Yeah $180,000 on lawyers is how many years of Gloria? Or the private school? Or the mortgage?
Biggest hole on the planet.
He has been too soft with her, I reckon she’s been threatening all sorts for years and at the back of Ioan’s mind she’s capable of at least feigning attempting it.
She makes a mockery of the whole thing, mental health, physical health, divorce and Co-parenting.
Ioan has been and is too soft with her. Mainly because he is an empathetic and decent human being. It is really good he has strong support -- his parents, Bianca, good lawyers, and likely a therapist to help him to keep his resolve. We have to keep in mind that he sees her differently from us. Like many victims of narcissists, he'll also have memories of her love bombing and Alice being fun, although there must be so many negative memories on top of it by now. Yet I believe he occasionally pities her and due to her being the mother of his daughters, he might not be as harsh to her as someone without a long-time personal connection.
What I noticed in a case of a close friend escaping an abusive relationship -- his emotions and attitude kept fluctuating. There were days when he started to feel sorry for her: she cannot help herself, she is sick, what will become of her, if I do not look after her, she needs me, and so on. Making excuses for her violence and abuse.
Also, when one is a decent human being, one cannot quite understand how someone can be so cruel, manipulative, and incapable of love, and as all humans do to some extent, they project their own feelings onto them and attribute to them good qualities that the narcissist can never possess.
The trap of having too much empathy.
Also, Ioan has another huge vulnerability, his Achilles' heel so to speak. He truly loves his daughters. (Someone once posted in these threads a photo of Ioan holding a baby daughter in his arms and the love was tangible from the tender way he held the girl to his face which was lit up). So he would do everything possible to avoid hurting them and unlike Alice, he would not use his daughters as pawns or props.