Blended families come with challenges, but this one turned into a power struggle.

A stepmom insisted she was also the kids’ mom, dismissed their complaints, and refused to hear otherwise—until a therapy session exposed the truth.

Instead of resolving co-parenting issues, it sparked a fight that sent the married couple storming out.

Check it out.

AITA getting my ex in trouble during therapy with me and his current wife?

My ex-husband (40m) and I (36f) share three kids (12f, 11f and 9m).

Since our divorce my ex has remarried.

His wife Janie (38f) has two of her own kids (13m, 7m) who she has full custody of.

So they’ve made a very blended family.

I have a partner (43m) myself now but we don’t live together or anything so he’s not directly involved here.

The problem is my kids dislike Janie, my girls more so, and they feel like she tries to play their mom and push me out.

They have mentioned specific incidents which led me to address the concerns with my ex and after a while of this it strained things between me and them (ex and Janie).

Sounds like she’s trying a little too hard to blend in—at the kids’ expense.

They told me they didn’t believe me and said I must be the reason the kids were causing trouble at their house.

They never specified what this trouble was.

At one point after things got bad my ex admitted to me that the kids had complained about the same things to him regarding Janie and he wasn’t telling her.

This landed us back in court and into therapy together for co-parenting.

In our therapy sessions Janie complained about me and said she feels like I refuse to accept she’s also now a mom to my kids and want to ruin it by making up complaints.

She wants the title, but not the truth—too bad the kids aren’t playing along.

She said anything the kids say isn’t real and is just kids trying to stir s*** with the adults.

During the discussion about this I brought up my ex and how the kids complained to him also and he told me as much.

This started a fight off between my ex and Janie.

It derailed the session because they walked out to deal with their marital issues.

My ex is mad at me for throwing him under the bus like that.

I defended myself but he said I could have approached the rebuttal differently.

Maybe if he had been honest from the start, he wouldn’t have gotten aired out in therapy.

Janie accused me of trying to break up her marriage and being a part of stirring s**** between everyone.

AITA?

In the end, the real issue wasn’t co-parenting—it was damage control.

The verdict: NTA.

This person says she should focus only on the kids.

That the ex messed up.

And that he’s a terrible dad.

Turns out, honesty isn’t the best policy—at least for the ex.

He shouldn’t have lied in the first place.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.