July 26, 2026 - Throwing Them Out of the House

The weekend of July 25-26, 2026 was one of Typhon's custodial weekends. As I explained in an earlier post, only Ursula and Peter decided to go to Typhon's house that weekend. Huck didn't want to go after what Typhon did the week before and the previous Sunday night, and Ramona never wants to go.

Bear with me - it's a bit of a set up before we get to the incident itself.

The provision about how to handle summer break in our Custody Agreement is a little complicated. The kids' summer breaks are usually about 9 weeks long. We're each entitled to 3 weeks over the summer and the remaining 3 weeks are set aside for the two Girl Scout camps that they do every year (one is a 1-week

camp, one is a 2-week camp). Those weeks may be taken separately or consecutively, but the "week" only consists of Monday through Friday. The weekend remains on the normal custody schedule. So if you want 2 weeks back-to-back, the weekend in-between has to be yours too. Step 1 in scheduling the summer is that I have to let Typhon know the dates of the two summer camps no later than March 1. Step 2 is that I get to designate my summer parenting time (i.e., my 3 weeks) by March 15. Step 3 is that Typhon is able to designate his summer parenting time (i.e., his 3 weeks) by April 1. We don't lose our right to our 3 weeks if we fail to designate weeks by those deadlines. Rather, any remaining weeks are available on a first come, first served basis until each of us has 3 weeks.

The Custody Agreement was signed and entered by the Court on June 6, 2025. Even though it was after the deadlines set in the agreement, we still followed this schedule. I think I may have designated one week in 2025. Other than that, because I didn't have any set plans with the kids for the summer, I wanted to go ahead and give Typhon as many options as possible for his designated weeks. Because I'm just that kind of person.

Unlike in 2025, the ability to notify the other party of our designations was affected by the Protective Order that was in effect from October 1, 2025 until April 14, 2026.

Side Note: We signed our Divorce Settlement Agreement on March 29, 2026, and the Final Order of Divorce was entered by the Court on March 31, 2026. The delay in getting the Protective Order dismissed was because the Court couldn't get us in to hear our motion to non-suit the petition for a protective order (i.e., dismiss it without prejudice) until the date we were already scheduled for a trial on it.

I was skeptical that we would be able to settle our divorce right up until the Divorce Settlement Agreement was finally signed. Typhon was completely unreasonable with respect to just about everything, and I wouldn't have been surprised if he walked away over something small, even after all the time we had spent negotiating. In fact, I was surprised he ended up actually signing the Divorce Settlement Agreement. Because I doubted the settlement was going to get done right until the end, though, I really thought the Protective Order was still going to be in effect over the summer. Thus, I did not notify Typhon of the week(s) I wanted to designate during the summer of 2026 before the March 15 deadline in the Custody Agreement. If the Protective Order was in effect it wouldn't matter because he wouldn't have anything but supervised visits with them anyway.

Typhon argues that I also did not notify him of the dates of the summer camps, but dates had been on the shared Google calendars since the summer of 2025. He had access to those calendars up until his action indicated that he was using the shared Google calendars to monitor me. When I learned that, I removed his access to all the shared Google calendars except the "Official Custody Schedule" calendar. He was granted supervised visitation under the Protective Order, and I wanted him to know which weekends were his so he could make the necessary arrangements to see his kids. (He never did.) The point is, though, that he should have been aware of his kids' summer camp dates.

Even though I hadn't designated any weeks prior to the March 15 deadline (because I hadn't thought it was going to be necessary), there was a week that I wanted to designate this year. One of my cousins got married at the end of July, and I really, really wanted to go to his wedding. Most of my extended family on Molly's side was going to be there, and I hadn't seen them for over a decade, in part because Typhon would always shoot down my ideas to visit family. So on April 2, after the Final Order of Divorce was entered but even before the Protective Order had been dismissed, I sent Typhon the following email:

I won't get into the back and forth over these dates because that's not the subject of this post. What is the subject of this post is my designated week - July 27 to July 31. I knew I couldn't tell Typhon that we were going out of town for a family wedding because Typhon would do everything under the sun to prevent us from going and ruining the trip. I mean, I knew he was already going to try to mess with my designated week, but it would be so much worse if he knew ahead of time that I actually had plans with the kids. Thus, I didn't tell him that we were going out of town until 72 hours beforehand, which is the deadline for providing him notice under the Custody Agreement that the kids are leaving the DC Metro area.

