Posts Tagged ‘child support’

I “lost” today

Thursday, January 24th, 2013

I lost all three of my motions today at court.

The two child-support motions were always long shots. “The” verdict, when I ran this by various attorneys, seemed to vary with the person. Losing this hurts financially, but it was child support that I wasn’t likely ever to have received anyway. And, on the plus side, I did get the ex to admit, in a sworn filing, that he had owed the amounts.

I’d really thought I’d had a chance on the motion to get my non-marital property back. But my witness was injured at work and is in the hospital today, and the ex’s attorney was allowed to spring a surprise witness on me, who of course lied through her teeth. I should have had the sense to subpoena the police officers who’d been present because, contrary to what the lead officer had told me, the report he’d written was not accepted as “evidence” by the presiding judge.

Live and learn.

As my sister pointed out, my ex hadn’t gotten the second “industrial-strength” shredder as part of the decor; he’d locked himself into his private home office and shredded documents by the hour because he’d been destroying documents. Of course my documents don’t exist any more! And the ex had told me, in early 2009, that he was “making piles of” my stuff to donate for the tax deduction. Of course my stuff isn’t there any more! He’s donated our child’s things, too: all the clothes, toys, cell phones, school supplies, etc, that I’d paid for and supplied to the ex for when our son was over there.

Now I’m stuck providing a list of things to the ex’s attorney (that is, giving him an itemized list of things to destroy) to pass along to the ex, in hopes that the ex will suddenly “find” my things and return them.

He escaped the contempt finding by claiming he’s been holding my things for years. Whaddaya wanna bet he escapes returning any of our things by claiming (again) that none of my things were ever over there?

*sigh*

But my sister is right. Nothing “real” changed today. The ex is continuing not to support his child, and to get away with it. That’s nothing new. And the ex is getting away with having destroyed my things. I was lucky to get out with as much as I did.

Now I need to start composing a Motion to Compel. The ex has done almost nothing he agreed to do in the divorce decree, and now, due to his own successful claim, he can no longer make excuses based on stuff from before that decree was entered.

Time to get to work. And, hey, I wasn’t heard for three and a half years when I had attorneys. Sure, I lost today, but I was finally heard! And it only took me four months.

Looking forward to court on the 24th

Friday, January 4th, 2013

I am actually looking forward to court later this month. Last month, I was startled to discover that my ex’s lies were being used by his attorney as their legal strategy! Maybe they’re thinking that, because we now have a new judge (the previous judge having retired), they can make claims that won’t be checked.

Thankfully, my court reporter became ill. Not that I wish her any harm, but it cut things short, giving me time to realize what was going on. (Yes, I actually stuck to my guns and insisted on my right to have a reporter present, despite my ex’s attorney hammering on my supposed “craziness” for wanting to document what he and my ex say.)

My ex begged off coming to court this month, on the grounds that it was a “hardship” for him to come because he’d have to leave his job that he’d “just started…yesterday”, being December nineteenth. But he’d told others about it on the fifth of December, and he sent me a letter, dated the nineteenth but postmarked the twenty-first, saying that he’d started on the seventeenth — a Monday, which makes much more sense. Then he sent me an e-mail this month, claiming that he’d lost the job on the twenty-sixth. Riiiiiiiiight.

Back to the “strategy”: My ex’s attorney is actually claiming that, as part of the divorce settlement, I agreed to “forgive” my ex’s tens of thousands of dollars in withheld child support in return for his “forgiving” me the hundreds of thousands (or millions; it depends when you ask them) that I’d owed him under the court order of March 27, 2009.

Unfortunately for them, I have a legible copy of that order. And in one of my ex’s rambling “she a bitch-whore from the pits of hell” screeds, he specified that the 2009 order is the one they mean when they claim that I owed the ex any portion of the income from my business (that they claim the previous judge had declared was a partnership).

I have little idea what I’m doing in court, but I have to say that, with the help of a program I found online (and these years of experience), I’m actually doing better now without an attorney than I ever did with one. How shameful is that?

How quickly it starts up again

Friday, June 8th, 2012

It only took my ex-husband about a week and a half to return to his previous (repeatedly, conclusively, and very-expensively disproven) claims that all of my documentation (cancelled checks, doctors’ bills, etc) was fraudulent, and “the only way” for him to determine the true-truth (as opposed to the mere facts which must suffice for us normal people) is for him to be given complete control of all of my finances.

On the basis of these ludicrous claims, he is justifying his renewed refusal to comply with court orders or pay child support. And because I’m having to pay him tens of thousands of dollars a year in alimony for more than a decade (tax-free to him), he can afford a lawyer to defend himself, while I can’t afford one to protect our son.

There seems to be a growing awareness of how the family-court system (in America, at least) is being serially used by abusers as a means of continuing their abuse and control of their victims. I think it’s appalling that my child is being forced to serve as another data point.