What do Microsoft and the practice of Family Law have in common?
Both are in industries that make a lot of money for attorneys
feeding from their offal. Last year, over $8 billion was paid to
attorneys who practice Family Law.
Jilted spouses and abandoned plaintiffs will readily concede that they
were worth every dime. Who can argue when the battle is joined in the
interests of providing for the reasonable needs of the marital
children?
The conflict is often a titanic struggle. To the victor goes the spoils.
Lawyers skilled in the fine art of discovery lay open the financial
affairs of private individuals and arrange them on a platter with all
the flair of a master chef. Opposing attorneys agree to argue,
for an advance retainer, the benefits of orthodontics, the requirement
of psychological counseling, the long-term effects of fecal-retention
syndrome, and the doubtful merits of Missy's horseback riding lessons.
Before you know it, you've run up a hefty six figure legal bill and a
visitation schedule that is more complex than the 1991 battle plans for
"Operation Desert Storm".
I should know. My ex-spouse's divorce tagged me for nearly
$120,000 in legal and professional fees. It destroyed two
professional practices and cost me my job at a third. The action
followed me for six years from North Carolina to California then back
to Pennsylvania. It froze my bank accounts, my investment
accounts, my pension accounts, and resulted in the cancellation of $1.2
million in life insurance trusts for the benefit of my children.
Much to their misfortune, those events are going to adversely affect the welfare of my children for the rest of their lives.
It is a system gone badly awry.
The tactics long-employed by pugnacious law firms but previously
reserved for drug cartels have become so effective in Family Court
matters that they were recently adopted by the United States government
in order to apprehend high-profile corporate criminals and foreign
terrorists.
Somebody ought to put the interests of the family back in Family Law.
That's hard to do in states where Attorney Generals are stumping for
re-election, where the legislators in many states are attorneys, where
member firms support the local legal society, where judges who were
once attorneys at these member firms establish case law and precedent,
and when there's so darn much money to be made.
It is a regular feeding frenzy. The participants in Family Court
actions are not only viewed as cannon fodder but also as a recurring
source of legal fees. Are you an attorney looking to buy another
vacation home? Just file half-a-dozen motions this
afternoon. Are private school tuition payments due for your
children? Pull out your "out-of-state dads" file and go for a few
default judgments.
The stock boom of the 1990's did more than increase the size of many
marital estates. It also increased the motivation of parties in
this now flagging economy to defend a right to their fair share of the
spoils. Even if the spoils no longer exist.
Although the stock market Crash of 2000 may likely be remembered for
the torrid cash burn rates that preceded the Internet Bubble's "busted
flush", the practice of Family Law appears to be flourishing. In
fact, it has become a veritable billing field. The children are the
innocent casualties.
Parenting, as I knew it before my divorce, was a shared
responsibility. It still is. Somewhere along the way,
the courts appear to have ruled that only a father had the
responsibility to support the children. This seems odd,
particularly when college-educated, income-producing women often play
an active role in managing the fuse on their biological clocks.
When a mother who has neatly painted herself into the "I am a victim of
the other woman" corner goes to court, at what point does she become
responsible for financially supporting the children and accountable for
carrying out a legal vendetta that results in the total destruction of
the family father figure?
Justifiably, some deadbeat dads need to be drawn and quartered. Their
children will one day become future citizens, taxpayers, and more
likely than not, parents of the same. Somebody needs to
discipline these dads about their financial responsibilities. If
you can't support your children, you shouldn't have them.
The same goes for women.
The recent perp walks by deadbeat dads and their public spanking not
only reinforced the notion of the FBI's mastery in solving domestic
crime, but it also made moms everywhere feel good.
The return to "family values" momentarily appeased even those who were
disappointed in the efforts of the CIA, NSA, FBI, and combined
United States Armed Forces to locate and apprehend Osama bin
Laden. Victimized spouses short on shopping funds and long on
their credit cards agree that nailing those domestic terrorists
masquerading as deadbeat dads was good for the country.
And it taught all a lesson that American soccer moms, comfortably
ensconced in their SUV's and standing firmly behind their bulldog
attorneys at local Family Courts, are not to be trifled with or taken
lightly.
