Recently, TikToker @_rad_alien learned some new information about the custody battle between his parents long ago. When he was four years old, and his sister was eight, their dad unexpectedly kicked their mom out of the house.
She could not afford a place of her own, so she ended up staying with a friend. When she had a day off work, she would come visit them.
Once their parents’ divorce was final, their mom’s friends took her out to a bar and introduced her to a guy they knew, who had also just gotten divorced. They really hit it off.
Then, @_rad_alien’s mom found out that his dad had cheated on her with the friend she was staying with, so she couldn’t stay with the so-called friend anymore. She had nowhere else to go, except to her home state, where her parents lived.
During this time, another woman moved in with @_rad_alien’s dad. He married this woman and made him and his sister start calling her “Mommy.” They also changed the house phone number so that their actual mom couldn’t call them anymore.
So, she started sending them letters, but they never received the letters because their dad sent her a letter, demanding that she stop trying to contact the kids and to stay out of their lives.
Their mom decided to get a lawyer, but she didn’t have enough money for the retainer fee. She called the guy she met at the bar. He gave her $1,000 and let her move in with him so she could be back in the same state as her kids.
With the threat of legal action, their dad agreed to let @_rad_alien’s sister live with their mom while he stayed with his dad, and they would arrange weekly visitation.
But the very next day, his dad and stepmom took @_rad_alien out of the state without informing his mom and cut off all communication.
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His mom had no idea where he was until the local sheriff tracked them down. A judge ordered his dad to take him back to their home state, but his dad said he would just wait for the sheriff to pick him up.
His mom didn’t want to wait around, so she rented a car and drove through the night to pick him up. When @_rad_alien’s dad was ordered to pay child support, he moved back to the state with the stepmom and started fighting for custody.
His dad’s lawyer argued that it was inappropriate for him and his sister to live with their mom because she wasn’t married to the guy she was staying with, so it would be too emotionally damaging for the kids.
Their mom didn’t want this to hurt her chances of custody, so she broke up with her boyfriend and moved into the only place she could afford, which was a beat-up single-wide mobile home in a dingy trailer park.
When @_rad_alien visited his dad on the weekends, his stepmom forced him to call her mom. She “helped” him write a letter to the judge, saying that he wanted to live with his dad. She also coached him to say that his mom was physically abusive.
One day, his mom’s ex-boyfriend came over because he missed them. When he saw the state of their living conditions, he insisted on moving them to an apartment closer to his house and helped pay the rent.
Finally, the custody battle ended with him living with their mom and her now-fiancé, and his sister living with their dad and stepmom.
A couple of years later, their mom and her fiancé got married. Now, @_rad_alien is trying to process the fact that his dad had been the villain all along, not the hero he thought he was as a child.
“BTW, growing up, I never heard my mom say one bad thing about my dad,” he wrote in the comments section, showing just what kind of person his mom really is.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
