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China Elevator Stories
I Received Sole Custody of My Children in China
I was awarded sole custody in December 2025.
09/01/2025
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
Dear readers,
after years of fighting in court and trying to get access to my children, and after not winning in court in Austria, I received sole custody of my children at the end of December. I can’t believe it. The evidence certainly worked in my favor, since my ex-husband had left them home alone and unsupervised for eight hours in a row on weekends, two days a week, while he was working at his pizza shop. He closed down his shop a few weeks ago because, supposedly, it wasn’t going very well, and, according to my children, he has since found another job as a baker (or something similar).
He had applied for sole custody in September 2025, but by the time we met in court, he handed custody over to me willingly—probably because… well, I don’t know. The judge was not willing to grant him sole custody, and my ex-husband tried to make others believe he was a good parent by claiming that he could not afford to save for our children’s university education if he had to pay for them. I had fought tooth and nail to prevent him from receiving sole custody, in this case by filing a countersuit and providing all the evidence necessary to prove that he was extremely neglectful and was putting our children’s lives in serious danger by leaving them at home alone for many hours every weekend. I also had to prove that I was not a bad parent, as he had portrayed me in his custody lawsuit. He seemed like a broken man when we met in court (a “collapsed narcissist”—these are the most dangerous kinds, so beware).
According to choosingtherapy.com,
narcissistic collapse occurs when someone with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) experiences a substantial blow to their self-esteem or sense of superiority. Their emotional breakdown often results in intense feelings of shame, rage, or despair, and it can drastically impact their behavior and relationships.
By the time I left China, he had already “collapsed.” He was raging on a regular basis and driving around like a lunatic, looking angry and unhappy all the time. This was not how he had been when we initially met. There truly is a difference between a collapsed and a non-collapsed narcissist, and those who are collapsed are the most dangerous. A narcissist may go to great lengths to “reinstall” their false ego in the eyes of others, which can even mean having someone killed if they are deemed an enemy, such as a truth-teller who exposes who they really are behind closed doors.
I had not met my ex-husband in person since 30 June 2019, and 18 December 2025 was the first time I saw him again. I wasn’t willing to meet him because of years of death threats, stalking, him having sent strangers to follow me wherever I went in Vienna, and two fires right next to where I had been living. All of this made me extremely uncomfortable with the thought of running into him, as you can imagine if you’re a woman who has ever been in a similar situation.
The Chinese believe in the power of numbers, and both the number 9 and December are seen as representing endings. In this case, December corresponds to the number 12, but because it is the final month of the year, it carries the same symbolic meaning. It marked the end of my ex-husband’s custody of our children, and I am happy that, after all these years, I finally received a relatively fair verdict. If you add the digits of the year 2025, you also arrive at 9 (2+0+2+5=9).
I will have to pay all expenses for my children myself, but it is worth it if it means keeping them safe and having sole custody.
I was awarded sole custody on the same day we met in court, which shows that the Chinese judicial system works fast and effectively. It took only three months from my ex-husband applying for sole custody and to have my bank account frozen in September, until we had a trial date and the custody trial was completed. This was very fast compared to Austria, where the custody proceedings took about 1.5 years and didn’t even include appearing in court, because the judge did not allow it.
I almost had to leave China because my ex-husband had my bank account frozen, which can happen if child maintenance is allegedly not paid for children living in China. I did not refuse to pay. I paid in “clothes and food,” which I sent from Austria every month once I had an address I could use for parcels. We could not reach an agreement on the child maintenance fee, and my ex-husband demanded more than I could afford. Afterwards, I also sent weekly or bi-weekly parcels with food and other items I thought they might need from Tai’an.
He never answered my questions about what the children needed and never told me their clothing sizes, so I had to guess. They are still wearing some of those clothes today. I also paid for them for many weeks when they stayed with me in 2025 and covered most of their expenses until 2019. Some of the parcels were never handed over to my children. My son later told me exactly which ones, when I once had to go through saved pictures for court while he was staying with me.
He also told me that some clothes were presented to them as having been bought by their Chinese grandmother (when she was still alive), making her the “good person,” not me. I strongly believe that you should not lie to children about such things. Unfortunately, this happened regularly, no matter how often I asked them not to lie. My ex-husband is a pathological liar, which was also evident in court, where he shared several completely fabricated stories about me, my family, and other people he portrayed as bad or evil. This is typical behavior when a narcissist presents himself, as he is likely to portray himself as the victim and the actual victim as a bad or evil person.
The war over clothes had started when my children were little, and I was already used to these kinds of lies and wasn’t expecting anything else. After moving back to Siping, I still bought clothes for my children, and my ex-father-in-law regularly hid them so our children could not wear them. On a few occasions, they were sad about this and were also told that what I had bought them looked ugly on them, that people did not dress this way in Siping, and other horrific lies. Now my son is running around wearing an old winter coat of his deceased grandmother, even though I said I would buy him a new one, one that was suitable for the male gender. Before the trial, most of the time my children were cared for by either my ex-father-in-law or me, not by my ex-husband.