I had no idea of any of this in 1962 as I fervently recited the "Pledge
of Allegiance" in Mrs. Reed's 4th grade class. Even those "get
under the desk, close your eyes, and turn away from the window" drills
for that extra margin of safety in a nuclear blast provided no hint of
the scorched earth tactics that would be used against me during my
divorce thirty-five years later.
These days, a new legal landscape has been carved out of the heart of this once-fine country.
I asked my mom, now age 77 and who single-handedly raised five children
after my dad died of a heart attack after nine years of battling kidney
failure, how she would have faired if the specter of legal blather from
Family Law attorneys were added to her pile. She replied, "Honey,
the Family Law industry didn't exist when your dad and I were
married. We never knew anyone who needed the counsel of an
attorney in handling a divorce. That's what friends were for."
My, how times have changed.
Today I am nearly penniless and barely breathing after the nightmare of
the last six years. Even the U.S. government's legal spat with
Microsoft's ambition of owning the computing world was resolved in less
time.
The results of my seventeenth hearing in the North Carolina Family
Court system on August 5, 2002, now attorney "pro se" because I can no
longer afford to pay for one, left me feeling as though I'd been
teleported to a pro-Taliban high counsel in Kandahar wearing an
American flag and a "kick me" sign.
These days, a totally different dynamic is in place in most family
court systems where any semblance of justice has been tainted by biased
judges, greedy attorneys, and intractable ex-spouses. Can anyone
explain to me how the tactics of these individuals are different from
al Qaida who have pledged Jihad?
Although the scandal within the Family Court system erupted a long time
ago, the results currently meted out by some Courts have become more
lop-sided than a Duke University v. Radnor High School basketball
game and nearly as predictable as Big Ten officiating.
It is no surprise that the stink in some courtroom decisions suggests
the process has even become more corrupt and dirtier than politics.
Yet these metaphors do not hold a candle when describing the "home
court" advantage afforded Wake County residents in the North Carolina
Family Court system. Particularly when the opponent is an
out-of-state dad wearing a scarlet letter "A" on his jersey and who
lied about it his first appearance in court.
Am I the only individual in the country who was ashamed to admit such
an indiscretion and a breach of the "for better or for worse" marital
vows?
Right. I thought as much. When a partnership fails, there is more than enough fault to go around.
Caught in the undertow of an unforgiving stock market, an unmercifully
harsh economic climate, and a job market that exists only in the minds
of a few, I still paid child support. Only after depleting all of
my savings and exhausting all other alternatives, I filed a "Motion to
Reduce" child support in September, 2001.
I needed the reduction for several reasons.
Three years is a long time for a brutal bear market.
My misplaced belief in the "independent" advice of Morgan Stanley's
Mary Meeker, Merrill Lynch's Henry Blodgett, and Gruntal's Joe
Battapaglia caught me flat-footed when the bottom fell out of the
market.
The doubtful veracity of corporate financial results filed with the SEC
and the talking heads on CNBC added fuel to the fire and incinerated in
a few short months a net worth that had taken thirty years to build.
My average income for the last three years has been $14,000. I
have no house, a negative net worth, and drive a car with 170,000 miles
on the odometer. Although the utilities are current, I have not
had the money to pay rent for several months.
After retaining an executive counseling firm, applying to over 6,000
jobs, paying nearly $20,000 in job hunting expenses, and taking
interviews in eight different states without an offer, I had run out of
money.
Newspaper headlines across the country seemed to agree that the economy had also run out of jobs.
It just simply was not possible to pay $2,000 per month in child
support for four children and an additional $350 or so for medical
expenses on what I was making. Those amounts were more than I
earned. How was I to pay for visitation expenses? How was I
to live? How was I to render unto Caesar the requisite federal
and state income taxes?
Even when the children were with me for the summer, I still had to pay
child support to their mother. Does that make sense to anyone?
My ex-spouse was a college graduate, had in excess of $600,000 in
assets, a house that was fully paid for, and an income producing job
that paid her $21,000 this past year. She also had in me an
ex-spouse who drove over 40,000 miles the last three years to visit his
four children during the one weekend per month permitted by the court.
