The Battles
Mind you it was not my intent to become this involved in the 'Father's' or the Parental rights movement. I came into this from a simple statement made to me by my own attorney during the early stages of my divorce and my desire to make my story available for all to see on the web.
While discussing my case during our first meeting I made it clear to my attorney that I wanted custody of my son and that her lack of interest in the child and the fact that I had been the raising parent were my basis for this. He said to me that I would never have or gain custody of the child because "I was a male and they don't do that in this county." I thought to myself, "What kind of BS is this guy trying to pull, should I get up and tell him no thank you because he was not on the same page as me here or what."
I stayed because in my mind this was wrong and I was going to do something about this. If that meant that I was going to be the one taking the stand for my 14th Amendment constitutional rights at this point, so be, but I was not going to get screwed and taken out of my son's life because someone that did not know me was going to say that that was the way it was going to be. I had not heard of or known that such a bias existed within the family court system but I was going to do right by my son and damn the torpedoes was going to be full speed ahead.
I was advised to go after a "new thing" called shared parenting where the parent share in the raising of the child because this was my best chance with the courts and would not likely lead to a protracted legal fight. I said OK to this. Had I known what was to come to me in the following years I would have slugged it out from the beginning.
I have laid these pages out with a chronological outline of each of the four times my ex has drug me into court challenging my rights as a parent. You will see many of the stupid things that have been said to me as a fit parent by people that never really took the time to learn the facts of this case or shall I say cases.
Having gone thru the divorce process in the beginning of 1995, it did not take long for the ugly realty of the family court system to rear its head. The first battle took a heavy toll on me mentally and physically as I lost a lot of weight. Divorce diet and then the custody battle caused me to lose 30 plus pounds from the stress. Stress that was unnecessary if my ex had only seen that an equal parenting situation was best for my son. The agreement (outlined here) that we had coming out of the divorce was in this child's best interest as it was constitutionally compliant in all manners. I have placed the full text of the agreement here so that all can see that I was very fair in writing this so that both parties remained active and fully shared in all the responsibilities of the raising of this child.
The second battle came out of her new marriage and her new husband's desire to totally control reality. This is where the real colors of the system rear its head. Pay attention to the comments made to me by a social worker from the court as this plainly shows the existing bias.
The third time around was when things had started to unravel because my own family was now turning against me. I found out that my mother was planning on selling my house. Sounds confusing but I can explain this. When I got divorced I had just started a new job so my mother agreed to put the house that my ex and I had bought together in her name, it was either this or lose all the sweat equity I had built up in the house which was substantial amount of money. The agreement was that if the house was ever sold all profits would be mine. Her intent was to sell the house to pay off her debts and leave me on the lurch because she was mad at me and had disowned me.
I beat her by contacting the buyer and arranging to go into a rent to own situation. This looked like a good deal until the buyer turned out to be an asshole and wanted to do a ton of unnecessary work to the house and was constantly disturbing me while I worked (I worked out the house). I kept telling him no to the things he wanted to do but he kept coming up with new things and frankly our ideas of a great place to live were not meshing at all. I like a house that is a home, has character. I want a place that is the old school, if you like, way ands I do not half ass things when I do a repair or remodel. He constantly wanted to half ass things and use cheap material which did not work with what I had in mind. Now mind you I am buying the house from him in this deal but he is forcing his ideas on me.
I finally had enough and told him no more bothering me. I was then served an eviction notice because I was a couple days behind on rent. When I tried to work this out with him, he refused and said I was costing him too much money.
I moved and never looked back except for contacting my mother to inform her that she should either turn the money from the sale of the housed over to me or I would sue her for it under our agreement. I needed the cash to move and move on as work had been slim. I ended up getting about half of the money and found out that she had sold the house for 2/3 of the true value.
