His daughters hate him, and their mother is to blame.
“Right now, my children want nothing to do with me,” said Ted Rubin, a Long Island dad whose bitter custody battle ended with an unusual jail sentence for his shrewish ex-wife.
“They tell me I’m strictly their biological father,” Rubin said, “and their stepfather is their real father.”
Despite a Facebook site filled with warm photos of Rubin with his teenage girls, the Norman Rockwell moments are distant memories, replaced by years of bitterness and alienation.
A tearful Rubin said that at least three years have passed since he enjoyed unfettered access to the kids. A trip to Europe, two years in the making, was scuttled after Lauren Lippe said “No.”
It was the latest disappointment leaving Rubin pining for quality time with the two people he says he treasures above everyone else.
Even after Judge Robert Ross sentenced Lippe to weekends in the county jail for repeatedly violating a joint-custody agreement, Rubin still wound up being the bad guy.
Lippe, 47, of Lloyd Harbor, was scheduled to begin her jail time Friday, but her sentence — six alternate weekends in June, July and August — was stayed pending an appeal.
“The last thing I want is for my daughters is to see their mother in jail,” Rubin, a marketing executive, said at his lawyer’s Garden City office. “That’s the last thing I’ve always wanted.”
Under the sentence, Rubin would be responsible for the girls while their mom is jailed.
But even with the threat of jail, Lippe has yet to learn her lesson, Rubin said.
“She’s not agreeing to any settlement,” Rubin said. “She’s fighting everything every step of the way.”
Lippe could not be reached for comment.
Ross, in his decision, blamed Lippe for deliberately alienating Rubin from their daughters and even falsely accusing him of inappropriately groping one of the girls.
“I don’t know if I can get through,” Rubin said. “But I want my girls to know I love them with all my heart. I always have”