When times were better, I had paid over $110,000 in previous child
support, alimony, and medical reimbursements.
You should have heard her howling in court the moment after the judge
dismissed my motion for temporary reprieve. Her invective-laced
sobbing accompanied by screams of relief made you wonder about her
motives during her victory lap.
The choreography was superb.
It was a public display of a hate so criminal that it should have been
jailed. It froze the bailiff in his tracks and stunned the gallery in
the court. The judge waved a finger at me and said: "If you
say one word, ONE WORD, you are going down."
How appropriate it occurred in North Carolina, land of lynching repute.
The judge's ruling was based on the Wolf case that was decided by the North Carolina Court of Appeals on July 16, 2002.
In that appellate case, the court refused to modify support determined
on the basis of an individual's earning capacity instead of his actual
income.
How that case applied to me was anybody's guess. I had logged
over 2,000 hours looking for additional work in the aftermath of my job
termination through sanctioned Family Court action, the Stock Market
Crash of 2000, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and the
longest recession on record since the Great Depression. I
provided over 1,500 pages of job listings, emails, rejection letters,
and many of the financial documents that supported my efforts to
demonstrate that my circumstances had indeed changed.
Surely some form relief was warranted.
Like many American citizens these days, I was involuntarily
underemployed, not unemployed. So too were hundreds of thousands
of other well-educated individuals in the wakes of the Enron, Arthur
Andersen, Adelphia, World Com, and Tyco debacles. So were those
individuals laid off or who had their hours reduced from nearly every
major company in the United States. The sectors included the
telecom, airline, investment banking, venture capital, and brokerage
industries and nearly every other as companies downsized and attempted
to "cut" their way to a profit.
Equally unemployed were many of the good citizens of North Carolina,
which, according to the September 2002 Bureau Labor of Statistics had
one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.
But if anybody was wondering about the justice for out-of-state dads in
the North Carolina Family Court system, well now, there is no longer
any need to wonder. There is simply no justice for out-of-state dads
where the North Carolina Family Courts are concerned. The recent
decision in my hearing rendered by the Wake County Family Court
judiciary has cast doubt upon the veracity of their entire legal
system. The court once again deviated from their own guidelines for
support and ordered me to pay $2,000 per month plus all medical.
How is such a decision possible for a dad with no home, no net assets,
and no money?
There is, of course, much more to the story.
The Wake County North Carolina Family Court system feeds those who make
their living frequenting the court rooms on the 8th and 9th floors and
the judge's chambers. In fact, the system exists to feed itself.
Attorneys with their over-sized legal bills always stand at the front
of the line.
The system takes money from their dad and gives it to their mom with
virtually no accountability. Despite the overly generous amounts
I have paid in child support, their mother has been starving
them. She testified she spends $350 per month on food for one
adult, three teenagers, and an eleven year-old. She has made them
buy their own clothes, intercepted my letters to them, withheld their
"CARE" packages, and routinely made them unavailable for visitation.
On one occasion, I flew from California to North Carolina for my
court-approved visitation only to find the house dark and empty.
Her boyfriend had taken my kids and her to a concert.
I will be the first to say that she has been a real pain.
During the last six years, I have appeared in front of three different
judges in the North Carolina Courts as an out-of-state dad in what has
now become seventeen hearings. I have lost every one: the
fourteen I had when I could afford an attorney and the three that I had
when I could not.
I have appeared in court by flying six times from San Francisco, a
5,600 mile round trip, and by driving eleven times from Philadelphia,
an 850 mile, sixteen hour drive.
That's 33,600 miles of flying and 9,350 miles of driving to attend
Family Court hearings. Three hearings were continued. On
one occasion, although the Plaintiff's attorney appeared, the Plaintiff
did not, hoping for the convenience of a default judgment.
It gets better.
I filed the Motion for Change in Circumstance on September 30, 2001.
Although the Plaintiff and her attorney appeared in court on November
26, 2001, they requested additional time and the judge granted their
motion. One more wasted drive. The plaintiff's attorney
took my telephone number and deftly handed me his business card with
the invitation to call so we could coordinate our schedules.
But all I got from his secretary when I called was that he didn't have his calendar with him. Apparently, ever.
