Imagine you’ve just come out of a physically and emotionally abusive marriage. You have sole custody of your child, and a child psychologist has recommended to the court that your former spouse be given restricted visitation privileges due to the documented past abuse. The divorce and custody proceedings over, you can now settle into the new routine and concentrate on raising the child you love.
But there’s a storm brewing. Your former spouse isn’t done yet. Suddenly, you’re hit with a barrage of motions which summon you back into court. Over and over, you have to show up in court to answer these motions, paying your attorney for their services. Soon, you run out of money, but the motions keep coming, and now you are in court alone having to face a small army of attorneys hired by your former spouse.
Suddenly, you’re hearing in court that you’re crazy; you’re unstable; you’re an abusive parent; you need to go into counseling while custody of your child is switched over to your former spouse. And none of the allegations against you have been substantiated, but the judge can only seem to hear the side that has the lawyers.
You come to find out that the court appointed child representative is working not for the best interests of your child, but for your former spouse. In fact, the lawyer you had working for you when you still had money (a very prominent and well-respected lawyer in your city) wrote a letter to that child representative, stating, among other things: “[You and the opposing counsel are] actively engaged in joining forces against my client and making comments about getting [witnesses] involved to ‘help out’ the problem; the problem being [my client’s] desire to be a mother to her child…[Y]ou have violated all ethical duties as a child representative and attorney.”
Imagine being ordered by the court to pay this same child representative a large sum of money every month, making it even harder to afford a lawyer.
Then you learn that the court appointed psychologist for your child is also fighting on the side of your former spouse, and that this psychologist has been taken to court in the past for similar misconduct.
And then you realize what it is that your former spouse and his aggressive attorneys are smelling: the rather large Trust coming to you and your child when your ailing father passes away. And, so, Act II: your former spouse exerts undue influence on your ailing and cognitively impaired father and gets him to change his will, writing you out, and writing him in. This is what is known in some circles as “elderly financial exploitation.”
Now it all makes sense. Play on your former spouse’s team and reap some of the financial windfall – you will be rewarded for your efforts.
Imagine that you have not only lost custody of your child, you have lost your inheritance, you have been drained financially and emotionally, and, worst of all, you have been denied all access to your child for the last year and a half – total separation, with no end in sight.
And what of your child, the child for whom you gave up your career while married so you could take care of his special needs? Has he glided through this unscathed? Has he been separated from you and isolated from most of his family without consequence? Hardly. Your child went from thriving in the Honors program at a school he loved to, under his father’s care, being truant most of the year at his new school, taken out of Honors courses, and being overmedicated and hospitalized.
This is the nightmare currently being lived by a good friend of mine, a friend who at this time wishes to remain anonymous to avoid further legal harassment. We have raised just over $1,700 through other means for her legal defense fund, but lawyers are telling her it will take at least $6,000 to take this back into court. So, we’re trying to raise $5,300 here. Please help this mother and child reunite. Please help end the nightmare.
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Insightful links:
Custody Disputes and the Batterer's Advantage http://www.lundybancroft.com/articles/understanding-the-batterer-in-custody-and-visitation-disputes
Maternal Deprivation http://www.savingdamon.com/maternal-deprivation.html Court proceedings, to the detriment of families, are bought and paid to the highest parental bidder. http://www.rocklandtimes.com/2015/04/01/woman-has-support-of-leading-psychiatrist-in-claims-of-unfairness-levied-against-family-court-system/ More money flows through the family courts, and into the hands of courthouse insiders, than in all other court systems in America combined - over $50 billion a year and growing. http://www.divorcecorp.com/
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