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This woman is absolutely correct - particularly in Stamford Court (which should come as no surprise given the well-known wealth of lower Fairfield County matrimonial litigants). I have witnessed it first hand - both with representation (egregious churning and billing/time spent/value fraud)and as a pro se standing on the CT Practice Book, common law AND STATUTORY law principles. There exists a self-funding, self-feeding frenzy, particularly when children and/or baseless and frighteningly harmful custody battles ensue. Its a transparently money grubbing enterprise that is ENCOURAGED by the judges themselves, which of course draws natural conclusions of complicity. As a well-respected civil rights attorney once declared in his weekly article in the CT Law Tribune: "...family court in CT is essentially a lawless Court..." (surpassed only by the REALLY lawless Probate Courts in the state). Stamford Court is BY FAR the worst offender with self-dealing, conflict-of-interests, lack of impartiality,and boldfaced ex parte corruption abounding, both within the Court itself and most certainly in the Clerk's Office as well (answerable to the Fam Court judges). Woe begon all monied litigants (particularly the wives/mothers whose divorces are file there and who are forced to walk the legal abuses run amok daily on its third floor. And yes, be VERY wary of the old-boy network that operates and controls this sewer of 'equitable justice' - they're easy to spot - and absolutely some wear cloaks over their suits. It's an atrocity and a disgrace within and to the CT Judiciary. Go read the Statutes and case law and you'll be outraged at the 'broad powers' vested in these judges such that this conscious set-up was and continues to breed widespread and rampant corrupted proceedings, decisions, and abuses of judicial power.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the comment. What I want to say is thank you to whoever this person is who was willing to speak out in this video. Does anyone know who she is? Whoever she is, she is speaking for every woman in CT who has lost her children in a custody battle or ended up without any money after a so called "equitable" divison of the assets.
ReplyDeleteActually the thanks should go to the both of you (I dont know who either of you are) as its gutsy for anyone willing to stand up and put voice (via tape or blog) to the egregious (and often flagrantly illegal) breeches of public trust and judicial due process that have - and are still - carried out unfettered and unabashedly in CT divorce courts. Particularly so in the high-stakes, high-money district courts. And this DESPITE an extensive Public Service & Trust Commission review, including public hearings around the state, and a Public Access Task Force headed by one of CT's most honored - and honorable - but unfortunately now retired Supreme Ct justice, Judge David Borden. He (and sadly only a handful of other justices who mostly serve(d) in the higher review Appellate/Supreme Courts, not in the all-important trenches of the Superior Court) was well acquainted with the frequent financial frauds carried out at the trial court level. And even famously memorialized in his definitive and well reasoned decision on that very subject - overturning all lower court decisions - in the preeminent landmark case of BILLINGTON v.BILLINGTON (husband's fraudulent financial non-disclosures). There are a myriad of supportive case law decisions too numerous to cite here - some are festering still, either within the well known, offending trial courts or inching slowly, wastefully, and needlessly expensively up the Appellate system.
ReplyDeleteSo much for progress,transparency,or equitable procedural and substantive due process (the bedrock of our judicial system) when Commissions, Task Forces, public hearings, bench-bar committees, court rules AND case law, fails to infiltrate, weed out and overhaul those inherently corrupt or corruptable bad apples that sooner or later come to define the CT divorce process as a whole.
At one point during the course of my own horrific travails (reverberating still after 8 damaging years in Stamford Court and beyond - hence my using anonymity) I questioned a friend litigator outside the 'matrimonial' field about the clear abuses. His response was "blame it on the system". To which I replied "well, that would be the lawyers and judges then, wouldn't it - they define and run this system, we litigants are just furniture in the room". Silence. From a quick-witted articulate defense attorney. I say with conviction no such taint and abuse exists with such flagrancy in criminal or other civil judicial arenas (i.e. jury cases).
Yet just exactly what underlies those cases - real live people, their livelihoods, their businesses, their investments, their money, their financial security, etc - so absolutely is at stake (and more) with a divorce. Like births, marriages, and death, divorce is a MAJOR life event and well defined as THE most important financial event in a person's life. It doesn't come and go like a tort case or a criminal case. It reverberates into all arenas of a person's life and tears at the fabric of every family member unlike any other judicial case or decision resonates.
And for that CT divorcing couples are thrown into a judicial 'system' essentially lawless, flagrantly capricious, often biased and injurious (largely to women and children's financial security), blithely paupering, self-serving, and oppressively mercenary?
(post to be continued due to space limits)
The corruption is not only limited to Stamford. Hartford family court is run by a few lawyers who somehow have the ability to threaten others lawyer from properly advocating for you. One lawyer in New Britain blatantly told me that she would not take the case if she has to go up against a particular lawyer who is the GAL. The lawyer told me that I would not be able to find a lawyer in the entire Hartford county who would go up against this lawyer.
ReplyDeleteIn court, my motions would NOT be calendared by the clerk's office but they would calendar my wife's lawyer's motions. When we go before a judge the clerk's office intentionally takes out my past discrediting motions so the judge will not have access to them in the court room. There are other issues.
I can only agree with every word that has been said in your comments above. Thanks for taking the time to let people know what is going on in the trenches every day in our family courts throughout the state. It is an extraordinary and unprecedented tragedy.
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