We planned on leaving that Wednesday, July 29, so I needed Ursula and Peter to come home Sunday night (like they were supposed to anyway) and start packing for the trip. This was especially important for Ursula, because she was getting dropped off at a 1-week sleepaway Girl Scout camp on our way home that following Sunday, August 2. She needed to pack for her camp on Monday so that she could make a list of what she was missing and I could pick it up for her on Tuesday. She couldn't wait until Tuesday morning to pack and have the list ready for shopping on Tuesday afternoon because the first of the small claims court cases Typhon had filed against me was being held the morning of that Tuesday. Since small claims court is "cattle call" (that is, there are a bunch of cases schedule at the same time and they just move through the list alphabetically until all have been heard), I had no idea when we would be done at the courthouse. Typhon also subpoenaed Ursula, Peter, and Huck as witnesses in the case, so they had to come to the courthouse with me and sit in the hall until it was done. Ursula couldn't both sit at the courthouse in case she was called as a witness (which she was, actually) and be home packing.

I reminded the kids of this on Saturday:

So, on Sunday, July 26, I headed down to the usual custody exchange location to pick up Ursula and Peter like normal. Unlike normal, though, I received a text message from Ursula soon after I arrived that said Typhon refused to bring them to exchange location:

He decided unilaterally that he was just going to bring them back up on Tuesday morning with him for the small claims court hearing. You know...because it didn't matter that his custodial weekend with them was over. And it really didn't matter that he would be taking one full day and part of a second day out of my only designated summer week. (Told you he would try to mess with my designated week.)

Then, to get the kids on board, he made plans with them to do something more fun than packing (although he didn't know that's what they needed to do with me). Ursula initially told me the plans were for Monday, but later, on the way home, the kids told me the plans were to watch a movie that night. They couldn't have done that on Saturday night??

Well, that wasn't going to fly. Like I said, I need the kids home -- especially Ursula -- to pack for our trip. As you can see in the text above, I tried to explain this to Ursula, but I didn't think the message was getting through to her about how important it was that she come home with me that night. I decided to drive the extra hour to Typhon's house and have a face-to-face conversation with my children.

When I was about 10 minutes from Typhon's house, I called the Orange County Sheriff's Office and explained how Typhon was refusing to return my children to me. The deputy I ended up talking to very politely told me that they couldn't do anything...yet. They don't get involved in custody matters; I'd have to go back to the court even though this was a matter of urgency that needed to be resolved right now. But if the situation escalated, then I could certainly call them back and they would show up. How nice of them, right? I told the deputy that there was a high probability I would be calling back shortly.

I arrived at Typhon's house, but there is not enough money in the world to make me park in his driveway right now, or even along the grass of his property. I have no idea what he would do to me, even though technically I'm still on the deed to that house and the property is half mine. Safety first, though, so I parked on the side of the road across the street from his house, along one of his neighbor's properties. I called Ursula and asked her and Peter to come outside so I could talk to them. I also specifically told her that I was not going to force them into the car and make them leave against their will. She agreed to get Peter so the two of them could just talk to me.

I was sitting in my car for what felt like a really long time. When the kids finally came out of the house, Peter had his bag of stuff and was crying. I can't remember if Ursula had anything more than her phone and headphones, but she looked shaken. They both climbed in my car. I was just confused. I only expected them to come outside to talk, but here they were, getting in my car to go home, and Peter had tears running down his cheeks.

Naturally, I asked what on earth happened. I was told that, when Peter was asked to come outside to talk to me, he moved his inhaler from his bedroom on the second floor to the banister or a table or something on the first floor. He says he did this only so that if he decided to go home with me, it would be easier and quicker for him to get it when he returned to the house. He was fully planning on just coming outside to talk right then. When Typhon saw Peter moving his inhaler downstairs, though, he completely lost it.

Typhon started yelling at Peter and Ursula that whenever their mother says jump, they say how high. He yelled at them to go get their things, leave the house, and "never come back!" He yelled that he was going to take all of their belongings that remained at his house and burn them on his front porch. He just yelled and yelled and yelled.

The summary though is this: Typhon kicked his two oldest children out of his house just because they were going to have a conversation with me.

Ursula and I tried to comfort Peter on the car ride home by reminding Peter how Typhon overreacts to things (he does), how he's probably going to pretend nothing happened when he saw Peter at the small claims court hearing on Tuesday (which is exactly what happened), and how 9 times out of 10 Typhon does not follow through on his threats so it was extremely unlikely Typhon would really burn Peter's possessions at Typhon's house (Typhon did not burn them...to my knowledge).

Ursula all but brushed this incident aside, which can't be healthy. Peter has gone to the other extreme -- he completely kicked Typhon out of his life for a period of time (which, in turn, has led to even more drama that I'll document soon).

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I'm finally recording this story on September 16, about one month and three weeks after this incident took place. This upcoming weekend is Typhon's custodial weekend, and Peter is considering going back down to Typhon's house for the first time since Typhon kicked him out of the house. Joking around, I asked Peter yesterday if this means that he thinks two months of not seeing him was enough punishment for his father for what Typhon did. Peter shrugged his shoulders and told me, "Eh, maybe." I then jokingly asked Peter if he thinks Typhon learned his lesson from Peter's cold shoulder to him. Peter looked at me very seriously and said, "Absolutely not."