In the summer of 2019, after a two-year-long custody battle (that began when my penultimate husband would not agree to stop flying our children from Texas to Virginia–and back–every first, third, and fifth weekend) the residential custody of my two children, ages 9 and 12, was awarded to the penultimate husband, moving them 1,300 miles away from Texas to rural Virginia, in what was a complete failure of the system.
When you enter into Family Court, you do so thinking you’re doing what’s best for your kids. But by entering the realm — or as I prefer to call it ”circus” — of Family Court, I signed up for spending two college funds and somehow initiated a process that removed the children from the only full-time home they’d ever known in the first 9 and 12 years of their lives.
Please note: as a non-custodial mom, I now understand the judgments people make, so let me pause here to answer the inevitable questions: no, I had never been in trouble with CPS; nor had any truancy issues at the school; I don’t do drugs; and I was once the PTA president, not a sexual predator.
In fact, despite my having evidence to document the years I spent trying to do the best for my children, so many “errors” happened in this journey that I have a hard time pinpointing just how the judge could have come to her decision, but these are the ones that I feel turned the tide when we finally did make it in front of a judge:
Multiple Judges
- Our county does not allow you to have one judge unless your case is “complicated” so we saw a total of five judges (one judge twice, by luck of the draw). This meant that although the final judge was to have reviewed the entire case file, there was no evidence that she understood previous rulings or how they applied to the case — which reflected how the legal system was being used as a weapon.
Custody Evaluation Prior to Mediation
- I agreed to a custody evaluation when we had not been to mediation and I was not sure why the penultimate husband wanted one. This allowed someone entirely paid by my ex-husband to enter the case and would result in not one, but two, severely biased and flawed (HIPPA violations, omissions, errors, retesting failures, non-verification of significant facts or timelines in the case) but seemingly well-composed 80-page reports to the court.
Lawyer Shenanigans
- My first lawyer dropped my case 10 days before our court-ordered mediation that was to happen two days before the emergency hearing that was generated after the first custody report. I later found out this lawyer was preparing for a jury trial with that same custody evaluator as her featured expert so she could not then turn around and tear down the expert for my case.
ProSe Representation
- Although I was able to get a second lawyer, she dropped my case because I couldn’t make my payments as planned when I lost my largest client (due to the stress of the court situation) and I decided to represent myself Pro Se at that time. While I thought it would help my case to show I was adamant that I believed in my parenting and putting the children’s interests first by being there in court to fight for their need to just fly once a month, it was used against me.
Amicus Attorney vs Custody Evaluator
- Even though I was able to get the penultimate husband to agree to pay for half of an amicus attorney for the children in December 2018 mediation, the judge did not accept his opinion. The amicus attorney did his due diligence and looked into the history of the case, not just the two months surrounding the custody evaluations. He visited both family “set-ups” on multiple occasions and agreed that the children should get their wish and get to stay in Texas with me. The Texas state code does not allow for an amicus attorney to present or prepare a report, and I believe that if the judge had side-by-side documentation of process and discovery, then she would have been able to compare apples to apples.
Continuance Issued after Amicus Testifies
- For our final hearing in May 2019, the amicus was asked to testify first–prior to other side testifying– with his findings. He did so (he stated the kids should get their wish and stay in San Antonio). The trial was to continue the following day, yet on our way to the courthouse, I got an email saying the opposing counsel requested a custody evaluation update by emergency petition and was then awarded a delay for another round of custody evaluation to happen.
Evaluator Failed to Demonstrate Evidence to Support Conclusions
- At trial after the second round of evaluation, the custody evaluator was questioned on the stand for more than three hours. The evaluator’s responses acknowledged multiple errors in his report and process and answers such as, “No, I did not review the file,” “No, I didn’t bring my case file to court,” and “I can’t remember” when questioned about any significant details relating to any of the omissions or noted errors in either of his reports.
Judge Not “Present” in the Courtroom
- The judge — who was busy editing the San Antonio Judicial Review as I testified next to her for the entire first day of the case — sided with the custody evaluator and the children’s father. She sided against me, the mother, against the wishes of the children, and counter to the assessment of the children’s appointed amicus attorney.
What Happened?!
You see, my penultimate husband is a doctor and remarried to a woman who is happy to be a stay-at-home-mom to my children. She has two children of her own. They are “Brady Bunching” it, and while I’m happy my kids get to have close relationships with new siblings, I did nothing to warrant the removal of the children from my care.
In fact, the reason I agreed to the custody evaluation was that we had been working with a family social worker for the six-months prior to the custody evaluation and our life was already “on the record.” Yet the custody evaluator never spoke to this woman. He also never confirmed the details of a complicated medical issue our son was having concurrently while I was filing to modify custody arrangements — because our son was suffering from the every first, third, and firth weekend cross-country travel.
It was only at this point — when the tactics of my penultimate husband truly started to show these outward signs of hurting the kids — that I finally did something in court. I believe it is worth it for me to “turn my cheek” as much as possible when the children are involved and have worked to make our divorce child-centered once I realized that divorce didn’t have to be a bad thing and I didn’t have to make my kids feel like they were stuck in the middle as I had felt when I was a kid.
Instead, I created (and paid for because I was the one who filed in court first) an opportunity for my penultimate husband and his team to purchase our children.
What Now?!
I am left to grieve the loss of the family I once knew. My son once proclaimed our family should be known as the “So-Loved iBeforeE Family” and I have no doubt in my heart that we will live up to that moniker, somehow.
But I am not alone. The court system is being used a weapon to hurt protective mothers (defined as those mothers who are in tune with their children enough to hear things the children won’t easily tell other people like therapists or teachers) and children are the pawns in the game and ultimately the ones to suffer the most.
I am working to help bring light to the wrongs listed above.
Formal Complaints + Letters
So far, I have completed the following steps to bring awareness to the issues that affected my case. I offer redacted versions of my file to the state board so that others may use them to see how I combined the screenshots of the evidence with the statements so that there is no “doubt” of the reviewer seeing the actual facts, which I suspect happens when you only provide exhibits as a chunk at the end of the presentation.
