On the mediation thing, yes, I have my concerns about that because my DW has borderline personality as one of her diagnoses, along with bipolar and some bits and pieces of other psych disorders (ADHD, anxiety, etc), and I've read on several sites where mediation with borderlines does not go well because they want to switch up things every time you get together. The thing I worry about with regards to letting some person from the court do evaluations is that she can make herself look pretty normal in the short term with somebody. I refer to this site and can say that she is very much like how they describe here:

http://www.bpd411.org/persuasiveblamers.html

She takes virtually all bad situations she finds herself in and puts them on me or somebody else. When cornered, she turns the dial and redirects the focus onto some other thing to try and keep you on the defensive and forget what you were just cornering her with. I have learned to quickly recognize and adjust to this after 3 years now of dealing with this behavior and learning from it (it's only in the past 6 months or so that I've gotten to that point - it's hard to logically evaluate and apply a response to something that is completely illogical being thrown at you). If the person lived here, they would see. She sleeps all day long, no matter what meds they try her on. She's on the verge of being admitted again right now, but they want to try and change up her meds and have her go to more outpatient therapy first. This is the third or fourth major destabilization in the past less than 2 years. Apparently, she has been having more nightmares and disturbing thoughts again lately. I guess she didn't threaten suicide again or her doc would have had her in again by now.

Yes, by far my concern is for the safety and well-being of my son. I do not wish to completely remove him from getting to see his mother, however, I am convinced that time alone with her would be very, very bad. Right now, all she has alone with him during the day is one hour of time in which she is supposed to get him ready for school and on the bus. He has already missed one day of school, and been significantly tardy another day, because of her not getting up and getting him out there. Every day I have to call multiple times to badger her into getting up and getting him ready. If I don't call...he doesn't go. I was told by her doc before school started that she was doing much better, so I went with her trying this again this year with her getting him off to school, but it's not doing well already. She leaves knives and scissors laying around, food and glasses lying about, empty food packages, sometimes her pills are out and accessible. I just think that the ideal thing here would be for her to have some sort of supervised visitation, no overnights because that's when she's at her worst, but perhaps something where she could see him when she's doing well. Would probably give her the option of calling off if she's having a particularly bad day. I just don't trust her with him anymore. I've been keeping a journal, so maybe that would help. I don't mind her seeing him at all, I just want him to be safe while doing it.

Close behind, though, property-wise is the house. I got this house for a pretty good price, so I would really like to hold on to it. I owned the house for 2 years before we got married, so from what I understand, she would only be due half the appreciation from when we got married until whenever a divorce became final. I would just like it if she would simply sign off to no claim on the house at all. Part of my interest regarding mediation is the fact that I was going to present that there is also a good sized equity loan on the house, as well as my credit card with over $10k in marital debt on it, that I would offer to not try to split with her if she would follow the route of not trying to lay claim to anything on the house. I might possibly get her to agree to something like that. I think the real sticking point is going to be the child custody and visitation arrangement, because she doesn't think that she is as bad off as she is. Another concern is the previously mentioned concept that I would have to pay her something because she is unemployed and on disability - and I would expect to get part of the disability payment that is supposed to be directed to him anyway. Seems like having to pay her would be taking away from him. As said before, this is a confusing area for me and one of the reasons I want to talk to somebody. Anyway, we just went out for a couple hours to do something and on coming back, of course she had to head straight for bed. Right now, I am estimating that she is spending approximately 18 hours a day in bed on average. Which reminds me, we have not had really any kind of "marital relations" since late June, we're basically roommates and parents right now. Does that count anything towards separation time?