My son does not consent to my purchasing a new coat for him. After his father began telling him false statements about the clothing I purchased for him without my knowledge, my son began rejecting anything I buy. Prior to this, he was comfortable wearing the clothes I purchased and wore them regularly.
When a person dies, it is often suggested in China that others should not wear her clothes, as the wearer is believed to carry the deceased person’s yin energy (negative energy). According to traditional belief, this may bring misfortune, illness or death. These are traditional beliefs I have heard repeatedly expressed by Chinese people.
The judge said that what I had paid for clothes and food could not be deducted from what my ex-husband demanded financially. He proposed that my ex-husband would only have to start paying child maintenance in 2032, and that I would be responsible for all expenses until then.
I agreed, since the judge was unwilling to consider expenses I had paid before 2019, when I was covering most of their costs, or to consider the broader situation, including the fact that I had paid my ex-husband’s rent, a car loan, and his debts.
When the judge asked, ‘Would you be willing to pay all of your children’s expenses in exchange for sole custody?’, I certainly answered, ‘Yes!’ I had already been paying a huge amount of their expenses after moving back to Siping, so paying a few more expenses didn’t make much difference.
If you have children in China, be aware that you may not find a satisfactory solution if you ever end up in a situation like mine. The judge was unwilling to take into account the expenses from the many weeks my children stayed with me after I finally reunited with them in June 2025, the purchases I made in Austria and sent to them, or the expenses I incurred after moving back to China. I kept all receipts, but the judge ruled that these costs could not be deducted.
This may sound as though I was horrifically neglectful, but that was not the case. I paid in food and clothes because we first could not reach an agreement in Austria. Later, the Austrian court told me I did not owe anything for the previous years. They also said that if my ex-husband wanted more alimony, he would have to sue me, and I was not even allowed to apply to have the issue resolved myself.
In the end, I “lost” a few thousand euros, but I got my children back.
I had no lawyer, since the ones I contacted charged horrendous fees. The entire proceedings cost me only 100 yuan (less than 15 USD) in court fees and a few more hundred yuan in translation and printing costs. I submitted a countersuit after my ex-husband sued me, as I had a two-week deadline to do so and provide my evidence.
My children will live with me except for one day every weekend, plus an additional five days during Spring Festival, five days during the National Holidays, and one week each during the winter and summer holidays.
The judge was very friendly but was not willing to include my previous child maintenance payments in my ex-husband’s calculations. The first time I saw him was when he and a court employee visited me downstairs at my apartment and handed me my ex-husband’s child maintenance and custody lawsuit in person, which is standard procedure in China. They also asked for my bank card, which was then frozen at my ex-husband’s request. I handed it over, as it is unlikely that you can reasonably refuse such a request from a court.
My university later asked the court to reconsider freezing my bank account and to calculate my regular expenses more realistically. This included costs for my children, who were staying with me much of the time, costs that weren’t included in the alimony calculation. Without access to my bank account, I would have had to leave China and my children, and give up my job right after the trial. Eventually, we were able to reach an agreement that allowed me to stay in China and take care of my children.
By the time I realized my account had been frozen, it was already frozen like the local river, where people walk and go ice skating in winter. I was lucky to still have some cash to buy food, but I started walking more and taking the bus instead of cabs. Cabs are reasonably priced here, and waiting for the bus can be unbearable when temperatures are extremely low.
The verdict took effect on the same day we appeared in court. My ex-husband was required to return my children’s old passports and Chinese travel documents, and to hand over their ID cards and hukou within one week—documents to which I previously had no access (except for their ID cards, which they needed to travel by train to Tai’an). However, he handed over only their most recent passports and travel documents, not the earlier ones.
He also attempted to persuade the judge to grant him additional visitation time; to prevent me from hiring a nanny—or, if I did hire one, to allow him to decide whether she was acceptable; and to require that my children stay with him or his father while I am working in Changchun (three days a week during the semester). He made several other requests as well, all of which the judge rejected.
He then suggested that either he or his father bring our children to the school bus or pick them up, which showed that he did not truly want to give up custody freely. He also wanted half of the school holidays and all kinds of other special arrangements that are usually only granted when both parents have custody, not when only one parent does. I was in shock listening to all his demands, but luckily the judge did not budge on any of these points and drafted a reasonable document stating the visitation times.
I knew that him being granted all these things would more or less have meant his father being granted them, since his father was the main caretaker when I was not around, not him. Our children had lived mainly with his father and mother during the years when I was not in Siping, not with my ex-husband—something he had tried to hide for many years.
The judge agreed only that decisions regarding the children’s school must be made jointly. My ex-husband also asked the judge to restrict me to living with the children only in Siping. The judge refused, stating that if I lose my job, I must be able to move wherever I can find suitable work within China. While international cities often offer job opportunities for foreigners, Siping does not. I had not been able to come back previously because I could not find another job here until this year. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, my university also switched to online teaching, leaving me with no opportunity to come back.
Have you ever been to court in China?