My ex filed for emergency custody while I was in surgery. It was scheduled surgery, and he’d known about it for six weeks. He had agreed to keep our son the whole time. The motion says I “abandoned the child without arrangement.” His own text from three weeks earlier says: “Yes I’ll have him Thursday through Sunday, don’t stress.” He attached the same thread to prove I’d been unreachable—and that message was nine bubbles up. I was unreachable because I was under anesthesia.
The hospital sent my attorney a certified timeline of the day. And when she matched it against his motion, the filing timestamp turned out to be 11:04 a.m. I was still in surgery at 11:04. The hospital records showed I hadn’t even been transferred to recovery yet. My attorney asked him how he could have known I was supposedly “unreachable” when the very text he submitted proved he had already agreed to have our son.
Then she noticed something else. His motion claimed he had been caring for our son when he became concerned about my absence. But the school pickup records showed he hadn’t picked him up at all. My sister had. She had been listed as the emergency contact for years, and she had signed the pickup form that afternoon. My ex had been at work across town. He wasn’t caring for our son when he filed the emergency motion—he was trying to create an emergency that didn’t exist.
At the hearing, the judge asked him why he had filed for emergency custody while simultaneously submitting a text proving the childcare arrangement had been agreed upon weeks earlier. He said he was “concerned something might happen.” The judge asked why he hadn’t called the hospital, my sister, or the emergency contact listed at the school. He had no answer. Then my attorney handed over one final document: the hospital’s admission record showing that my ex had signed the visitor information form six weeks earlier, the same day he agreed to watch our son during the surgery. The judge dismissed the emergency request before the hearing was over.
