This is happening in Ohio. My girlfriend (L) and her ex (K) have been separated for almost 2 years, but are still married. The divorce was filed about a month ago. They have 2 kids (11 & 10 years old) together and they had been discussing the idea of having the kids live with him for this current school year, but nothing was agreed upon. There is no custody order, but there is a child support order where he is paying her. Since their separation started, the kids have continuously lived with L.
5 weeks ago, K asked if he could have the kids for 2 weeks straight before the end of summer vacation, which was agreed to. When it came time return the kids, K had fallen off the map and wasn't answering calls or texts. A few days later, he responds and allows a phone call. L asks the kids where they are and K takes the phone away and tells L that he won't tell her where they are and to call his lawyer if she doesn't like it, then he hangs up on her. After this, L called his local police to have them do a wellness check at his house, but he truly had disappeared with the kids. A few days later, she called again for another wellness check and he was still gone. After an additional 2.5 weeks without any contact from K, L gets 2 emails, one from each of the kids describing their first day at school. Since then, a few more emails have been sent back and forth, but that's the only contact she has had with her children in the last 5, almost 6 weeks.
During this time, he has taken it upon himself to use the divorce filing where he is requesting full custody as proof that he has been awarded custody and enrolled the kids in the school where he lives (his current girlfriend's house), which means that L is unable to pick them up from school to get them back. They have been enrolled in L's local school district since their first years in school, and were already registered with her local school again for this year before he decided to do this. He also took it upon himself to cancel a doctor's appointment that had been set up for months with a specialist without any communication.
Without a custody order, the police can't/won't do anything; so on the first day of school, we drove 1.5 hours away last week to the county where K lives to try to pick up the kids from school. During the drive there, we found out that he doesn't actually have a lawyer. when we got to the school, the principle told L that he can't give her the kids because they are showing K as having full custody, even though the only documentation to prove that he has custody was the divorce filing where he has *requested* full custody. The principle told us that if we can get something from the court showing that there is no custody order, then he will release the kids. Obviously, the government isn't going to do any such thing, so we spent the entire day out there running around and talking to people so she could file a motion for emergency temporary custody. She was able to see a judge/magistrate after about 8 hours, and he denied the request and added a hearing date for the matter to follow immediately after the first divorce hearing, which will be Sept 29th. When we done filing the motion, we drove past his house and his truck was there, so we don't believe that he has moved out.
My girlfriend is an absolute wreck and has had to call off work several times (which is risking her job) and has scheduled appointments with mental health professionals because of the unbelievable emotional stress and fear that he will hurt or completely disappear with the kids, and due to the thought of not seeing her kids for an additional month. What can we do?