I haven’t been divorced, but my brother has, and yes, his ex uses the kids to play all sorts of head games with him and with our parents, and even with me. Unfortunately, even though we don’t rise to the bait, she can always find yet another person to convince that she is wonderful and he is terrible. A case in point: they have shared custody but because my brother requires the kids to go to school, do their homework, help with housework, and tell him where they are going and who they are with, the girls decided to move in with their mom. Mom proceeded to convince the school district right after the divorce that she is the representative custodial parent so all school-related correspondence goes to her. Thanks to that, anything that goes right with the kids is attributed to her doing, and anything that goes wrong is my brother’s fault. Once the girls moved in with her they started missing school (65 days in one school year. Each!), flunking their courses, and staying out all night going to bars (at this point they were 16 and 14 years old respectively). However, my brother knew nothing about this until the girls were at risk of suspension and his ex called our father to ask him to pay to put the girls in private school. He of course contacted my brother and asked what was up. He really didn’t have the money for a lawyer so he decided to fix things himself. As a result, the girls still live with mom but every day my brother would go to his ex’s house after she had left for work, pick up the girls and make them go to school. He then picked them up after school and made them do their homework at his house, and then drove them back to mom’s house before she got home from work or her social life. Of course, he can’t do this directly and openly because he isn’t on the list of people approved to pick up his own kids from school. He has to pick them up down the street from the school. As a consequence the girls’ grades went back up. However, he is still never invited to parent-teacher conferences and the school still thinks he was the one to blame. Fortunately, the oldest is now 18 and has moved out-of-state for college so she is away from her mom. However, she still plays head games that affect us all because of the younger girl, and now because of the youngest, a boy. The ex also has been seen spying on my brother to try to catch him doing something he shouldn’t, yet she has turned up at his house to pick up the kids when she is obviously drunk. We often hope she gets a new boyfriend because then she is too busy to mess with anyone.