “verbal abuse” narrative. Over…

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]]> Email from Kim on Dec 27th 2019, asking that we go to Dr. James office to discuss details around moving to MN, among other references to Dr. James office being a “safe space.” The very next session is on Feb 14th, and when she gets caught trying to insert this new “verbal abuse” narrative. Over the following months, she attempts to manipulate her way out of this by holding two stories at the same time:

  1. Admits to Dr. James (after first denying it) that she used this allegation, and that it was unfounded and inaccurate.
  2. Starts to double-down on it with me (after first denying it)
  3. Gets caught inadvertently when I fwd an email from Kim to Dr. James where she is maintaining this accusation of verbal abuse to me, but has admitted to him that it was false. She also started seeing another therapist, without telling Dr. James.

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]]> 2019_11_03_20_25_08.mp3 https://www.malfeasance.io/document/2019_11_03_20_25_08-mp3/ Fri, 06 Aug 2021 13:23:19 +0000 https://doc.bradpayne.org/?post_type=dlp_document&p=333 PlayPauseMute/Unmute

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]]> 2019_10_31_17_15.mp3 https://www.malfeasance.io/document/2019_10_31_17_15-mp3/ Fri, 06 Aug 2021 12:51:52 +0000 https://doc.bradpayne.org/?post_type=dlp_document&p=325 Audio of Kim using profanity around kids, right after bringing it up as an issue, and right before Rowan used “What the fuck?”

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]]> Audio of Kim using profanity around kids, right after bringing it up as an issue, and right before Rowan used “What the fuck?”

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]]> Phone Call 10/16/2020 https://www.malfeasance.io/moving/449/ Sat, 17 Oct 2020 00:07:36 +0000 https://doc.bradpayne.org/?p=449 A phone call following Kim’s recent (same day) progression with her mortgage. Now that she had an additional level of borrowing approval, she gets bolder and makes demands about her plans to take the children to St. Paul. [[ AUDIO ]] Need to cut into clips – file is too big.

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]]> A phone call following Kim’s recent (same day) progression with her mortgage. Now that she had an additional level of borrowing approval, she gets bolder and makes demands about her plans to take the children to St. Paul.

[[ AUDIO ]] Need to cut into clips – file is too big.

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]]> Phone Calls RE: Custody on 9/14/2020 https://www.malfeasance.io/moving/537/ Mon, 14 Sep 2020 20:41:03 +0000 https://doc.bradpayne.org/?p=537 In our weekly call regarding the children, Kim starts her campaign to break the 50/50 arrangement that we had been operating under. She employs the various manipulative tactics that are seen throughout our interactions. Audio Summary Start Time Kim starts “primary caregiver” argument 02:40 Schools, etc. Including recap of past conversations. 14:11 Related: Kim’s Request…

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]]> In our weekly call regarding the children, Kim starts her campaign to break the 50/50 arrangement that we had been operating under. She employs the various manipulative tactics that are seen throughout our interactions.

Audio Summary Start Time
Kim starts “primary caregiver” argument 02:40
Schools, etc. Including recap of past conversations. 14:11

Related:

 
Initial Call – Full  
Follow Up Call – Full  

Manipulative Tactics Used

  1. By this point, I had told Kim that all decisions relating to the future of the children needs to be handled through the lawyers. Not because I wanted to delay the process, not because I wanted to run up legal bills, but because I was aware of the lying and manipulation taking place, and that I could not effectively counter it in-realtime, and having no documentation of the agreements that were or were not made. Despite this, Kim tries to strong-arm me into saying something, or agreeing to something directly to her in a series of calls that were intended to be used for discussing the ongoing raising of the children. 
  2. She bombards the conversation with assertions that I don’t agree with. If I stop to argue each point, she will “blow up the conversation” saying that I’m simply argumentative, or not willing to work. If I don’t argue the suppositions that she makes, she keeps making the assertion over, and over again so as to make it seem as though it is reality.
  3. She talks over you, with rapid points that are blatantly false, while maintaining this “fragility” and making accusations of being “verbally abused” if you counter one of her points, putting words into my mouth that I didn’t say.

