My parents divorced in like 2015-2016, and ever since, I’ve been living with my dad. He’s a narcissistic and manipulative liar (or so according to my mom, she’s not wrong though). For years he’s been telling my older brother and I that my mom doesn’t love us and shit like that. Whenever he said something seemingly “legal”, I never argued because I believe he was right, and I didn’t really know too much about that stuff. For the past year, I’ve been working on ways I could move in with my mom without causing an uproar. A couple of weeks ago, I was able to access their custody order, and I found they have (or had) joint custody between my two brothers and I (my brothers are now 18 and 19), with no set visitation schedule. He told me a while back it was ordered that I stay with him on the weekdays, and I stay with my mom on the weekends (even if that were true, which it isn’t, he’d have been violating for years). With that being said, he’s been restricting me from seeing or staying with my mom, both in general and as punishment. He says that since I’m only 16, he can control where I physically reside. I spoke to my school counselor today, and showed him the document. He said that since there was no set visitation, I should be with both my mom and dad for at least half of the week (or to their discretion), and that he can’t stop me from going to my mom, “even if I was the worst kid in the world.” Honestly, there’s a few things my dad has done which, if I got the authorities involved, would probably speed up the process of me living with my mom, but I also want to take her opinion into consideration. She said she wants to take me, but her house is full, since she has hella kids there (like 6 of my siblings and my baby niece). There’s probably a lot more I could say, but this is basically a rundown. I honestly don’t know where I’m going with this, but I need to get this off my chest. Who better than a bunch of strangers who might be going through the same thing.
Also remembered this after I finished writing, he’s a shitty parent (if you already don’t think that after reading). My mom divorced him (no this is not the only factor) because he was always gone, and almost never took care of me and my brothers (one of them is a nonverbal autistic with OCD). He did, and is still doing, the same thing with my stepmom. He’s always gone, and leaves my stepmom my half-sisters (one of them has 1p36 deletion syndrome). Whenever she forces my dad to take care of them even for one singular day, he doesn’t even do it. He always makes me or my stepsister do it, even when he’s free. His only defense is that he’s the breadwinner of the house, and he isn’t wrong. This is literally my first time posting something to Reddit so sorry for the dump, which is more or less not in chronological order.