Toto

Remember how the last time I had to go to Family Court, my Mum fell over in the morning and broke her pelvis, vertebrae and a couple of ribs?

Well, this time I fell over.  In the bathroom.  Flat on my back.  And landed on my elbow.

I was winded and in pain.  But it was my poor Mum who needed calming down.  She thought I’d done some serious damage to myself and was absolutely distraught.

After a few minutes, when the shock had worn off, I realised that it was only my elbow that was in serious pain, so, with no time to spare I took some panadol and got in a Taxi and went on my way.

It’s been throbbing painfully all day, and when the mediation was over, I went and got it x-rayed.  Nothing is broken (although my GP is convinced that the radiographer must have missed it).  But it’s still pretty bruised and sore.  And will be in a sling for at least a couple of days (typing is S L O W).

And really, if you’re looking for good news you’d better stop reading now.  That was the high point of my day.

It’s off to Family Court again for us. (insert sound of $10,000 – $20,000 burning here)

The Independent Children’s Lawyer (ICL) and I were very clear about what would be “in the best interests of the children”.

It’s about talking with the children, listening to what they want, weighing up the pros and cons of all possible outcomes, factoring in their ages and their past relationships with both parents, and then working out what would cause them the least stress and the most happiness.

Am I right?

The ICL and I agreed 100% that the best interests of the children would be served by having them spend Wednesday afternoon until 7.30pm, and every second Friday and Saturday night with their father.  Returning home at 7.30pm on the Sunday night.  The ICL spent a lot of time talking about how QUALITY time has nothing to do with QUANTITY of time.  She made a lot of sense, and spoke articulately and kindly to DH.

This would allow them to have the “fun” times with their dad without the horrible stressful ANGRY times that they have when homework, schedules, uniforms, instruments, breakfast, school lunches and strict bedtimes are involved.  She emphasised how much the boys “love” their fun times with their Dad.  She tried to make it sound like a positive outcome for everyone.

This would mean that the current situation would remain as is, with the exception of the Sunday nights.

The boys have been too scared to tell their father what they wanted, and so they each wrote him a letter last night.  Which I gave to him prior to the mediation today.

Boo’s letter:

“Dad,

I really don’t want to go to your place on Sunday nights or anything else.  Things were good before.  I don’t like how you have people over basically every time.  I don’t like the Monday mornings because you are always grumpy and and yelling at us.  And when we’re all ready you aren’t.

Boo

PS. We were going to tell you this, but you had Katie in the car.”

Toto’s letter:

“Dad,

I don’t want to have Wednesday to Monday because it will not work for my situation with my gear e.g. my air league uniform, my trombone, my school books, and my sport/normal school uniform.

Also Monday mornings are very annoying because you are stressed and i usually get to school with not enough time to get organised.

But I do want every second weekend from Friday and go home to Mum at 7.30 on Sunday like it used to be.  And I want Wednesday afternoons still.

Toto”

Well… They may as well not have written a word.  In fact, they may as well be rag-dolls with no opinion or even an entitlement to an opinion.

DH was…. well…. DH doesn’t seem a strong enough acronym for him anymore.  Dick Head.  Deeply Horrible.  Disgustingly Hedonistic.  Doesnotdeservetobe Here.  Yep, that last one feels better.  Any better and more appropriate suggestions?

Where was I?

Oh yeah.  DH was immovable.  And SO incredibly uncaring and insensitive to anyone’s needs but his own.

And not caring what he does to get his own way.

For example, when asked about his past contact with the boys, he said..

“When their mother was INSTITUTIONALISED.. I had Toto every Sunday for two hours….(blah blah)” (the emphasis is his)

Yep, he’s trying to prove me an unfit mother.

3 months in a mother-baby post-natal ward of a psych hospital with severe post-natal depression THIRTEEN YEARS AGO because my beloved husband walked out on our marriage leaving me with a 9 month old son and another in my belly… oh… because he was screwing an air hostess…

Oh my god I was upset.  I actually said almost the exact sentence above out loud… to which DH said “I was not screwing an air hostess” and the mediator called for a break.