  4. She is very deliberate about which points she’s going to argue, because she’s been setting them up:

    1. “No reason to believe that I’m going to keep the kids away from you..” an off-shoot of the refrain that she used since the beginning of divorce talks. “I’d never do anything to limit the time the kids have with you, I’m worried that you’d do that to me, because YOU have the power in the court system…” while she had been plotting all along to do precisely that.
    2. “you go into the basement…” a point that she complained to during the implementation of our “in-house separation” that I was not isolating myself to the basement “enough”
    3. “We don’t communicate…” I had been pushing for over a year to work on the co-parenting relationship, in a post-divorce model. She refused to engage in that, going so far as to say that “trust is not required for co-parenting,” both in conversation and it writing. She argues back and forth on why she’s unwilling to follow the state-provided framework for communication.
    4. “You didn’t have room’s setup..” She intentionally gave me very little notice before moving out of the house, and despite her claims of needing to tell the children on a timeline, together, she started telling Rowan and the neighbors about her moving out before she brought it up with me.
  5. The points about being the primary caregiver was clearly the point that she needed to stress. When coupled with a manufactured urgency in needing to move, she believed the “primary caregiver” role would allow a decision for her to take the kids with her. Once established with her, this would be hard to change. So, she perjured herself relating to any detail in order to establish herself as the “primary caregiver:”
    1. Medical
      1. Oliver chipping his tooth, and she dropped him off at my house with swollen face
      2. Antibiotics
      3. Medical records of visits
    2. Selection of, and involvement in, the kids’ daycares
    3. Involvement with arranging babysitters
    4. Manipulated neighbors and others into providing testimony that they were not comfortable with. 
  6. Trying to say that I don’t have the capacity “because of my super-intense job”
    1. I have made offers to quit my job and stay home with the kids, Kim derails that conversation, stating that I HAVE to be the bread-winner for the family
    2. I told her, that “I would make things work,” because the kids are my priority. The past year has been a demonstration of that.
      1. I took off work from October to January to focus on this divorce.
      2. I moved to Minneapolis days after she was granted the rights to take them, jeopardizing my job stability.
      3. I have been working 1/2 time in order to deal with constant issues coming out of Kim having care of the kids (e.g. Newman, etc)
    3. I started a new job in 2019, as we were discussing getting a divorce, in order to possibly have more flexibility, as my prior job certainly did not. In my new job, I was in way over my head, and needed to “earn my spot” in a project, that ended on June 15th. I needed to deliver this project in order to keep demonstrate my ability to perform in this new role. Kim took full advantage of this, acting as though this initial vigorous schedule was a permanent thing. 
      1. I hadn’t worked more than 40hrs a week since having kids, until this job
      2. Even when working in Duluth and Alpharetta, I took the kids to, and picked the kids up from school
      3. I took days off of work to take the kids on field trip, participated in other school events. I have always had the flexibility and desire to do this on my own, absent divorce “in the air.”
      4. Kim has shown neither the ability, nor desire to participate in the kids’ schools, until divorce came into the conversation. And going through the financial records, it’s clear that A LOT of her behavior in 2019 is explained in hindsight because she was already strategizing on how to manipulate the divorce process

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]]> Conversations Following “Wellness Check” Text From Dr. James https://www.malfeasance.io/moving/360/ Tue, 18 Feb 2020 04:28:41 +0000 https://doc.bradpayne.org/?p=360 Dr. James sends a “wellness check” text, which among other things asked that this “new narrative of abuse” not take hold before he had a chance to clinically diagnose it. I was taken aback by the mention of abuse, and asked Kim about it. After “assurances” that she had no idea what he was talking…

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]]> Dr. James sends a “wellness check” text, which among other things asked that this “new narrative of abuse” not take hold before he had a chance to clinically diagnose it. I was taken aback by the mention of abuse, and asked Kim about it. After “assurances” that she had no idea what he was talking about, we had the first conversation outside of therapy in quite some time. I recorded it, because I had lost all trust in Kim months prior to this, and needed a record of what was said.

