KEVIN CASE V. JENNIFER JONES, FA074032302, A MOTHER INTERUPTED!

Have you ever heard the saying that "Too many cooks will spoil the soup?"  Well, let me tell you how many cooks were in this case. 

 

We have here Judge Constance Epstein, Judge Holly Abery-Wetstone, Judge John Brennan, Judge John Caruso, Judge Jorge Simon, Judge Herbert Barall, Judge Stephen Frazzini, Judge Richard Dyer, Judge Edward Dolan, Judge Linda Prestley, and Judge Gerard Adelman. 

 

Then post judgment we have Judge Harris Lifshitz, Judge Jane Grossman, Judge Leslie Olear, Judge Carbonneau, and Judge David Dee. 

 

That makes just about 16 judges and from the look of this case which has lasted from 2007 up until the present the results haven't been that successful. 

 

It is amazing when you consider it.  Can you imagine the sum total of the education that all these outstanding jurists have had, the years of experience between all of them, and yet they cannot seem to establish results in a case like this which will lead to a working relationship between these two litigants. 

 

I'll bet you I could get some good results pretty quickly.  For one thing, give the child back to the Mother where she belongs. That would be a really good start.  The only reason the Father in this case wants this child is for power, money, control, and ego. 

 

How do I know this?  I'll tell you how I know this because the ruling in the Memorandum of Decision dated March 28, 2011 states, "The plaintiff Father did not appear to have played a very significant role initially in his daughter' care once the parties separated." 

 

Really? 

 

But if you look at the very first thing this Father did upon filing for a divorce, it was to file a custody application for the child.  Then he proceeded to file two ex parte applications for custody and also filed for child support.  Great start!  Dump the child on the Mother, then file for custody and child support. 

 

So then you read through the Memorandum of Decision, yadda, yadda, yadda, blah, blah, blah, residential custody to father, sole decision making to Father, and then you get to the factual findings in the case and guess what, lo and behold, it looks like the child is living with Father in the paternal Grandparent's house. 

 

So guess what?  Who do you think is really taking care of this child? 

 

In essence, the trial court has taken the child out of the care of her Mother and passed her over to the care of the Grandparents who are probably behind the whole thing. 

 

I'm loving all the praise Father is getting on his way to residential custody and sole decision making--to loosely quote, "Father has assumed full responsibility for the child's care since early August 2008 and, by all accounts, has done well ever since."  Sure he has done well.  So have Grandma and Grandpa. 

 

Mr. Case (Father) has described "the parties' participation in the Families In Transition Program (FIT) run by The Children's Law Center as a "horrible experience."  Why?  Because the therapist didn't agree with him all the time? Because he was actually asked to consider how his ex might feel? Bummer.  I know that really sucks. 

 

So I know you readers must be really interested in knowing exactly how Ms. Jones (Mother) lost custody to the Father.  You must be imagining that she didn't feed the child, or maybe she left the child at home while she went shopping, or maybe her house was crawling with bugs or something awful. 

 

You would be wrong if that is what you thought. 

 

What happened is that in August 2008, Ms. Jones had attempted for weeks in advance to get Father to care for the child for an extended weekend so she could go on vacation.  Apparently, it was his weekend anyway and all that was necessary was for him to agree to take care of the child for one additional day. 

 

Instead of saying yes or no, that he could either take the child or not during that planned vacation, Mr. Case hemmed and hawed, and then at the last minute said no.  In response, Ms. Jones took the child to day care with extra clothing and a car seat and went off on the planned vacation.  In response, Mr. Case filed one of his lovely ex parte motions for custody.

 

This was sufficient for the Family Court to shift custody from Mother to Father and to give Father residential custody and decision making at that time. 

 

Now my reaction to that is, you are kidding me.  You are kidding me.  But no, it was not a joke. 

 

Then, our pal Dr. James C. Black gets involved and carries out a custody evaluation for an entire year and a half.  Again, I am appalled. We are talking a year and a half of torturing a Mother in regard to whether she is going to get her child back or not. 

 

Readers, do you understand that even in the most high conflict types of cases, some of them considerably more embroiled and complicated than this one, a custody evaluation should take no longer than three to five months, when done by ethical clinicians.

 

Apparently, the wicked Mother was responsible for this state of affairs because she did not "cooperate with the evaluation in a timely fashion."  I wouldn't have cooperated with this evaluation either since it seems as though it was stacked against her. 

 

It doesn't matter if Mother cooperated or not.  The evaluation should have been completed sooner for the sake of the parties and for the sake of the child. 

 

What was Dr. James C. Black thinking of?  Oh, Dr. Black doesn't think.  You're right.  I forgot about that. 

 

The Memorandum of Decision talks about Father removing the Mother's name from school records and telling school officials that he has sole custody.  It talks about Father playing games so the Mother was unable to see their child.  It all rings so true to me, and the Trial Court seemed to agree.  Still, in this case, the custody went to the Father.

 

And in doing so, the Trial Court admonished the parties to work together on getting along for the benefit of the child.  However, the problem with this kind of thinking is that when a person has been cheated and defrauded as this Mother was, when she has been manipulated by the system into losing her child, this is the kind of injustice that such a Mother will never be able to come to terms with. 

 

And that is why there are just as many motions and hearings post judgment as there were prior to judgment. 

 

This was only to be expected.  This is the human response to great wrong.  You would think that Family Court would try to avoid results like this.  But probably not. 

 

I'm sure many of you have heard of the millions and millions of dollars that the Department of Health and Human Services has been giving to attorneys and custody evaluators who assist men in obtaining custody of their children, taking them away from fit mothers.  This case, in particular, gives me the feeling that money changed hands, people profited, and this Mother was denied her rights as a parent.