It's a sad day for me. Spring break is over and I had to put my boys back on a plane to their father. Horse cried last night. Rabbit was plotting how to miss the plane so they could stay. They will be back in about 6 weeks for summer vacation but as Horse told his father,
"Even ONE day is too long!!!!"
They should not be with their father. He's not a bad guy but he has issues. Mental health issues being the biggest.
Our divorce/child custody was a comedy of errors, except it wasn't funny. People would tell me that there was no way that the courts could rule against me, yet they did time and time again. Those who were asked to make the determinations twisted words, told half truths (I have people who will swear that what is in the reports was not what they said) and didn't bother asking for clarification on important details. A big deal was made that I didn't sit and eat dinner with the kids. If they had bothered to ask me about it, they would have found out that I was working during the evening hours. Running back and forth to the kitchen to cook and serve while doing my work.
Others, when asked to make a second determination, shirked their responsibilities by ignoring us for months then telling the court that since they didn't have enough time to do anything, they would just go with the first report (this happened twice!).
I was even thwarted by the court itself. When I asked to speak, I was literally told that I could but anything I said wouldn't make any difference to them.
Bottom line though, it came down to the being able to afford legal counsel. He hired an expensive high powered attorney. I scraped and hired a lawyer, who then took my retainer and disappeared. Not even the court has been able to find him and it's been almost 4 years. I did hire another lawyer but my retainer didn't even cover long enough for her to play catch up, although she tried. Money was gone, so when I walked into the court for the final divorce and the year long custody battle after that, I did it alone.
There were no "free" lawyers available, not for family law cases. I called all over.
Sorry for the pity party. I miss my boys already and I'm already counting the days until they return home.
I had dog tags made for them a year ago. On one side is our picture. On the other side a quote from J.R.R. Tolkien...
"Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost"
No comments:
Post a Comment