[[ IMG_TXT_MSG ]]

Moving to Alabama

Because we were in a cooperative place, and we didn’t discuss anything outside of Dr. James’ office, I ask Kim to elaborate on her plans for moving to Alabama that she had just sprung on me 3 days before in Dr. James’ office. Below is what she said:

Plan Details:

Priorities:

TODO:

  1. Dr. James’ txt message
  2. Audio of Kim denying abuse was mentioned in the 2014 therapy session

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]]> Kim Springs Her Plan to Move to Birmingham in Last Joint Session with Dr. James https://www.malfeasance.io/moving/355/ Fri, 14 Feb 2020 22:14:17 +0000 https://doc.bradpayne.org/?p=355 Background We had been discussing plans to move to Minnesota as a part of this divorce. We had been discussing what timing would be best for the kids. We had disagreements about things, most notably how to determine the locale for the two houses that would be good for the kids, and acceptable to both…

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]]> Background

We had been discussing plans to move to Minnesota as a part of this divorce. We had been discussing what timing would be best for the kids. We had disagreements about things, most notably how to determine the locale for the two houses that would be good for the kids, and acceptable to both of us. Kim first proposed that we “get a duplex” and each live on one side. I thought this situation was rife for unnecessary complications and confrontation, but Kim stood her ground and insisted. We took the matter to Dr. James who agreed that the there would be too many issues for the children and for us, who didn’t have a friendship-type relationship anywhere on the horizon.

After the duplex issue was put to rest, we started to discuss which areas of the metro we preferred. Kim was adamant that she had to live within the city limits of St. Paul or Minneapolis.  This was always a strange quirk with her, and again this quirk became more of serious problem. She absolutely refused to consider even first ring suburbs…even though (in my opinion), many areas you cannot tell what is Minneapolis or St. Paul proper vs what is a suburb. She would make absurd claims to support this like “it’s cheaper to get housing in the city.” And since my priority was always to find the best school district suited for the kids, then find housing from there [[ LINK ]], I did not find this to be a rational position.  We were at an impasse at this, and Kim was proposing as late as Dec. 29th [[ LINK ]] that we discuss the details for moving back to Minnesota in Dr. James’ office, because it was bound to create heated discussions.

February 14th, 2020 Session with Dr. James

We were supposed to be discussing the details for making plans to move back to Minnesota, as well as continuing to build a foundation for a working co-parenting relationship, after coming out of a marriage in which it had been repeatedly demonstrated that one of the people in the marriage objectively could not be trusted to be honest [[ LINK ]], do what’s right [[ LINK – HOUSE ]], or exercise good judgment with the children. [[ LINKS – sidewalk, COVID, Newman, etc ]]

Instead of doing this, Kim springs the plan to move to Birmingham, and take the kids (by decree). She was going to file for divorce in the next two weeks to make this happen.

When I calmly confronted her about this, somewhat shocked at how she could propose insisting on moving forward without any consideration for me, the children, or my input for the children, she dropped in an accusation of being “abused.” Something to the effect of “while you were abusing me…” Dr. James picked up on it, I didn’t pay it any attention, because I’m used to this kind of hyperbole coming out of Kim [[ LINKS to VERBAL ABUSE ACCUSATIONS IN OFW; audio from end of 3/17 ]].  This turned out to be another detail that was not just spur of the moment, but a tactic that she intended to use to gain leverage in the divorce. Kim got called out via text a few days later, and her plan fell apart as she tried to lie and manipulate her way out of it.