During the next 210 days, the Plaintiff's attorney refused to answer
any of my correspondence or take any of my telephone calls to discuss
the case. Seven months later, having failed to obtain my
day in court, I filed a complaint with the North Carolina State Bar
citing unethical behavior on the part of the attorney. I provided
copies of my phone records to the law office where I left nearly a
dozen different messages as well as certified mailing receipts. After a
pro-forma investigation, the North Carolina State Bar determined there
was no basis for my claim.
During the June 3, 2002 hearing which was again continued to a later
date, the Plaintiff's attorney told the Court I had been in Raleigh,
North Carolina visiting my children and that I had hardly been
inconvenienced by driving 850 miles for the scheduled hearing.
It was a lie, and of course, I told the judge so. I had the toll
booth receipts in my car from that morning's 425 mile drive. The
Ft. McHenry tunnel receipt in Baltimore, Maryland and exactly one
hundred miles outside of Philadelphia is nearly one-quarter of the way
to Raleigh, the capital of the Tar Heel state and home of the infamous
Wake County Family Court.
I pointed to the attorney and called him a liar. The judge told me to sit down and shut up or I was going to jail.
Properly chastised, I filed a second complaint with the North Carolina
State Bar against the Plaintiff's attorney citing the lie. I also
provided copies of toll booth receipts for the Delaware Turnpike and
Ft. McHenry tunnel. After a second pro-forma investigation, the
North Carolina State Bar determined there was no basis for my claim.
"No foxes in this henhouse," said the fox.
On August 5, 2002, over eleven months after I filed my motion, the case
was heard. How Pollyannaish was it of me to think that justice
might be blind? But then again, perhaps it was merely
short-sighted.
The plaintiff's attorney reveled in my job misfortunes and my failure
to produce a greater income. Theoretically, I should be making a
much higher wage as an MBA and CPA. It didn't matter that fifty
year old MBA's were a dime a dozen or that thousands of CPA's were out
of work.
Reasonable people would agree that hypothetical earnings should not
count for much unless child support can also be paid with hypothetical
dollars. They have learned that lesson from World Com's
smorgasbord of income manipulation that hid over $9 billion in real
operating losses with theoretical accounting adjustments.
The attorney on the other side of the aisle objected to substantially
all of the evidence I attempted to enter into the court record. The
judge largely agreed. He didn't want to slog through the more
than 1,500 pages of discovery I had been asked to provide.
Besides, he was on his way to lunch with another judge, and clearly had
no time, patience, or sympathy for an underemployed, out-of-state dad.
He instructed me to pick one of the documents and he would allow that document into evidence.
After his lunch, in no uncertain terms, he denied my claim for
relief. He also denied the Plaintiff's claim for legal
fees. The judge also instructed the Plaintiff's attorney to draft
a proposed order and mail it to the applicable parties for review.
Five days after I received the proposed order, I provided an
alternative proposed order. I faxed it to the judge and mailed it via
first class mail to the Plaintiff's attorney.
A week later, with neither order entered by the court, imagine my
dismay to find a new "Motion to Show Cause" in my mailbox. A nice
transmittal letter was attached. It stated there would be other
follow-on motions filed by the Plaintiff's attorney. Although
readily admitting the recent order had not been entered in court, they
also demanded their legal fees. My estimate of their fees for
this action was something on the order of $8-12,000.
I could spend 100% of my time just answering their motions and driving
back and forth to court. How does that benefit my children?
Unfortunately for the attorney involved, he also should also have
requested a peer review by the North Carolina State Bar since many of
the dates in the new motion citing previous orders were wrong.
They even cited references to 1993 court orders pertaining to my
case. I was still married in 1993 and at least four years away
from the receipt of their first legal letter.
It is absolutely amazing the kind of legal drivel you can churn out
with a good secretary and word processor. The regularity of these
harrassive motions, unlike the regularity of a good bowel movement, is
enough to torture my honest soul. But if this is what Alan Greenspan
had in mind the day he begrudgingly acknowledged an increase in
productivity, then will somebody please take me back to the Stone Age?
