u/Low-Raccoon669

I recently filed a custody case against my children’s father. Snooping through my house, he discovered the filing and has claimed he will try to evade being served. I have text messages as proof. Is this something that will possibly benefit my case?

Initially, he attempted to convince me to “work it out” when I disagreed, he decided he will not be present and has left me with multiple full work weeks ahead, and no help with childcare. I have not yet found a consistent babysitter for my work days as he and I were copacetic and alternated childcare during each other’s work schedules. This has completely stopped on his end after he discovered I was filing for a custody arrangement.
This has been happening the last few weeks and I have since become accustomed to having to take them to work with me.
Despite this, he expects me to take care of the kids when he works overnights. I don’t believe this is my responsibility. He is obligated to figure out his own childcare is he not?
I am no longer willing to “meet in the middle” with him as he is difficult to work with and takes more than he is willing to give.
Should I be concerned in the future court proceedings that this will backfire on me?. I am worried this will end up looking bad on me despite his own disdain for me when I initially was asking for the same accommodations. I have since stopped accommodating him or asking him to accommodate me because he was not showing up when he was told I would be needing him, showing up hours later on his own time, or not at all.
I have been keeping a record on these situations but I think his threats are getting to me a bit.

TW: self harm, emotional distress, emotional abuse

I’ll try to keep this short but it may be a doozy..

My CF (30M) and I (29F) were in an unhealthy relationship for 8 years. There was emotional and physical cheating, initially from him then from me and in the last few years we were really on and off. We have 2 children together (under 6).
Our relationship finally ended with him kicking me out in October 2024 and me living out of my car until I could afford an apartment in February 2025. At the time I was a stay at home mom and attending school trying to finish my degree so I had nothing and no one to help me.
I had sworn off ever getting back with him after that because while we had plenty of issues, if I couldn’t even trust him to keep a roof over my head when I had nowhere to go and no money to get there, I didn’t see how I could forgive him.

What led up to him kicking me out was a huge fight we were having. I’m not sure how it went but we had been fighting like this for a while and at its worst, we would argue until I essentially had a panic attack and/or self harmed (hitting/punching/scratching). The kids were not present for these instances.

I never had a history of self harming or even feeling how I did in those moments before his and my relationship got to this point. The only way I can explain it is i felt stuck and that “stuckness” would incapsulate and suffocate me until I felt like I was dying. It didn’t help that while I was feeling this way, CF would continue fighting, arguing, or pushing his point onto me.

CF had some cameras in the house and eventually started to threaten to use the videos of my mental breakdowns during the arguments against me in court and take my kids away.
I was delusional for a while about it and blamed myself entirely bc I wasn’t innocent here but a switched flipped in my head one day to where I could acknowledge my wrongdoing but finally still see that he was antagonizing the situation and would intentionally push me until I had a panic attack and even self harmed, all while recording it on his phone and/or directly in the vicinity of the houses cameras.
The videos really don’t look good, I won’t lie about that and so I started getting really scared he was gonna actually use them against me, so I started to try to record. It took a while because it’s obviously odd to get used to remembering to pull out a camera while having a panic attack but after a few months I had solid evidence in texts and videos that showed i at least wasn’t just flat out mentally unwell or needed to be put on hold but that he was intentionally pushing me to the point of having these mental episodes.

I saved all those videos hidden in the “hidden folder” AND I hid the folder itself so it couldn’t even be accessed without changing the setting

Now to present day…
(Call me a fucking idiot, but at least give me some respectful advice)
After essentially being convinced to give him another shot in April, there were a ton of issues I don’t think are relevant to the point of my post but I continued to let him try and change bc I struggle to stand my ground with him and stand on my “No.”

My main concern, and reason for this post, is this specific thing he did (like I said it’s not the “only” red flag thing he’s done since April).
My kids use my iPad currently for tv when they watch a movie bc CF broke his a few weeks into April and won’t get it fixed for a while. I have the password set to the universal password CF and I have had for the kids previously. CF knows this password, of course, and I didn’t mind that bc I have nothing to hide in the context of him and I trying to be in a relationship again.
I say that bc he’s deeply insecure and even since saying he wants another chance, he’s doubted that I didn’t sleep with anyone or have any form of physical intimacy while we weren’t together. It’s literally a daily conversation.
Bc he doubts that I didn’t have sex or literally even kiss anyone else, he’s been caught reading my messages starting since the first day I let the kids take my iPad to his house.
Other than the obvious issue, I had explicitly asked him not to out of respect and he did it anyway then came to my work and made a weird scene of coming in and giving me my iPad back, we argued about it but, like I said I didn’t really care bc he said he wouldn’t again and if he’s going to fuck his chance up, me being overbearing isn’t going to change that.

Of course he looked again.

Only now its so bad I can’t even…..

BASICALLY, in all these weeks I guess he’s been accessing idek what on my iPad.
He had his fingerprint added onto it which I noticed 3 days ago but the following day after a fight, he let it slip that he deleted all my “evidence”.
I knew exactly what that meant the second he said it and I was immediately crushed. I actually was in public or I probably would’ve had a mental break right then and there…

That was yesterday….
I’m just getting around to locking down my iPad finally, bc clearly he isn’t going to stop looking through my stuff no matter how much he doesn’t find and I’m so done, he clearly can’t be trusted.
I went ahead and checked the “hidden” folder, gone.
My “deleted”, gone.

I had a panic attack when I saw it and have had one per draft while writing this shit out and realizing how much progress I fucked over for myself. I’m deeply ashamed bc I knew better and I thought I’d do better too but clearly not, on all accounts.
I’m really fucking scared again bc CF has been threatening to take me to court and take the kids anytime there’s a threat to us “making it work”, claiming it’s not 50/50 and that I’m not capable of taking care of them. It’s all retaliation bc this same man was telling me he loved me a few hours ago and that he was going to change and how he wants to be better. Frankly, there are ways he is better. Every argument since April has been significantly more healthy but clearly nothing has actually changed within him, or me I guess.

I saw all of this before typing this out and now CF is calling me and acting like I’m being weird and crazy about it bc I brought this up suddenly.

While I had been trying to figure out my feelings about this, I brought it up bc I’ve gotten multiple “unknown AirTag” notifications in the last week. (He’s hidden an AirTag in my car before as well.)
Now I’m fucking scared that he has my passwords bc I’ve gotten notifications that my accounts are being logged into since he’s been around. We were driving cross country in the beginning of April and I got one. he denied it was him even though I was asleep and the geolocation showed exactly where we were driving through.

But he’s still trying to spin my anger about him deleting these video into a “you must be cheating/lying” thing.

I just don’t know what to do. Can I recover any of this? Am I shit out of luck? Bc I’m assuming I am.

I know I’m not, but I need to know if I really am not overreacting?

I guess I’m never opposed to the idea that it could all be in my head..