 

[[ FIND HOME FOR THE BELOW  — NOT THIS POST ]]

It turns out that almost every example of the noted confrontational behavior that Kim was displaying at the time had a payoff that she would use in the emergency hearing. She had been planning for over a year about exactly how she was going to isolate the kids from me, for no other reason than either she wanted the children “all to herself,” or she was planning on surviving financially with the support of someone else. She has proven time, and time, and time again that she is incapable (or unwilling) to maintain her own finances. [[ LINK ]]

  1. Had a babysitter write a pretty blatantly false affidavit about my participation with the children. In the affidavit, she had the babysitter make claims like Kim was the only person who communicated or arranged her services (demonstrably false with txt messages) [[ LINK ]]. One of the things that she stated was that I “just immediately went to the basement,” [[ LINK ]] and didn’t talk to her or kids. This was not true – but was precisely why Kim was pushing for that to be the case, telling me that her confrontational behavior would subside if I were to just create more distance and essentially live out of the basement as if it were a separate apartment.
  2. She was pushing me to travel more for work, because she knew “how critical it was for me to settle into my new job.”
  3. She was complaining about the pace of progress on making plans, but she refused to use the project management framework that I setup (although she offered to track my progress).

 

 

TODO:

  • Add links to docs where indicated
  • Find place for the decrypting of the confrontational behavior

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]]> Use of Profanity Around the Children https://www.malfeasance.io/co-parenting/324/ Sun, 03 Nov 2019 13:54:27 +0000 https://doc.bradpayne.org/?p=324 After having repeated discussions about our difference of opinion regarding the use of profanity around children, and making no headway with Kim, I brought the issue to Dr. James to see if he had an opinion, and he could either give me another perspective, or gain some ground with Kim. Until that point, when I…

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]]> After having repeated discussions about our difference of opinion regarding the use of profanity around children, and making no headway with Kim, I brought the issue to Dr. James to see if he had an opinion, and he could either give me another perspective, or gain some ground with Kim. Until that point, when I had said that she (although, I’d use “we” so as to not “attack her”) should not use profanity (especially fuck, shit, etc.) around the kids, her response was that “we’ll just tell them that there are grown up words and kid words.”

I was not satisfied with this response, because it implies a level of comprehension and reasoning that simply doesn’t exist in children 18months and 3yrs old who are just learning how to use words, and are using mimicry to learn. There is an email that documents this concern to Dr. James on Oct. 29th. I spoke with him about that email in a session on Oct. 30th, and then on October 31st (Halloween), as I was bringing the kids home from trick-or-treating, Kim was in the driveway talking to our neighbors. As I joined her with the kids, her use of profanity didn’t stop, so I recorded an example of it:

Just a few days later (Nov. 3rd), I was giving my 3yr old daughter a bath, and I couldn’t find a bar of soap that I had just dropped under the suds. After 30 seconds of looking for it, I said “What in the world?” At which point, my 3yr old daughter said “No daddy, you have to say ‘What the fuck?'” The appropriate use of context was what threw me the most off-guard. I very gently told her that is not a word for her to use.

I didn’t appreciate being put in the situation to have to tell my daughter to not use a word that she hears Kim use all of the time – she definitely shouldn’t be reprimanded for it, and wasn’t old enough to understand why she couldn’t say it, if Kim always did. I brought this up to Kim as it happened, her reaction is below.


The lack of willingness to co-parent on this, and then the immediate manipulation of what was being said was the more frustrating than predicting this just a few days prior. Kim immediately falls into using manipulation of the situation:

  1. It’s completely normal – “every 3yr old says this …”
  2. “Don’t say that 3yr old don’t say that…” (I didn’t say they don’t, I said they shouldn’t)
  3. “Don’t attack me. That’s not how you approach things. What you should have said was [almost exactly what I did say].”

I’m not sure how much of this is due to the fact that she seemed to have thought I was telling her this anecdote as a laughable moment to share…which was odd, due to the very recent discussions and disagreements about profanity, including with Dr. James.

