Children’s living arrangements- can they have a say?

My stepson has lived with his mother in another country for 8 years, after she and my now husband separated when he was a baby.

He’s now 10, and after a period of his mother seriously struggling to care for him properly, he came to live with us full time in June. The move was her idea and it was absolutely necessary at the time, but she was obviously torn about him leaving, so we agreed that after one year, we’d all review the situation- us, her, and my stepson- and we’d then see what was best; him staying here, or moving back to her. One of her reasons for wanting him to move to us was that his behaviour was too bad for her to handle, and honestly, yes it is difficult to manage sometimes, but we’ve been working with him to try and cope with his emotions so he doesn’t have such extreme outbursts etc, and he’s actually doing amazing. The other reason was that she just needed space. Her mental health isn’t the best, but as far as we can tell, she’s made no progress with that. She still gets extremely irate over tiny things, is emotionally manipulative with my stepson, and is a pathological liar to the point that it seems like she doesn’t even realise she’s lying- she’ll come up with scenarios that just didn’t happen, and will devolve into name calling, personal attacks, screaming abuse if you as much as question what she’s saying; she gets this way if you disagree with her about anything too. She was emotionally abusive toward my stepson while he was living with her, would scream at him over the smallest things, tell him he’s ruined her life etc, and a few months ago he broke down and told his dad that she’s also hit him in the face one on occasion- when it happened he told a teacher at school, his mum got called in, he told her what he’d said to the teacher and she blew up at him, then when they went for a meeting at the school his mum said that he was making it up and he lied to back her story up; I don’t think they believed him about it not happening though because he was given 2 sessions a week with a therapy dog, but he wouldn’t ever tell us why. We never heard anything about this from the school and it never went further.

Since he moved here in June, she’s been extremely inconsistent and difficult. She’s only seen him twice (and that’s only because we paid for the flights, or she wouldn’t have seen him at all) and she’s just been completely up and down with how she is toward him. She’s asked him several times if he wants to go back to live with her and he has told her no he wants to stay here- each time she guilt trips him saying that speaking to him is just too difficult because she misses him so much that her heart hurts, then she just cuts contact with him & ignores his calls for weeks on end, and then out of the blue she’ll again start texting him long messages about how much she loves and misses him.

So. This morning she’s text me saying that she’s planning on having him visit her in April, and this will be the last visit until he moves back to her in June, as we agreed last year. She knows this isn’t what we agreed, because she’s gone on to justify why he needs to move back in huge length- there’s no mention of what’s best for him, or what he wants, just all about how we’ve made it hard for her, which is bullshit. The way she’s speaking about it, she’s clearly not going to accept no for an answer. But that’s not what was agreed, and I know for certain that my stepson does want to continue living here- yesterday he asked me to drive him to the two possible high schools he could attend in over a years time, because he’s already thinking about that. He talks about his future here all of the time, and says he’s genuinely happy and feels settled for the first time in years. He’s flat out told her several times that he prefers living here, but it’s just like it hasn’t even crossed her mind that he won’t be going back to her in a few months. He did tell her during his first visit back to her that he might want to move back with her sooner rather than later, but he also told us that she was putting a lot of pressure on him while he was there and said that he could tell that she was fed up of him by the end of the week.

I’m so upset at the thought of him going back to her. If he wants to, then that’s his choice and we’ll 100% support him and continue to support him while he’s there, but he’s absolutely thriving here. Each time she pleads with him to move back there his behaviour completely tanks, he gets miserable and irritable, has nightmares, comfort eats (which he then gets more frustrated about because he was very overweight and self conscious when he moved over, but we go out running with him & he helps us cook good meals etc and he’s now much slimmer, healthier, fitter, and more confident) and he gets so distraught that we’ve had to intervene and basically told her mother (who has always acted as a mediator if things got difficult) that if she continued with this emotional blackmail then we’d have to monitor their contact, which she agreed to help with if needs be.

The whole thing is just so messed up. For 8 years we put in 99% of the effort and she did everything the could to make things difficult for us, but we still managed to see him 10 times a year for a week or two at a time, as well as paying child support, covering his school uniform costs, making sure he saw all of his family on this side etc. We had to buy him a phone so we could call him because she blocked both our numbers and refused to let him use her phone to contact us, and even now while he’s been living here, she’s still had us blocked more often than not, but his phone is broken at the moment so he literally can’t contact her. I had to call her mother 3 times asking her to try and get my number unblocked so my stepson could call his mum and only last week she finally agreed. We’ve offered drive my stepson to the airport and pay for his flights, but have said that she needs to come and collect him and fly back to her country with him (he can’t fly alone, and there are multiple same-say return options for her but none for us so we can’t physically take him to her) but it’s not good enough because she can’t afford her own flight apparently, though I find this hard to believe because it’s usually only around £80, and she can definitely afford to go out for meals at least twice a week, redecorate her house twice in the past 3 months, get new tattoos, etc.. She also doesn’t have a job, and hasn’t had one for at least 6 years.

She’s called him a total of 32 times since he moved here in June, but if he doesn’t call her at least once a week or accidentally misses a text then he doesn’t hear the end of it. She literally hung up on him last week because she heard our other son sneeze in the next room and then berated my stepson via text for not speaking to her in private. It’s fucking nuts.

Does anyone have any experience in split living arrangements like this? If he says he wants to stay, can she make him go back to her?

I’ve put some of the messages below. I don’t want him going back to her abuse, but we have no court orders in place regarding where he should live currently, it was always just stated that both parents have split custody rights.

My messages: