THE MIGHTY SPREADING BLOB

One of the problems they don't tell you about when you get into this legal mess is just how much work representing yourself can be.  

I think I've told you about this before, when I get online and write blogs about how busy I am.  That busy consists of time spent at Staples or Kinkos making multiple required copies of legal documents.  Hours spent on making sure that all the details that need to be in order when you put a motion together have been attended to.  

Today, I spent all sorts of time simply on making sure that everyone who was required to get copies of documents, i.e. judges and the other parties in the case, received their copies, and that meant writing up the envelopes they had to be sent in.  Then there are the writes and the multiple rewrites and proofreading of documents.  It goes on and on.  

How it begins to become unmanageable, to become this mighty spreading blob, is when you take your case through trial, and then it goes to appeal, and then, as it has with me, you end up with grievances to the Statewide Grievance Committee regarding certain lawyers.  Just submitting a complaint about a single lawyer ends up rising to the level of engaging in another lawsuit.  

So you have your original lawsuit, and it goes to appeal, and then you have, say, two or more grievances against lawyers with the Statewide Grievance Committee, and then you can go to the ADA and submit a complaint there, and that adds to the mix, and then you can go further and start complaining about the judges.  

Well, complaining about the judges requires that you submit paperwork to the State Judicial Board, and that, again, is similar to starting another lawsuit.  And if you've been in Court as long as I have, that means you probably want to submit a complaint about more than one judge.  

Of course, don't forget your Guardian Ad Litems who have probably acted just as badly as anyone else, so again, you could file a complaint about them.  And once you have finished with them, there are the mental health professionals who acted like jerks, why not file a complaint to the APA (American Psychiatric Association), the SWA (Social Work Association) or the DPH (Department of Public Health).  

Basically, when things go wrong from the beginning, the wrong doing continues to multiply, one mistake leading the next mistakes, leading onto the next mistakes and onward.  It's like a Hurricane Katrina right in your own front and back yards, and it just keeps on spreading.  

It's like, as I have said, a mighty blob that keeps on blobbing and blobbing until your life is just one great, big blobula.

That's what I envision when I actually sit and ponder about what I could do if I actually had the financial and emotional resources to do it.  What actually needs to be done in a high conflict divorce would take an entire corporation to complete, if you really thought about it.  

That is why you have to be pretty careful about what you choose to do and pretty much pick and peck through the lawsuit possibilities and establish what are your priorities in terms of what you want to achieve.  Think about it.  What really, truly matters above all else to the point where the other options for what you could do seem to pale in comparison.  That is what you have to determine.  Otherwise, the whole task seems overwhelming.  

And, of course, the attorneys you are opposing know this and that is why they keep on adding additional motions into the mix or looking up rare and esoteric cases, rules and regulations to hit you with, because they know it will take you time to look it all up and respond to it and tire you out.  Sometimes, you have to look at what they are doing and say, do I really have to rise to that bait, or can I wink at it and move onto some issue that is more important.  

Prioritizing, selecting out the important matters, pacing yourself, all of this is important.  You don't want the blob to roll over you and squish you--trust me, you don't!