Okay, so long story short I have an extremely abusive ex who I share an amazingly beautiful 9 week old daughter with. I wanted to give him the chance to be a good father, but his only interest in her seems to be so he can use her as a weapon against me. He’s high 24/7 and has threatened to kill my daughter and I, especially if I ever take him to court over custody. I hired a lawyer because I want him out of our lives, but she said there isnt enough proof to deny him any visitation of her. The most I could hope for is supervised visitation since he does have a long history of family abuse and assault. However, even then he could work his way up to unsupervised. I know he will hurt her to punish me if I try to go to court. Unfortunately, he’s never said this over text or voicemail so I have no proof. Right now I’m just trying to avoid him, but that will only work for so long since he comes to my home and threatens my friends and family to get at me. I’m scared for my life, and more importantly my daughter’s life.

My question is if it’s legal in the state of Virginia to leave state and not tell the father where I’m going with the child. We don’t have a custody agreement and online I keep getting conflicting laws. Does anyone know if this is legal or have advice about this? I don’t know how else to protect my family.

I tried to make it work because I didn‘t want to take someone’s child away, but now her safety is in jeopardy. He was abusive to me and I’d only known him a few months, I can’t imagine how much worse it’s going to get. I’ve tried everything I can think of to try and make things okay, and all I get is violence and threats of being killed. I need to get away from him to protect my daughter. Please help.