Not to be dismissed, his lawyer (yep, CF again) started off with “We have grave concerns about the mother’s medical situation. We understand she is on anti-depressants and has been for years.”

Oh God.. I don’t think I can write all this up.  It’s so upsetting.

I’ll summarise… (my responses in italics)

DH wants to increase his custody by 1 night every school term until he has 50/50 shared parenting.  (He left the boys 13 years ago.  And before this litigation began last year, he had never ONCE asked for more than every second weekend in the intervening years.  In my educated (because I lived with the man for 8 years and I am witness to his relationship with his children) opinion, he is doing this PURELY to remove all future child support obligations)

DH is gravely concerned about the way that I am raising the children.  They are “mollycoddled”.. and his evidence of this is that they refuse to walk to his local shops unaccompanied.  DH is gravely concerned about the boys’ inability to cope with his “grumpiness” in the mornings.  He said that every parent yells at their children when they are getting them ready for school, and the fact that the boys are unhappy about this is evidence of the inappropriate parenting that they are receiving in my house.    ( Ummmmm….. HE LIVES IN KINGS CROSS!!  They see junkies shooting up in his back lane!  The walk to his local supermarket requires passing 3 strip-clubs, and the attached bouncers.  The boys have been walking to and from my house to their school unaccompanied for the past 3.5 years.  Toto catches public transport in and out of the city for school every day, and both boys think nothing of walking to our local shops by themselves.  Need I say more? And I don’t yell at them in the mornings!  At my house they’re quite independent in the mornings and have no problems leaving for school on time.  Oh, DH also stated that Toto wasn’t toilet trained until HE DID IT!  This is insulting, ridiculous and totally designed to be inflammatory.)

DH wants Boo to attend one of 5 incredibly expensive Private Schools, but thinks that I should pay for the first 2 years and he should pay 50% for the following years because he has been “spending so much money on the boys lately”.  (WHAT MONEY?!?!  Jeez.  This one is a killer.  Especially because I was told that I couldn’t bring up anything related to Child Support.  But he can bring THIS up?  Well, it ain’t happening.  Boo does not want to go to any of the 5 schools that DH listed.  And, I’m sorry, but DH has crippled me financially with his litigiousness, and the judge in the financial hearing crippled me financially by wiping the child support debt, so I’m supposed to pay $25,000 per annum school fees with WHAT? What I DID say was “I am absolutely unable to afford any of the schools that DH has chosen for Boo, and Boo has no interest in attending them, which DH would know if he had ever discussed this with Boo. “)

DH is not going to continue to pay Toto’s school fees.  He thinks that I should pay the next 2 years in full, and that he should pay 50% of the fees for each year after that. ( This, and the point before, was brought up in DH’s “private session” with his lawyer and the mediator.  When the Mediator presented it to me, and I said “But DH has signed documents with Toto’s school stating that he will pay 100% of the school fees (approx $1,300 per annum)!  I am completely unwilling to change this situation, especially as the Child Support Agency said that they thought that this was fair and that it should not effect my Child Support”.  The mediator said “So you would take Toto out of a school that he loves rather than pay his school fees? (in an outraged voice).  I was too shocked to respond brilliantly… but in retrospect I should have said “It would be DH taking him out of the school by changing the already agreed upon arrangements.  I am happy to leave him there under the current arrangements.  My actions would not be changing anything.”  But I didn’t, and I could tell by her expression that the mediator will include my “putting money before my children’s welfare” in her report to the family court judge.  Bugger. )

DH wants the two of us to attend counselling in order to learn how to communicate and co-parent.  DH wanted it known that I have been unwilling in the past to do this with him.  DH wants me to pay 50% of the cost of this. (This one is particularly painful to me, as for years… YEARS… I asked DH to attend counselling with me in order to best communicate and co-parent as divorced parents.  He flat-out refused.  And now he’s implying that I have been the unwilling party to this?  Of course, all I could say was “Yes, I am prepared to do this”)

