When an order lambasting ex-spouse still doesn't favor you...

[ForeverDad]

Background:  I had already gotten custody in 2011 but GAL didn't want to change equal time in hopes ex would be more stable with child support.  All it changed was one thing - rather than ex taking our son to the PCP when she wished, she had to call me and demand me to make an appointment because son needed a doctor "now!"  Entitlement, blaming and behaviors unchanged.

Note that in 2006 and 2011 court used a worksheet to calculate my child support.  Despite minimal inflation between those two years, my 2006 CS for alternate weekends was about $50 less than the calculated amount for equal time in 2011.  Perhaps that was in line with my slightly higher income by 2011, but I had expected equal time would have made payments smaller.  What did not change was that my ex was both times imputed with minimum wage since she has never ever provided her income to the court.

So I went to court in 2012 seeking majority time due to impact on school and schoolwork and also her continuing poor behaviors.  Since we had previously 'settled' in 2008 and 2011, her behaviors had never been documented extensively to the court, just bits and pieces.  We had testimony in autumn 2013, school officials testified about a school field trip incident, homework and tardies, I played some rants and demands of ex from recorded phone calls.

The result was an order at the end of 2013.  My lawyer called it a win and in reality it was, I walked out with majority time during the school year and as a consequence my CS was cancelled, but over time I've gotten a better sense of what was really addressed and what wasn't.  While mother 'lost' - she made one more CPS allegation and since then her entitlement has been reduced and less oppositional - I've concluded I didn't 'win'.  Why do I say that?

Example 1 - Parenting time

Although the order repeatedly commented on mother's 'disparagement' of father within range of son's hearing (and used additional negative words as well) it was curiously tepid on father's contrasting behaviors.

Apparently due to mother's past tardies and not as involved with homework, etc I got majority time during the school year.  I'm sure her observed disparagement factored into it but... . when it came time to deciding summers, the magistrate gave her "one more try" with equal time during the summer.  Me?  I would have considered that her disparagement wasn't only occurring during the school year.  In fact, I had a couple recordings regarding an Independence Day conflict in July.

But despite that, all I got was majority time during the school year.  I really mind that more on principal than in practice.  She's already asking me to let him be with me some snippets of her time for various reasons.  Also, to a certain extent it does give me more free time.

Example 2 - Child support

But the details of the order have been percolating in the back of my mind and I've identified another mismatch, this time about the CS.  Normally the minority time parent or the equal time parent earning more money would pay child support.  At least that was my case.

The order discussed "there was insufficient evidence to determine a child support order".  Okay, I admit, my lawyer didn't submit my income during the testimony, but neither did mother submit her income.  As already noted above, she has never, not once, submitted her income, the court has never had an issue with it, it always just imputed her with minimum wage and that didn't prevent her from getting child support!  Apparently too the court did not want to use the prior worksheets from 2006 or 2011 either.

However, what I came to realize in recent weeks was this:  According to the court order, "Father shall pay for his share of the GAL fee.  Based upon the last worksheet available, Mother's responsibility for any part of the GAL fee is waived... . "

My impression, court doth speaketh through both sides of the metaphorical mouth.  (Or forked tongue?)  For Father to get child support current information was required, though actual data was never a strict requirement for Mother previously.  But then Mother got her GAL fee waived based upon an old worksheet that contained Mother's imputed minimum wage income, a worksheet the court had just declined to use for Father to receive child support.

That supports the old saying... . You don't win the case as much as the disordered spouse/parent loses the case.

[livednlearned]

That supports the old saying... . You don't win the case as much as the disordered spouse/parent loses the case.

It also supports the idea that it's all about the judges.

In my last hearing, the judge reinstated visitation AND ordered N/BPDx to get substance abuse counseling, anger management classes, and an MMPI-2, to be completed within 30 days of the hearing.

Why not just reinstate visitation AFTER he did those three things?

As a result, there is no official document ending visitation. It just ended unofficially because N/BPDx didn't do what he was supposed to do.

So now I have to go back to court if I want to make no visitation official. Otherwise, n/BPDx could pick S12 up from school, or out of the blue ask for visitation. It also meant that I couldn't ask for sanctions to have N/BPDx pay for my legal fees. He has had to do that for all of the recent hearings, and it's been bad enough that the judge issued a gatekeeping order to keep N/BPDx from either taking me to court or not complying with court orders. Why, with that track record, would the judge not do the same with the visitation order? What he ordered was essentially the same thing, but with a small variance that had a huge impact on me and S12, including financial implications.

I have a decent judge, but my point is that judges don't think carefully of the consequences or the details of our cases. Sounds like it's the same in yours, FD.

[Waddams]

I think if you have the money, then have your L write draft orders for what you propose to the judge.  Then if the judge agrees, he just signs.  And if he wants to change anything, I've had my L in the past make the changes for the judge and send it to his office.  So far, opposing counsel hasn't objected, the judge hasn't objected, I got my orders done quicker, and had a chance to QA/QC everything and make sure no minor nuances cropped up to bite me.

Lots of times, I think the judges and their clerks are just like the rest of us, they want to go home after work, and they sometimes don't review everything quite as thoroughly as they should.  Just like the rest of us sometimes get into cruise control at work and keep doing the same thing the same way and sometimes miss a nuance of a specific situation.  The more proactive you are at setting yourself apart from their "normal", the better the chances that they'll remember your specific circumstances.

They also sometimes will lambast either or both parents, but in the end it won't make a difference to the ruling as they'll go more towards kids needs and expect the parents to get in line with that.  And sometimes they give the parents more chances to do so than they should.

[livednlearned]

They also sometimes will lambast either or both parents, but in the end it won't make a difference to the ruling as they'll go more towards kids needs and expect the parents to get in line with that. 

I just learned why this is the case. In the process of dealing with my ex's four appeals, I found out that one of the reasons a court of appeals can overturn a ruling is if the judge is found to show favoritism.

It helped me understand why the judge ruled my way, but seemed to favor N/BPDx during the hearing. I even got lectured on how to transfer a DMV title even though it was my ex who was obstructing the title transfer. 

Now I know why.

[ForeverDad]

A few days after we separated, police came for her, once she was out she went straight to family court and filed for a protection order and included our son.  I saw she listed her pending case in the other court as required (but I soon doubted the magistrate even asked or cared about it), CPS investigator stood up and stated his agency had "no concerns" about me, but basically the magistrate had one question for us... . What are your work schedules?  I said I had a regular schedule, she said she 'worked from home' even though I had a TPO preventing her from coming near our home.  Still, in those 30 minutes she became temporary custodial parent with majority time.  I didn't get anything more until we settled the divorce over two years later.  It took me 8 years (from November 2005 to January 2014) to reverse that initial status set in 30 minutes.

Well, not exactly reversed, despite now being seen as a disparaging parent she still has a slightly better order now than I had back in 2005-2008.  I then had 22.3% versus she now has 25% during the school year and 50% during the summer.

No one can convince me that if genders were reversed, that if I had gotten majority time way back then but had turned out to be the misbehaving parent that it would have taken her 8 years to get it fixed.  (Although some mothers here do report they've had immense struggles to get decent orders, it's almost as though the court dances around the misbehaving, squeaky wheel father too.)

[david]

I have had the same experience as Waddams. I wrote our custody agreement. The judge denied the first one which gave me primary custody. The other thirteen were specific and he just copied them exactly as I wrote them. Had I written the first one in detail, spelling out a typical month day by day, I believe he would have just copied it without ever doing the math as to who had majority time.

It took me several weeks to write and it looked very legal when I was done except for the first one.