 

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]]> Outline of My Concerns with Kim’s Personality and Parenting https://www.malfeasance.io/schools/313/ Tue, 29 Oct 2019 12:13:22 +0000 https://doc.bradpayne.org/?p=313 By October 2019, Kim and I had made the decisions to “de-couple.” Until this point, I had to “hold back” my objections to Kim as a parent (or as a partner), because she had made it perfectly clear that she was willing to let a little spat escalate into a justifiable reason to breakup a…

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]]> By October 2019, Kim and I had made the decisions to “de-couple.” Until this point, I had to “hold back” my objections to Kim as a parent (or as a partner), because she had made it perfectly clear that she was willing to let a little spat escalate into a justifiable reason to breakup a household with two small children. I had conceded that I wouldn’t be happy with her as a partner, but was not going to personally allow “silly” arguments be the cause of a broken home for my two kids.

Below is an email to Dr. James that outlined some of my concerns with Kim as a parent, as a partner, and just as a decent person.  I called out the use of profanity as a concern around the children, something that I had brought up a number of times. Just days later, that documented concern would come to a head when our 3yr old daughter corrected me to say “What the Fuck?” instead of “What in the world?”

Alternative text – include a link Link to PDF 

I came to this decision that de-coupling was necessary after Kim absconded with the proceeds from the sale of 399 Curtice, and immediately tried to argue that she was completely justified in doing so, I realized that even if I was willing to concede every little mole hill of an argument with her, I would never, ever, trust her in any way again. She had numerous financial improprieties in the past, but she played both sides of the issue so as to not be addressed:

  1. “I don’t understand finances, because nobody ever taught me, because no one in my family ever had any money” – even though she was 43yrs old and could have/should have taken this upon herself by this time.
  2. “You’re not my dad, don’t treat me like I’m a child by trying to get involved with how I spend my money!” This is what she would say when I tried to get involved in getting a handle on the household finances and understand where her income was going.

With 399 Curtice, she didn’t even feign to offer an excuse; she just said it was “her house,” and she could do whatever she wanted with the money.  The history of 399 Curtice, is a story of its own, but suffice it to say that I unquestionably put more time, money, and labor into that house than she did. This made me realize what she was capable of, and that she would likely never regain my trust, at least sufficient for a healthy relationship. She either never attempted to – even when it was explicitly stated for the benefit of the children in building some kind of working co-parenting relationship. 

I learned a few things over those last months of 2019:

  1. That she cannot be given the benefit of the doubt that she’s not lying straight to your face…about anything
  2. If you simply politely press Kim to clarify a “story” that she’s telling you when it doesn’t make sense, you don’t get very far until you run into one of her avoidance tactics. I had not pressed her much in the past (prior to kids), because there weren’t many issues that were worth fighting over.  Upon having kids, I had positions that I at least wanted to understand the rationale to the opposing position. She would consistently stand her ground, without giving any kind of explanation for the position, and continued this underlying “well, I’ll just leave if I’m not happy (getting her way).”
  3. Kim has a very deliberate and identifiable strategy once you’ve seen the pattern:
    1. She uses what would be a virtue as an exploit for her avoidance tactic for something that she’s doing or planning to do, and sets it up well in advance.
      • e.g. “You’re calling me stupid!” seemingly out of the blue. When I adamantly object to that accusation, she’d use anything like a sigh or a questioning look to be the same thing.
      • Other examples that started with divorce: “You’re calling me a gold-digger,” “I would never do anything to limit/restrict your time with kids – I’m afraid you will,” “Are you seriously going to drag this family to court (rather than conceding moving to Alabama)? I can’t believe you would stoop to that..”
    2. As she has you on egg shells to not make her think that “you’re calling her stupid,” she’d use absurd rationales for her arguments.
      • e.g. She objected to me “spending the money” to put the children on the waiting list for a feeder daycare into the charter school right by our house, in only a few back-and-forths, I shouldn’t spend the $100 admin fee because, “we don’t even know if the kids will want to go to college, so won’t need to go to a good school.” (I later found out the real reason to this example – she wanted to use “bad schools” as part of her justification for the urgent departure with the kids, and that only she was the parent who arranged schools).

 

 

TODO:

  1. Add links to posts, where indicated in the red text.

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