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Showing posts with label CUSTODY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CUSTODY. Show all posts

Monday, November 11, 2013

HOW DO WE KNOW CUSTODY COURTS ARE SENDING CHILDREN TO LIVE WITH ABUSERS?

Barry Goldstein, of the NOMAS Child Custody Task Group states the following:
 
"Mothers and domestic violence advocates have been complaining for many years about problems in the custody court system that have resulted in large numbers of children being sent to live with abusive fathers while safe, protective mothers are denied any meaningful relationship with their children.  Courts have tended to dismiss the complaints by referring to the mothers as “disgruntled litigants.”  As more concern about the problem has been expressed and more research performed, the mothers’ complaints have been confirmed.  Early in 2010, a new book co-edited by Dr. Maureen T. Hannah and Barry Goldstein, DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, ABUSE and CHILD CUSTODY will be published and end any doubts that there is a pattern of mistakes made in the custody court system.  These mistakes have caused thousands of cases to be mishandled and placed the lives and well being of battered women and their children in jeopardy."
 
To read more of this article, please click on the link below:

http://www.nomas.org/node/168 

Saturday, October 19, 2013

WHEN MEN ASK FOR CUSTODY: WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE KIDDING?

Thank God I ended up with the residential custody of the children.  However, sometimes in my wildest dreams I imagine what might have happened if my ex had ended up with custody of the children. 
 
His scenario, from what I've gathered from the custody evaluation, was that he would continue to work and that he would have a nanny taking care of the children while I saw them once a month for a short visit. 
 
This would have been quite interesting to see, had it actually happened, because after knowing my ex for 25 years, I am aware that he is a workaholic and that even once he came home at night, he was very likely to have continued on working with the children running around the house unsupervised.  
 
Still, my attorney told me that I was within a hair's breadth of losing custody of my children and that I should be very grateful for his hard work. 
 
Of course, from my perspective I am looking at a custody evaluator and a GAL who actually entertained the idea that having three children in the care of a total workaholic would be a good idea.  Of course, I am not sure they even asked him how many hours he worked.  I think they spent their time looking at all the pictures he snapped during his parenting time. 
 
(I am not going to call it visitation, because there is something inherently wrong about referring the time fathers and mothers have with their children as time that they are visiting!) 
 
My bottom line question is, why do we have these custody disputes costing multiple thousands of dollars?  Shouldn't it be obvious that custody ought to go with the mothers who are the primary caregiver? 
 
Now before you start yelling at me all at once, don't start thinking that I am gender biased.  My own father was a very non-traditional man who never allowed himself to be limited by expectations of what men should or should not do. 
 
He was, in fact, a marvelous mother. 
 
He loved babies--he loved to rock them and hold them.  My mother used to tell me that he always thought they were "cheaper by the dozen." And as a young faculty member, he used to take my older sister to his class where students fussed over the baby while he delivered his lecture. 
 
My earliest memory of my father is of sitting next to him while he darned socks, in the days when people actually darned them.  And this was no easy feat.  My father was well over six feet and extremely large.  His hands were enormous, yet he would take this tiny little needle and repair a whole bundle of socks.  
 
He was also good, by the way, at making buttonholes, hemming seams, and doing all kinds of major clothing repairs on the Singer sewing machine we had stored in the closet.  I could go on about his excellent cooking, about how he collected buckets full of crabapples and turned them into delicious jelly in the summer, but I can only make this blog so long! 
 
My parents had a modern marriage in the 60s and 70s way before it actually existed.  My Mom had a full time job and worked when no other mothers I knew worked.  She would march to work every morning with her hair cut severely short wearing a polyester pants suit.  When her granddaughter asked her on a visit, "Why don't you bake brownies the way my other Grandma does?" my Mom responded, "I am not your brownie baking Grandma!"  My Mom took college classes, attended plays and operas, wrote poetry and published short stories throughout her old age.
 
With parents like this, how could I possibly advocate for the assignment of custody based on traditional gender roles?
 
The first reason is that these children came out of my body.  I risked my life and my wellbeing in order to have these children. 
 
In particular, after my first child I had damage to my reproductive organs that was extensive, consisting of both severe internal and external tearing and bleeding.  Sorry to gross you out, if that's what I've done.  I'm also squeamish talking about these things, but still facts are facts.  I had to wait three hours for the surgeon on call to make it to the hospital to care for me.  Afterwards, it took a considerable amount of time to recover. 
 
Subsequently, when I had the two additional children, things did not get better for me.  This means that I have physical damage to my body that is irreparable.  I did have surgery three years ago, but this could only repair so much, and the expectation is that it will require follow up work later on and that I will never fully heal. 
 
So every day that I get up I have physical problems that have resulted from my pregnancies which a man will never have to face in order to have children. 
 
Now, I am not saying I regret these children in any way.  In fact, every day I wake up I thank God for the wonderful children that I have.  I am only saying, that before any custody evaluator or GAL thinks about taking them from me, they should consider the price I've paid for them. 
 
And, of course, it doesn't just end there. 
 