DH wants the boys to attend counselling.  He wants me to pay 50% of this too.  (When, early last year, I took the boys to a Child and Family Psychologist to give them a “safe” place to talk about all of this stuff, DH and his lawyer brought it up as a way that I was trying to manipulate the children, and forbade me to take the boys to see her more than once.  I had, of course, told DH about it before I took the children along.  He didn’t think to object until his lawyer gave him the idea.  And now, of course, it’s his brilliant idea.  I did mention that I would only be happy to pay for 50% of this if he paid for 50% of Boo’s speech pathologist and Toto’s tutor.  I was given no response to that. I was looked at again as though I was placing more emphasis on money than on my children’s emotional well-being.  Oh the irony in that.  It’s all very well and good to organise all of these things, but when you simply DO NOT HAVE income or money to pay for them… what do you do?)

Some other issues raised… I said that the Family Court Counsellor’s report, done over a year ago, suggested strongly that DH should attend parenting classes, and that extra time with the children was NOT in their best interests.  I said that DH had made no attempt to attend parenting classes, and, instead, blamed all of his difficulties with the children on the way that I was parenting them.  I requested that DH attend parenting classes.  He agreed to this. (yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it too!)

DH’s lawyer suggested that I should buy a duplicate set of all of Toto’s school / sport and air league uniforms, and trombone, and cricket gear and school books as this would resolve all the issues.  The ICL and I both refuted this and reminded her that the boys’ objections were about much more than uniforms etc.  I also *gulped* internally because this would be about $10,ooo worth of stuff.

His lawyer said again and AGAIN that she had concerns about “the wife’s mental stability”.  I have never felt so mentally unstable, if feeling mentally unstable is feeling as though you would like to grab a big heavy object and heave it towards your ex-husbands’ lawyer’s head.  Hmmm.  Perhaps she is RIGHT to be concerned.

Oh PUCK (as Boo would say and would get away with).

There’s heaps more.  Obviously.

But the gist is that DH requested lots of things and because he went first EVERY TIME we were asked to speak (that was pretty slack of the mediator – she’s supposed to ensure that we take turns) I was “responding” and “reacting” and did not have an opportunity to do anything other than defend myself and my parenting.

Good thing the ICL was totally on our side with the custody arrangements.

So, now it’s another year or so until we get a date in court.  Actually, I’m hoping it’s more than a year.  If the boys were 14 and 13, there is no way a judge would do anything other than what they wanted.  Or, if it all went to hell in a handbasket, there is NO WAY anyone would enforce a parenting order with kids of that age.

And you know, with everything that’s happened to me so far, I’m not exactly optimistic.

********

The absolutely most HORRENDOUS thing that I learned today had nothing to do with our parenting case.

My lawyer told me that she is representing someone who is in exactly the same situation as DH was in our financial hearing.  This time the case is being heard by a female judge, and the female judge is disgusted with the man’s application to remove all of the unpaid child support debt.

My lawyer is using MY CASE as precedent… in order to force the judge to seriously consider removing the debt.

MY CASE.  AS PRECEDENT.

Used as a tool to remove unpaid child support debts for other scum-bag dead-beat DH fathers.

I.AM.SICK.OVER.THIS.

SICK.

My poor lawyer obviously dislikes the position that she’s in.  Which is why she told me.  She has no choice over her clients (she’s a partner in a large firm).  And she has to do her best for them.  And she is sick about this too.

********

If you’re still reading, well, then obviously you’re a good friend.

I need cheering up.

I need reminding that this situation IS wrong and horrific and that DH and his lawyer are OUTRAGEOUSLY misguided.

Because when you spend all day listening to it, it’s almost impossible to believe that something so outrageous is presented so seriously. You start to buy into their conviction.  Or at least that they might get their way.

I still have a WISH that our family law system has some fairness to it.  Even though I know from experience that it doesn’t.

I can’t read back over this before pressing “publish”.  So there are probably grammatical and spelling mistakes.  Sorry.

Thanks for all the wonderful bloggy-love last night.  You have no idea how much it helped me.

xox