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 for Affidavit, stating these details agreed upon Argument in OFW Relating to Schools; Now school selection very important.
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