What about the years of breastfeeding that I devoted myself to so that the children would be physically and emotionally healthy.  That adds up to at least four years of breastfeeding.  That's like a decade in my life during which time I was either pregnant or breastfeeding. 
 
Over and above that, can any of you ladies reading this blog recall when your body became your own again, when the kids stopped spontaneously jumping on your lap when they needed reassurance, when they stopped banging on the door nonstop when you tried to take a shower, when they stopped reaching out for you and hugging you at will, when they stopped jumping up and down asking you to pick them up--about years, I would say, and we have the ratty clothing and miserable hair cuts to show for it. 
 
This is a feat of giving in order to create a family that a man never has to consider providing. 
 
What shocks me, then, under these circumstances is that any court, any GAL, any custody evaluator could ever have only observed a hair's breadth difference between my ex and me when it came to the decision on custody. 
 
So why did it end up this way? 
 
Because I don't think anyone involved in the custody recommendation thought that this kind of information was important.  Our world is still very much a man's world, and so who even thinks to ask questions like that.  Yet these are very basic and fundamental questions that should be considered. 
 
For example, during the entire time that the kids were young, I never once saw my ex change a diaper. 
 
In the fourteen years that we were going to the pediatrician, my ex maybe saw the doctor two or three times. 
 
So since when did it turn out that he should be the one to get custody?  Because he takes good pictures?  
 
I have days when I think that men should have no involvement in custody issues whatsoever because they are simply clueless.  They have no idea what is going on with their own children, I can assure you, and then they go out making judgments on mothers in custody battles when they have no idea what being a mother is all about. 
 
My Dad was a lot different in so many ways, as I have said.  But he had a demanding job and he often had very late hours.  It was still my Mom who took the job that made her more available and that continues to happen nowadays for most people. 
 
So my Dad was not there to hear about my day when I came home from school; he did not instruct me on how to tie my shoe laces; he did not come to my room and check my temperature when I was sick and had to stay home from school; he did not walk me up the street to join the Scouting group at our neighborhood school, or sell girl scout cookies; he did not put my hair up in individual curlers when I was upset and then tell me how beautiful I looked once my hair was all done. 
 
Kids need their Moms, and anyone who thinks otherwise is nuts!

Saturday, June 1, 2013

PATRICK HENRY AND BETSY ROSS' TESTIMONY AT THE MARCH 25, 2013 51-14 HEARINGS AT THE SUPREME COURT!


CHIEF JUSTICE ROGERS:  Good morning.

               JUSTICE EVELEIGH:  Good morning.

               MR. PATRICK HENRY:  Good morning.  Obviously, we are switching gears a little bit here based upon what we view as being a very responsive court here this morning. 

               In your folder are copies of Patrick Henry’s address of March the 23rd of 1775.  The reason why I included that is that we’re all here this morning in a unified parental and discriminatory issue that we believe exists in the family court system in the state of Connecticut.

               We have been parents, most of us stripped of our joint legal and physical custody rights without access to due process or equal protection of the Fourteenth Amendment.  In Troxel v. Granville, the United States Supreme Court of 2005, a decision that I know that this Court is well aware of, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor delivered an eloquent defense of the rights of parents as a fundamental liberty interest that is subject to due process and equal protection.

               In your folders today, you will find two letters to the editor, one going to my hometown newspapers in New Canaan and the other being distributed to every single weekly newspaper about the passage by the Joint Committee of the Judiciary of an endorsement of House Bill 6387 which directly emanated for more than two years of meetings that I personally attended of the family commission. 

               We have a very difficult issue about judges writing law.  Articles 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 of the supreme law of this land declares the separation of powers of government.  No judge in this state has the right to submit legislation imbedded in a court operation’s bill submitted with only seven days of a public notice that this was going to occur on March the 4th in the legislative office building. 

               I’m here to address one issue and that is Practice Book Rule 1-9a created in a seditious conspiracy by Justice Peter Zarella and captured on the June 29, 2007, minutes of the annual judges’ meeting in which a resolution was passed to start creating clandestine meetings between the legislature of this state and members of this Court.  How dare you?  And you have denied us. 

               And you, Senator McDonald --  former Senator McDonald, now Justice McDonald, participated in not conducting a public hearing as the co-chair of the judiciary committee of this legislature for 43 years and now you sit on this bench.  I wrote to you, sir, asking where is the public hearings on Connecticut General Statute 51-14a?  You never wrote back.

               CHIEF JUSTICE ROGERS:  Patrick Henry?

               MR. PATRICK HENRY:  That was Patrick Henry.

               CHIEF JUSTICE ROGERS:  Then is there a Betsy Ross?

               (Pause in the proceedings.)

               CHIEF JUSTICE ROGERS:  Good morning.

               MS. ROSS:  Good morning, Panel.  I’m representing Betsy Ross, one who has brought about change to our nation with a symbol of our flag which stands for liberty to our freedoms of this great nation of the United States of America.

               JUSTICE NORCOTT:  Ma’am, could you lower the microphone so we can hear you, please?

