Co-parenting after divorce can be difficult, as it requires you to make decisions with and talk to someone who you don’t get along with anymore. However, the situation should never escalate to harassment.

If a co-parent has been texting or calling you to make harmful, abusive statements or spreading lies about you to others, this is harassment, and you do not have to accept it. In fact, you should take steps to stop it, as it can sometimes become so bad that it affects the children or even intensifies to physical violence. If you are dealing with this, here’s how to get help.

Should You Keep Communicating with Your Co-Parent?

While you will have to communicate information about the kids, this doesn’t mean the co-parent should feel to call, text, or email you all the time to talk about anything. You can and should put boundaries in place by asking the co-parent to only contact you about subjects that involve parenting the children.

If the co-parent ignores your request and the verbal abuse continues, you can block their phone number, email address, and social media accounts. Then you should use a co-parenting app that records all communication, so if the co-parent harasses you, you have documentation of it. Sometimes pointing this out is enough to convince the abusive co-parent to stop harassing you.

Should the Harassment Affect Your Custody Agreement?

In many cases, the point of harassment is to convince you to change your mind on some aspect of child custody or child support. Some parents become angry when they feel they’re paying too much for child support or not seeing the kids enough, so they berate and threaten the other parent until they give in.

However, it is important not to let the harassment sway your decisions on custody and child support. Let the court and skilled family law attorneys help make decisions in the best interest of your kids. The only way harassment should change your custody arrangement is if you feel the children are unsafe in the care of the co-parent, in which case you should tell your lawyer immediately.

Who Can Help You?

If you feel unsafe because the co-parent is stalking you or threatening violence, call the police. This could lead to you getting a restraining order, so the co-parent is legally required to stay away from you.

Otherwise, you should let your Texas family law attorney know about the harassment and find out what your legal options are. If you haven’t hired a lawyer yet and need legal advice regarding your custody agreement, please contact our Bedford law firm today at (817) 813-8513.