My former coworker became suicidal and went back to his country before he did something that would make his child parent less.
I don’t know what happened after he returned, but the wife told the child how much he hated the child which is why he left.
Same fear. I don’t think I could take it.
My friend was divorced and lost access to his son within the first year of marriage. Ex-wife is a real piece of work and even refused the generous spousal and child support ¥ that he tried to pay, just to spite him. He’s been saving ¥ and investing for his son, should he ever be able to see him again. It’s been about 18 years, so he’s hopeful that his kid will look him up and give him the chance to explain his side of things. He never stopped loving his son and never gave up hope that they’ll meet someday. It’s been rough on him, sure, but he’s doing the best he can.
I think the only thing you can do is hope your ex is fair (hah) or make it make financial sense for them to allow you to be in the kids life.
Awful tbh, I hope it works out.
What percentage of marriages end this way?
My wife’s school class mate did this to her American husband it seems. Kids were probably around 8-10 so they must be missing their dad. Then she shacks up with some young French dude. Imagine how the kids feel about that, WTF.
It’s amazing how selfish these women can be
I know a foreigner who committed a suicide after his wife took the kid
It’s amazing. The Japanese are the cause of all this. And everyone is talking under the assumption that foreigners are the good guys.
What causes the large percentage of women? Why are there so many women? People are ignoring the fact that the reason is that the cause is the husband’s domestic violence.
Going through a similar situation now though mine isn’t as severe as other cases.
Even after divorce, you could go to family court and request visitation. Although normally in a single month, they would probably only give you one full day of visitation (including overnight stay at your place) and MAYBE an additional half day for a grand total of 1.5 days of visitation per month.
Unfortunately, the above is a very slow and expensive process especially if the parents are really at each other’s necks. Even with a lawyer it will cost at minimum 800,000 yen and take anywhere from 6 to 12 months to complete. Also if the custodial parent violates a visitation order by the court, at worst they would have some money taken out of their account after taking the trouble to file a lawsuit against them. No cops will show up at their doors. So in that sense it isn’t very strong legally either.
I will also be one to admit that the money and time cost and the mental toll it can take on you to go to court does create a de facto one sided custodial arrangement and I don’t blame or fault people who give up. I was fortunate enough to be able to afford a lawyer, but when I sat in the waiting room of the court, most people didn’t have lawyers. Out of the 12 or so people in the waiting room with me, only 2 other people had lawyers. It actually has somewhat become a pet peeve of mine when people say “just go to court” like it is something you could do as easily as going to McDonalds.
Japan is considering joint custody and the good news is that there is widespread public support for joint custody if there is no DV and even within lawmakers it seems there is marginally more support for it than against. But even so, I think it will still be 5-10 years before it will actually be implemented.
Don’t mean to offend anyone, honest question.
How does this happen? Like, the only way I can imagine this happening is if you marry someone too soon without “really” getting to know them. Otherwise, how do you miss the red flags? Surely you would find out that person is an asshole long before you get married? I can’t imagine someone being kind and caring, and then switch like that after a divorce. Is this because people get married after 1 year? I know it’s common for some cultures.
What about if it was our ex back home that’s not Japanese that stole our kid? I’m doing ok. I went crazy for awhile. Party hard trying to kill myself. Finally out of that fog and doing good. Hopefully one day she’ll coke find me
I have/had a friend that this happened to. Like me, he was an ESL teacher in the late 90s. Unlike me, he stayed in eikaiwa, got married to a local girl student, a HS grad, who spoke lower intermediate English and had little exposure to non-Japanese life (important later).
So, they get married and have child 1 and things are still ok. Child 2 comes and now there is this convergence of financial stress, differing expectations, and apparently no more sex. She gets a job at a fast food place to help but also resents it. She resents it because other local ladies don’t work after having children (I was unfortunately present during that awkward convo). He has sort of unrealistic positive memories of the US.
After a blowout fight, she leaves for the parents and that was the last time they live together. She and the kids are never available after that. He sticks around in JP for a year and never sees them and then leaves for the US.
Sort of tricks her into visiting and he tries to keep the kids in the US. Goes to court. Judge says it isn’t his jurisdiction and it needs to be worked out in Japan.
He hasn’t seen his kids in 16 years or so. We are technically in touch, but he never contacts me and my wife thinks it is just too psychologically difficult because we remind him of Japan.
Good luck.
Coping coping. Left the marriage with nowt having been a longterm stay at home parent, but due to leaving with nothing but the clothes on my back was allowed free visitation. Financially, a rough ride having given up any chance of a career to raise the kids. But managed to avoid the hell some have where they are actually not able to see the children. Japanese are also victims of this upon divorce, it’s just that being the foreigner the chance of you being the one to not see them is much higher.
Edit to add , if you do lose the kids people in Japan understand. In the UK, I basically got ‘wow, you must have been a crackhead’. Nice. Erm no I wasn’t a crackhead, in Japan, actually. I wouldn’t know how to become one here. But after hearing comments like that I was then tempted to become one in the UK. Thankfully, I rode that storm. Edited again: did not marry for the visa. We met in my country; had never been to or cared about the place much before that
Any person making snide or judgemental comments on this thread: may your table in hell await you
Towards the non custodial parent, I mean. Fire away on the other one …
I know someone who lost their kid and the wife left them to go to another country. Now he just sees pictures of his kid from mutual friends… so sad
Never been through it myself, but I have two friends who have, both American men married to Japanese women.
First one went through this years before I met him, lost access to his son. He ended up re-marrying and starting another family, who I know. His son from his first marriage grew up and contacted him a few years ago. Not sure how close they’ve been able to become, but they seem to have a relationship now.
Second one was a guy I knew more than 20 years ago when he and his future wife were dating. She seemed nice, he was a bit weird. They got married and then I moved away and kind of fell out of contact. They had a daughter together shortly thereafter and when social media was invented I got re-acquainted with them. I don’t know what precipitated it but they ended up having an acrimonious divorce when their daughter was still quite young, probably about 15 years ago now. The guy hung on in Japan for a couple of years after that but eventually moved to the US. His hasn’t seen his daughter, who must be nearing high school graduation now, ever since and its really devastated him.
This kind of thing absolutely sucks.
If you live in fear of that, you have big time underlying problems in your marriage bro
I know a Japanese lady, single mother of a 14 year old girl. She left the father when the girl was a toddler, and has always told her that her father is dead, so the girl won’t even try to contact him when she becomes older. She told me all that very directly, as if it’s common and not a big deal.
18 comments
My former coworker became suicidal and went back to his country before he did something that would make his child parent less.
I don’t know what happened after he returned, but the wife told the child how much he hated the child which is why he left.
Same fear. I don’t think I could take it.
My friend was divorced and lost access to his son within the first year of marriage. Ex-wife is a real piece of work and even refused the generous spousal and child support ¥ that he tried to pay, just to spite him. He’s been saving ¥ and investing for his son, should he ever be able to see him again. It’s been about 18 years, so he’s hopeful that his kid will look him up and give him the chance to explain his side of things. He never stopped loving his son and never gave up hope that they’ll meet someday. It’s been rough on him, sure, but he’s doing the best he can.
I think the only thing you can do is hope your ex is fair (hah) or make it make financial sense for them to allow you to be in the kids life.
Awful tbh, I hope it works out.
What percentage of marriages end this way?
My wife’s school class mate did this to her American husband it seems. Kids were probably around 8-10 so they must be missing their dad. Then she shacks up with some young French dude. Imagine how the kids feel about that, WTF.
It’s amazing how selfish these women can be
I know a foreigner who committed a suicide after his wife took the kid
It’s amazing. The Japanese are the cause of all this. And everyone is talking under the assumption that foreigners are the good guys.
What causes the large percentage of women? Why are there so many women? People are ignoring the fact that the reason is that the cause is the husband’s domestic violence.
Going through a similar situation now though mine isn’t as severe as other cases.
Even after divorce, you could go to family court and request visitation. Although normally in a single month, they would probably only give you one full day of visitation (including overnight stay at your place) and MAYBE an additional half day for a grand total of 1.5 days of visitation per month.
Unfortunately, the above is a very slow and expensive process especially if the parents are really at each other’s necks. Even with a lawyer it will cost at minimum 800,000 yen and take anywhere from 6 to 12 months to complete. Also if the custodial parent violates a visitation order by the court, at worst they would have some money taken out of their account after taking the trouble to file a lawsuit against them. No cops will show up at their doors. So in that sense it isn’t very strong legally either.
I will also be one to admit that the money and time cost and the mental toll it can take on you to go to court does create a de facto one sided custodial arrangement and I don’t blame or fault people who give up. I was fortunate enough to be able to afford a lawyer, but when I sat in the waiting room of the court, most people didn’t have lawyers. Out of the 12 or so people in the waiting room with me, only 2 other people had lawyers. It actually has somewhat become a pet peeve of mine when people say “just go to court” like it is something you could do as easily as going to McDonalds.
Japan is considering joint custody and the good news is that there is widespread public support for joint custody if there is no DV and even within lawmakers it seems there is marginally more support for it than against. But even so, I think it will still be 5-10 years before it will actually be implemented.
Don’t mean to offend anyone, honest question.
How does this happen? Like, the only way I can imagine this happening is if you marry someone too soon without “really” getting to know them. Otherwise, how do you miss the red flags? Surely you would find out that person is an asshole long before you get married? I can’t imagine someone being kind and caring, and then switch like that after a divorce. Is this because people get married after 1 year? I know it’s common for some cultures.
What about if it was our ex back home that’s not Japanese that stole our kid? I’m doing ok. I went crazy for awhile. Party hard trying to kill myself. Finally out of that fog and doing good. Hopefully one day she’ll coke find me
I have/had a friend that this happened to. Like me, he was an ESL teacher in the late 90s. Unlike me, he stayed in eikaiwa, got married to a local girl student, a HS grad, who spoke lower intermediate English and had little exposure to non-Japanese life (important later).
So, they get married and have child 1 and things are still ok. Child 2 comes and now there is this convergence of financial stress, differing expectations, and apparently no more sex. She gets a job at a fast food place to help but also resents it. She resents it because other local ladies don’t work after having children (I was unfortunately present during that awkward convo). He has sort of unrealistic positive memories of the US.
After a blowout fight, she leaves for the parents and that was the last time they live together. She and the kids are never available after that. He sticks around in JP for a year and never sees them and then leaves for the US.
Sort of tricks her into visiting and he tries to keep the kids in the US. Goes to court. Judge says it isn’t his jurisdiction and it needs to be worked out in Japan.
He hasn’t seen his kids in 16 years or so. We are technically in touch, but he never contacts me and my wife thinks it is just too psychologically difficult because we remind him of Japan.
Good luck.
Coping coping. Left the marriage with nowt having been a longterm stay at home parent, but due to leaving with nothing but the clothes on my back was allowed free visitation. Financially, a rough ride having given up any chance of a career to raise the kids. But managed to avoid the hell some have where they are actually not able to see the children. Japanese are also victims of this upon divorce, it’s just that being the foreigner the chance of you being the one to not see them is much higher.
Edit to add , if you do lose the kids people in Japan understand.
In the UK, I basically got ‘wow, you must have been a crackhead’. Nice.
Erm no I wasn’t a crackhead, in Japan, actually. I wouldn’t know how to become one here. But after hearing comments like that I was then tempted to become one in the UK. Thankfully, I rode that storm.
Edited again: did not marry for the visa. We met in my country; had never been to or cared about the place much before that
Any person making snide or judgemental comments on this thread: may your table in hell await you
Towards the non custodial parent, I mean. Fire away on the other one …
I know someone who lost their kid and the wife left them to go to another country. Now he just sees pictures of his kid from mutual friends… so sad
Never been through it myself, but I have two friends who have, both American men married to Japanese women.
First one went through this years before I met him, lost access to his son. He ended up re-marrying and starting another family, who I know. His son from his first marriage grew up and contacted him a few years ago. Not sure how close they’ve been able to become, but they seem to have a relationship now.
Second one was a guy I knew more than 20 years ago when he and his future wife were dating. She seemed nice, he was a bit weird. They got married and then I moved away and kind of fell out of contact. They had a daughter together shortly thereafter and when social media was invented I got re-acquainted with them. I don’t know what precipitated it but they ended up having an acrimonious divorce when their daughter was still quite young, probably about 15 years ago now. The guy hung on in Japan for a couple of years after that but eventually moved to the US. His hasn’t seen his daughter, who must be nearing high school graduation now, ever since and its really devastated him.
This kind of thing absolutely sucks.
If you live in fear of that, you have big time underlying problems in your marriage bro
I know a Japanese lady, single mother of a 14 year old girl. She left the father when the girl was a toddler, and has always told her that her father is dead, so the girl won’t even try to contact him when she becomes older. She told me all that very directly, as if it’s common and not a big deal.