               (The microphone is adjusted.)

               JUSTICE NORCOTT:  Thank you. 

               MS. ROSS:  Did you hear what I said?  My First, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights were serious violated and I have a rule book here, it’s called the Constitution of the United States of America which states so -- by someone on this bench here, Judge Maureen Keegan, seriously violated those rights when she falsely arraigned me in the criminal court last year by way of hearing my testimony on May 31, 2011, and then acting upon a false report that it was a conflict of interest for her to arraign me.

               And I don’t have a script written but I’m just going to be stating that many times in the family court, parents’ rights are not properly listened to.  They just rule from what they want to do with parents in the court and whosever has a bigger pocketbook, who has more money to pay lawyers, pay judges -- because I know that goes on -- pay therapists, to say what they want in their reports, and there’s many false reports written to the courts by way of therapists, evaluators, and it only hurts our children’s lives. 

               My child’s life is not afforded the same education because of faulty decisions made by judges in the courts -- in the family courts, the juvenile courts.  I don’t have to be a rocket science to know this or research the laws to know that my child’s life has been thwarted because of the inadequacy by the judges in the family courts and the juvenile courts, and it says -- and I can quote a child’s statement by saying that he looked over the juvenile justice system, a recent bill in the legislation in which I’m sure you’re all privy to and know about, that it states throughout the whole bill, best interest of the child, and that child stated that never once when he was in the system his best interests were looked at and his best interests were never taken into consideration.

               The judges -- you need to enforce that the best interests of the child be taken into consideration and that’s what’s ruining our country.  Our children’s future is being damaged -- severely damaged because everybody is on a power trip in the courts and everybody thinks that, you know, we won for the best candidate, the person who has the most power, but you’re just hurting our children.  Our children’s future is being damaged. 

               So if we want this country to go forward on a positive note, I firmly believe that you should uphold our constitutional rights.  Thank you. 

Monday, February 21, 2011

TIMING, A TICK A TOCKA, TIMING!

When you start the proceedings in a divorce, the way it is supposed to happen according to the timing is you are supposed to initiate discovery--by discovery I generally mean obtain financial information necessary to put together your financial agreement--and work on a parenting access plan at the same time.  

This means that information regarding finances and information regarding parenting is emerging at pretty much the same time volleying back and forth between the parties in the same way that a tennis match involves volleying.  This maintains a nice balance of power and a steady emergence of information that is beneficial to establishing a good rhythm to the proceedings so that when the time comes both sides are prepared to write up a fair and equitable final agreement.  

However, as you know, particularly when it comes to what happens to women in family court, and particularly in regard to what happens in a high conflict divorce, these kinds of nice arrangements fall apart.  What often occurs is that all financial matters are placed to the side while the entire legal focus is placed on establishing a parenting agreement regarding the children.  

This places the entire focus on, guess who, the Mom, who has most of the time done all the work when it comes to taking care of the children.  All of a sudden Dad, who couldn't give a sh*t before, is suddenly concerned about this or that way in which Mom handles the children.  All of a sudden every little thing that Mom has been doing is under exaggerated scrutiny.  


Did Mom ever let Junior take little sister off the bus one day--Oh, my God--Mom is parentifying Junior!  Did the puppy ever shit on the rug when it was being toilet trained? Oh my God--there are faeces all over the house!  Did Mom ever see a therapist?  Oh my God--she is crazy!  And, on and on, for month after month.  Has Mom been providing home cooked meals during the pendente lite period?  She'd better be, disregarding the fact that Dad has probably not been providing the money to pay for them.  All of this is taken very seriously by the custody evaluator and by the GAL and that is no joke.  


After months of being hammered away at by the ex's high priced lawyer most women are totally exhausted by the time the parenting agreement gets signed and by then, during the months that the legal focus has been on the children and Mom's behavior, most abusive spouses have had sufficient time to hide much of the marital assets, and most women are too exhausted to look for them, aside from the fact that they are too fearful to press too hard on the subject because they are afraid that bringing it up will lead their exes to continue to call their custody of the children into question.

Furthermore, the majority of parenting plans drawn up in a high conflict divorce include an additional clause that the issue of custody will be reevaluated within six months which means that Mom remains standing with a gun to her head in regard to the children.  And for women, what matters more than your children--nothing really, and don't guys know it.  

Oh, and by the way, if you can make sure there is no such followup clause in your parenting agreement, the more power to you. When I agreed to one in mine, I did so because I was unaware of what would happen as a result.  
 
 
Now that YOU know, don't be as stupid as I was!

I had a sense that timing would be a problem when my whole divorce started and I said to my lawyer why don't we start with the financial matters first, because that will expose my ex's character--the way he has hidden our finances from me, refused to abide by agreements, defrauded the IRS, and generally engaged in questionable business practices.  Then the focus would have been on him.  

But no, nothing I said could reverse the order of the proceedings and I ended up with a really bad financial agreement for exactly the reasons I've described.  I've seen this happening all around with women who are engaged in high conflict divorces.  For the court system, for lawyers, it's just business as usual!