We are in desperate need of financial help to protect my wife’s children and provide a stable, loving, and caring home for them. We have exhausted our life savings, my retirement, had so sell our only car, and liquidated assets to pay attorney fees and we are in extreme debt at over $80,000 and growing. We are financially devastated and any help would be greatly appreciated.
My wife is a 30-year-old mother of 3 and has always strived to do what’s right in life for her children and our family. When she left her abusive ex-boyfriend, he lied to the courts and abused the judicial system to take her children; two of which are not even his biological children. His first claims were for 3rd party custody based on what were proven in court to be lies of abandonment, abuse, etc. When that didn’t work, instead of providing a ruling on a concluded trial, the judge offered for him to change his petitions to de facto parentage claims using fundamentally the same story. You’re probably thinking that this is a miscarriage of justice, which it is. This is piecemeal litigation and claim splitting and they are against the law in Washington State. Additionally, the fundamental tests for de facto parentage were not met. However, the Judge paid no attention to this or a number of other legal and cited points that support my wife’s position and awarded the children to this liar who has not only abused the court system to kidnap her children but has also blatantly shown no respect for the court. He was found in 2 counts of contempt and refused to provide evidence that the court compelled him to produce in a timely manner.
This nightmare started 2 weeks into us dating and we are now happily married. I have stood by my wife through thick and thin, exhausted my finances, and helped our family because I love my wife and her children and I know it is the right thing to do. Nobody should be allowed to lie to the courts and kidnap your children through abusive use of the judicial system. What’s more disheartening is that this man took advantage of my wife when she was most vulnerable and needed surgery due to cancer. Unfortunately, she had to wait until after the birth of her youngest to have treatment which made it spread beyond noninvasive means; leading to surgery. Because she didn’t want to separate the kids during the recovery she asked her son’s father if he would help. He agreed to watch all 3 of her children while she took a few days to recover from major surgery. While she was convalescing, this guy filed a motion trying to get custody of her son (his child) and 3rd party custody of her 2 daughters that are not even his children! This was done on the untruthful grounds that she had abandoned them during this time! He actually took advantage at a moment of weakness when she had surgery and needed to recover in order to file cases that she had abandoned her children. During this time, he tried to do this twice. His first attempt was denied because the court didn’t see any grounds to support his claim. Then, he added a bunch of lies about drug abuse, physical abuse, etc. and tried it again. This time the court granted his submittal and gave him her children throughout the time leading to trial.
My wife had recently left this man due to his extreme abuse toward her and he was always high and drunk and playing video games; all while also neglecting her and her children. He was a terrible role model and she wanted to get them away from him. She had tried leaving him before but finally decided to leave for good and took the children with her. When she had to have surgery she needed help and he agreed to refrain from any drug or alcohol use and not play video games while the children were with him. Little did we know that he and his family had planned this.
The day that we were to pick up the children after her recovery from surgery his sister showed up and served her documents that claimed:
- She had abandoned her children - (remember, he agreed to watch them while she was recovering from surgery for a few days).
- That she and I physically, mentally or emotionally abused her kids - (they even called CPS to make a report of these accusations which were supposed to have occurred on a day her children were with him!! CPS did a thorough and very upsetting investigation on both of us to find that these claims were completely unfounded).
- She was abusing drugs and alcohol – (She took a hair follicle test and he took a urine test. Hers went back 9 months and showed as negative. His was only for 1 month and his came back positive showing that he uses drugs).
Even though all of these allegations were found by credible evidence to be false and he and his witnesses admitted to lying about them during the trials, these lies are what he used as a basis to rip my wife’s children away from her.
My wife has now been without her children for 3 years while this has been through the courts and leading up to a final decision in the court of appeals. We have only been able to see them over night every other weekend and on Wednesdays. Her little girl was just over 1 year old and had never been away from her mother for more than a couple of hours until they took her. These are years she will NEVER get back and to any loving mother this would be absolutely heartbreaking and devastating. We have fought hard and told the truth and submitted all the evidence we have against him. We have had 2 trials and are now in appeals court at great expense to our family who didn’t have the money to pay for any attorney fees much less those that have added up to 2 trials and an appeal at over $80,000 and are still piling up. We were forced into having to protect her children and found attorneys that were willing to take payments but we are financially devastated and really need help. It is my belief that either a corrupt or lazy judge gave this abusive ex-boyfriend a 2nd avenue to go down after he didn’t prove his first case and allowed him to modify his petitions to de facto parentage cases so that he could use that as a way to get her children based primarily on their having lived with him for a period of time. Imagine: the court can take your children from you and give them to another person just because you lived with them for a period. How is a single person supposed to try and find a life with someone else if the court can take your children and give them to that person if you had lived with them – even if for 18 months? According to the court, if you live with someone then you are fostering them as a parental figure.
My wife never fostered a father-like relationship between her girls and this abusive man and she has always adamantly denied that he is their father. Yet, we are now in the appeals process to try and get the judge’s ruling overthrown because this isn’t right. How can someone blatantly lie about what they have done to take your children and the court still, without any direct evidence supporting any of their false claims, take your children from you because you once lived with them? My belief is that the Judge had already made up his mind from reading the petitions and had no interest in finding the truth or justice. If so, this man would have been fined or put in jail for perjury and abusive use of the judicial system. Turning the cases into a matter of de facto parentage made it easy for the judge to find in the plaintiff’s favor and relieve himself of the fact that my wife is not unfit.
“De-facto parent laws allow a biological parent to lose full parental rights--not because they consented to an adoption, or were unfit, but because someone else wanted to share parenting, and can establish some sort of claim on the child… De-facto parent laws allow anyone to commence an action to assert parental rights. This includes nannies, next door neighbors, step fathers, and persons with a grudge against the parent.” 'De-facto parents': Another way to steal children? FMF, June 2017.
We are financially devastated yet that doesn’t compare to the mental anguish and heartbreak we have gone through and the corruption and lies that my wife’s children have been exposed to while living with these people who are not their family. The children are now all telling us how they were bribed and coerced into lying about the facts they were asked about and it is our belief that the court has imposed a great deal of harm on them and our family by allowing her ex-boyfriend to legally kidnap her children through abusive use of judicial process because he wanted to get back at her for leaving him. They are going to need counseling and reintegration into our family while realizing that these people who have kidnapped them are not their real family.
According to U.S. Supreme Court:
“There is an abundance of case law that unequivocally promotes the potent constitutional right of parents to care, custody and control over their biological children. “Due process demands that a parent receive custody of a child unless the parent is unfit or custody of the parent would cause actual detriment to the child’s growth and development.”
“There is an abundance of case law that unequivocally promotes the potent constitutional right of parents to care, custody and control over their biological children. “Due process demands that a parent receive custody of a child unless the parent is unfit or custody of the parent would cause actual detriment to the child’s growth and development.”
There was no evidence of this detriment and it was not referred to in the judgement. That’s because we are good parents. We had several witnesses attest to this during the trials.
My wife’s ex-boyfriend and his family ganged up on her in court, told lies, manipulated, and coerced people into supporting them. We believe that we must protect our children against people like this and that it is a parent’s responsibility to help our children grow into honest and responsible adults that provide a positive contribution to society. Allowing them to live with such a horrible person is not in support of this or in the best interests of our children.
Thank you. We appreciate any financial help that you can offer…