I filed my third complaint to the North Carolina State Bar as a result
of this new motion which appeared to be crafted from some prior,
unknown, but "it's stored-on-the-computer-so-let's-use-it" filing. The
toxic forum provided for out-of-state dads by the Wake County North
Carolina Family Court System has all but strangled the life out of
me. While it has been a regular ATM machine for the attorneys and
law firms involved, it has taken its toll on all of us. What
remains of "the family", the children included, is weary of the
process.
I have never seen such a wholesale destruction of wealth in my lifetime.
A sympathetic police chief and friend of long stature tracked me down,
wondering why those whose company we once enjoyed had not heard from
me. For years.
I provided him with the 10,000 foot "fly-by" version of my story.
With good intentions, he offered a remarkably simple solution. "One of
my deputies is going through a divorce. I suggested the 20-50
plan: pay $20K for a Harley and $50 for a sleeping bag. You
need to serve me? Then find me."
That, of course, works for awhile. As long as you don't have kids
that you're just madly in love with that are held hostage by some
Family Court order. I had ruled that option out years ago.
Besides, these days, I couldn't afford to pay for even a used Vespa.
"But child support is based on income. They can't take more than you make."
In North Carolina, oh yes they can.
Although a simple class in "Economics 101" will convince you that you
cannot spend money you do not have, the laws in the North Carolina
Family Courts appear to condone deficit spending.
They most certainly tolerate the legal shenanigans that lead to such troubling decisions.
This past summer, my oldest daughter filled a backpack with her
precious things, called a cab from her mother's home, and took the
train out of Raleigh to live with her dad. She attends public
school in Philadelphia. It marked a turning point in her life
where the detritus of her mother's unfettered enmity towards her father
finally drove her away. In a few short years, her siblings may
follow.
I don't know that I would have had the courage at age 17 to make such a decision.
She is doing very well, thank you, without the benefit of the faulty
vision of the North Carolina Family Court judiciary system. The
recent motions filed by her mother conspicuously omit the fact that the
oldest daughter has been living with her dad for the last five months.
This year I have worked four jobs: as a web site writer, as an
accountant, a handyman, and a painter. I celebrated my 50th
birthday on September 17, 2002 at the top of a twenty-eight foot ladder
painting the trim on a warehouse in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.
I have been reduced to selling personal items on eBay in order to pay
for some of the past due child support. Holiday and birthday
gifts may have to wait a few years. Be sure you bookmark my
auctions. I would greatly appreciate it.
I am still battling with the Internal Revenue Service over the
exemption for the children. My ex-spouse mistakenly believes she
is entitled to take them as dependency exemptions on her income tax
return and has done so since 1998. She earned no money and
received the appropriate amount of child support. Although I have
been a practicing CPA the last 24 years, I simply am incapable of
understanding the IRS's reasoning.
It is a darn shame that I am still required by North Carolina to pay an
ex-spouse child support for a child who is no longer living with
her. Especially since my daughter has SAT's and college
application fees coming up.
Don't even start with me about how I plan to pay for her college.
The punishment to my daughter does not fit the crime. In fact, she
committed no crime. She simply loves her dad. And I need her. She
has been a delight in my life. One day, all my kids will somehow grow
up and make their own decisions. Yours will too.
Wherever I live, the "Welcome" mat for my children is always out.
But what do you do about "Hairbow" hate crimes still hiding behind the
skirts of Family Court systems? It is indeed unfortunate for the
civilized members of society that the judges and bottom-feeders at the
Family Court trough have yet to realize that they have exacerbated the
problem. In North Carolina, there is currently no "family"
in the Family Courts.
Indeed, the courts in North Carolina appear to have targeted the
wholesale destruction of the once sacred institution of fatherhood.
They have certainly confiscated its dignity.
I am now "on the record" with my opinion that North Carolina is a state
that more closely resembles a Dante's "Inferno" that has shaken my
belief in the judicial system to its core. Family Court is little
more than a country road game a chicken where attorneys are driving
eighteen-wheelers and out-of-state dads are riding bicycles.
The credibility of those courts is in tatters as a result of the
disconnect between Family Court decisions and an ability to pay.
You must give that matter some serious thought before you consider
moving to North Carolina. It can be a nice place to visit.
But would you really want to live there?
Mark can be contacted at:
