Sua Sponte – My Favorite Phrase

Wikipedia says:  In law, sua sponte (Latin: “of his, her, its or their own accord.”) describes an act of authority taken without formal prompting from another party. The term is usually applied to actions by a judge taken without a prior motion or request from the parties.

I say:  sua sponte is when an elected Judge is made aware of an unfair and illegal prior ruling and takes it away from the prior Pro Tem Commissioner to ensure they don’t screw it up again.

On August 4th I was found in Contempt by a Pro Tem commissioner, on 2 of 8 baseless, unsupported and vindictive charges.  My attorney and friends and family sat in shock.  We moved into action to file for a Reconsideration with health records that were unavailable.  Due to e-filing issues, the motion for reconsideration was not received until 13 minutes after the deadline and was subsequently “Denied” by the Pro Tem Commissioner.  We then filed for a Revision to the denial of the Reconsideration.  This went before the Judge assigned to our case.  This Judge ordered the Reconsideration to occur based on the Merits by the original Pro Tem Commissioner.

This Reconsideration was to happen on 10/20, without oral arguments.  On 10/11, the Pro Tem Commissioner requested a response from the other party, meaning she was looking at the reconsideration.  Out of nowhere, this morning, our IC Judge submitted and signed a Sua Sponte Order of Reconsideration.  He vacated the Finding of Contempt.  After the initial shock of this wore off and my heart started beating again, I jumped up and did a Happy Dance in my hallway at work.  Then I actually started crying.

Tonight will be the first night in 70 days that I will likely not wake up at 3am with the anxiety of feeling that I will be thrown in jail, or worse, that my children will be taken away from me.  Since that Contempt ruling fiasco 70 days ago, I have been threatened via email and text another 10 times of additional contempt charges being brought against me and 20 times of being put in jail.  I have had 2 separate petitions for anti-harassment protection orders filed against me.  I never imagined that this could end well, as living in the constant state of fear from additional legal threats and actions is horrible.  Again, my biggest fear was never being put in jail, but that my children would be subject to the continued bad behavior from their father, stepmother and stepbrother on a full time basis.  4 days a month is tough enough for them to handle, but it is at least bearable.

After the Commissioner Jeske ruling and now this, my outlook on the Family Court system is taking a drastic turn.  While it has taken a lot out of me, both emotionally and financially, justice finally seems to be prevailing.  Maybe Family Court Circus is the exception rather than the rule, or maybe I am just lucky.  Either way, my advice is to never give up.  Fight for your children and their rights and well-being, even when you keep getting beat down and the outlook is grim.  Eventually, you will get noticed and the Ferris Wheel will end.

The Stars Align with Jeske

Somewhere over the rainbow there is a place where children matter and truth prevails.  I don’t want to make it seem like this doesn’t happen in Family Court, because it does and i will ty to write about my good experiences.  Not all of Family Court is a Circus, but it seems that once you get thrown into the Circus you have to work your way through the FunHouse mirrors to get out.  In future posts I hope to give some advice how to avoid the Circus, and then how to dig your way out.

My first experience with Jeske was over a year ago, when I tried a family court motion Pro Se.  I was so nervous, but she made it so easy.  She was soft-spoken and understanding.  She advised us how things were to go and she was firm but understanding when we made mistakes.  She read everything, and further asked questions to clarify meaning beyond our declarations and oral arguments.  She took a holistic approach to my simple motion and added verbiage to the order that touched on areas that were further causing conflict.  I have used peices of her order ever since to help settle disputes.  She could have really slammed my ex on his actions, but she didn’t.  She simply explained her decision, without making him wrong or harshly criticizing him.  The experience was short and sweet, and without conflict.

Today, however, was an experience worthy of a national holiday.  I swear the clouds parted and a bright light shown down around her in the courtroom.  There was also a glow around my attorneys head.  Jeske was like the Fairy Godmother for my children, and Steven Fields, my attorney, was my Fairy Godfather.  After a downward spiral of my summer of courtroom doom, today I saw the light.

We had a simple motion planned, to appoint a Parenting Evaluator and get some Civil Restraining orders placed on my ex’s new wife.  They came back and tried to file another protection order against me.  Seriously, this is the 6th time they have brought up some of the same allegations to ask for restrictions against me, largely infringing on my first amendment rights.  We didn’t expect to have this family court commissioner even touch the protection order since it was improperly before the court.  However, she knew that they would simply turn around and renote it somewhere else.  She gave us the option of waving proper service and offered to conduct an evidentiary hearing.  Right there on the Family Court Cattle Call docket!

My attorney guided me through that like an angel, despite my sheer terror of even being in court, let alone speaking in court.  He asked me questions as if I was on trial, carefully leading me to disclose the evidence and the truth.  The beauty of the truth is that you don’t need to rehearse or practice, it comes out the same everytime!

Jeske listened carefully, and asked some constructive and pointed questions of both of us.  It became very obviuos that she had read everything, even declarations and orders that were from previous motions.  She quoted the law and used the law to make her rulings.  She labeled hearsay as hearsay and tossed it out.  She knew all about CPS and how “unfounded” does not mean it did not happen, and it certainly did not mean it was a “false” report.  She was even versed and knowledgeable about the bankruptcy issues that my ex had drug me into.  If an encyclopedia could be human and have compassion, that would be Jeske.

We still have a long road to go before trial, but we are at least on the right road now and out of the Circus sideshow.  Thank you Jacqueline Jeske for caring and taking the time to rescue us from the Circus.

Marie, I know you are up there taking care of me in your divine way.  God bless you!

To Blog or Not To Blog

Since I began this blog last week, and more importantly, since I told people I was doing this blog I have received a number of wonderful comments, careful warnings, encouraging words and a small number of harsh critiques.  My number one fear is that I am scared to death of not protecting my children, my number two fear is that I am scared to death of not preventing harm to other children when I might have made a difference.  I believe in a higher being and a divine plan for my life.  I believe that we are all handed struggles and they are first a lesson learned; secondly, they are a lesson shared with others.

I know many of you think I should keep quiet in order to make my legal situation better, but I am already tarnished.  They have already blackballed me in the family circus.  My last hearing was a threat from a Judge that essentially said that I will lose custody of my children if I keep this up.  Well, that pretty much kills my opportunity to appeal or even motion for a revision.  Furthermore, this Judge sent the copy of this Order to my assigned Family Court Judge to ensure he knew of my actions.  My mistake was making a decision to protect my daughter in the instant that i found out about improper sexual conduct.  Apparently, the Circus does not like when you make a decision on your own.  They need the control, they want to rule everything with regards to our children.  So there was my punishment….no legal basis for a Contempt charge.  Then I had the audacity to challenge the ruling and motion for a reconsideration.  How dare I do that.  Fortunately, my attorney encountered a glitch in the mandatory efiling which led my motion for reconsideration to be transmitted 13 minutes late.  It was denied.  Forget about the victim, forget about the wellbeing of my daughter; it was late darnit.

Then I made my second mistake.  I went online and searched myself to get a protection order that would last until we could motion family court for protection.  It instructed me to go to the nearest district court to get a temporary order.  After explaining my story to the District Court Judge he carefully wrote the order to not interfere with the Contempt Order Purging.  Apparently, this was the biggest insult to Family Court unknown to most lay people simply searching the website.  Never undermine their authority by going to a lower court to fill in the gaps of their timing issues.

My last mistake was then taking the Motion for Reconsideration Denial and filing for a Revision by an elected Judge.  Which brings me where I am today, threatened by the last Judge in a completely frivolous Anti-Harassment Temporary Protection Order hearing.  She read a whole bunch of baseless and unsubstantiated lies which not only did not occur, but even if they had occurred they in no way met the legal definition of harassment.  This Judge knew nothing about the struggles I have endured as primary custodian in the last 6 years.  She had not clue that my children’s father has not been to a single medical appointment, not one parent/teacher conference, has disregarded every court order in the last 3 years, has not paid a penny to any of our children’s activities, and is 6 months behind in his childcare payments.  Regardless of these facts, she had the lack of integrity to threaten me with losing custody of, or possibly never seeing my children again, if i kept up my actions.  The only confrontational thing i have done in 6 years is keep my daughter from going to her father’s home after she and her friend alleged sexual misconduct.  Apparently, my daughter does not even have the right for a fair investigation.  She and I are victims, and now I am being threatened and prosecuted for this.

For this reason, I will blog.  I will not let the system that is supposed to be protecting our constitutional rights, use my children as pawns to threaten me.  If I back down to their threats, they will continue to do this with others.  These are our elected judicial officials that are unconstitutionally chilling my first amendment rights.

I appreciate all of you that have voiced your concern to protect me, but I feel that a judicial system that is purposely trying to control our free speech is the one area that needs to be exposed.  So please pass this on to anyone and everyone you can.

The Penalty for Perjury is…..uh, nothing

Most of us feel a twinge in our stomachs when we have to sign all of our declarations with the ever-so-famous, and probably committed to memory, perjury clause:

I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of Washington that the foregoing is true and correct and based upon my own personal knowledge.

“Yikes!”  I thought the first time I signed that with my hand shaking.  I have been intimidated by this clause for 6 years and diligent about checking every detail in all my declarations to make sure I did not include any typos that would cause me to have the wrath of the PENALTY OF PERJURY thrown against me.

As more and more documents piled up from my ex, I noticed that there were so many lies and inaccurate statements in his declarations that practically none of it was true.  My issue was that they were difficult to prove, so I assumed he could not be hit with the PENALTY OF PERJURY.

Finally, I had the break I was looking for.  I found a number of obvious and provable lies within many of his documents the last few months.  I pointed them all out and composed lengthy exhibits which proved without a doubt that he had committed perjury.  I called my attorney’s paralegal and forwarded her all my documentation.  I told her I wanted to pursue my ex getting the PENALTY OF PERJURY  and i asked her what his first offense penalty would be.  She said, “uh, nothing.”

I went on an internet mission to disprove her, with no luck.  There is absolutely NO penalty for perjury in civil cases, even in criminal cases it is rarely used.

The comments from the Family Court Circus state that they know that EVERYBODY lies in family court and the truth is somewhere in the middle.  This is clearly flawed logic since this methodology only punishes those people who are truthful, and benefits those people that lie.  Furthermore, the more you lie the better off you fare in the Circus.

Lastly, maybe we could at least save a tree or two by simply removing the useless clause from the bottom of every double spaced court document.

Pro Tem Commissioner with a Vengeance

To date, my worst experience in King County family court was August 4th, 2011.  I was having an endless summer of court dates after I finally had to petition for minor adjustments and modifications to our parenting plan.  This little spark sent my ex and his new wife over the edge and created an expolosion of retaliation.  Part of the retaliation was a first motion of Contempt alleging 7 violations.  All of these were from the prior 2 years.  My attorney, Christine Hook, did a wonderful Memorandum showing how none of these allegations were backed by any legal guidelines or RCWs.  The most notable of the allegations was a series of text messages that i had supposedly sent to my 11 year old daughter 4 months earlier.  The only “evidence” they had of these text messages was a blurry and completely ineligible picture supposedly of my daughter’s phone.  His declared his evidence to be his own typed up version of the texts that i had supposedly sent her.

In early July, I found out from the mother of a friend of my daughter’s that my ex’s step son had been inappropriately examining and viewing both my daughter and her friend.  As my daughter revealed more, i became very concerned because of the shame she was displaying.  I informed my ex via email that i knew about what had happened and that we needed to work together to get her some help and determine exactly what had gone on.  He refused to work with me and said I would need to wait until he returned the children from his 2 weeks at home vacation time starting in 2 days.  I told him i would not let her be around this step-brother until we figured out what happened.  I went on getting my daughter in to see our family doctor and a therapist.  This has been a long, slow healing process of which i continue to see new ways that this has negatively impacted my daughter.

My ex ended up filing another contempt motion against me for not allowing him his chosen vacation time, during which time my daughter was getting medical help and i was advised to keep her away from her stepbrother by multiple professionals.  Due to a combination of delays where my ex failed to confirm his first contempt hearing and he did not receive my response for the continuance, both of these Contempt motions ended up being heard together.

This brings us to August 4th, where we were in front of Pro Tem Commissioner Leslie Savina.  We end up being last on the docket as usual, since my ex makes it a practice to check in just minutes prior to any hearing to lengthen my attorney’s time and increase the bill.  My attorney did not know anything about her, but was told she typically handles DV cases so we thought this would go well.  When Ms. Savina was handling the other cases before us, it was pretty clear she had not thoroughly read through any of the documents.  She was even confusing motions between Adjustments and Modifications, which is a major difference when dealing with child support.  At one point, she held up a huge stack of documents and told the attorneys of one case to excuse her unpreparedness as she had been reading the docs at 11pm the night before.

I still didn’t feel concerned, nor did my attorney.   Our case should have been open and closed.  There was no evidence, and certainly withholding a young girl from an alleged child suspect of sexual abuse was for good cause.  When i saw that it was a woman, i told me attorney to be prepared.  My large 240 pound, shaved head, 6’2″ ex always cries in front of women judges and commissioners.  I timed it, within 20 seconds of speaking he started sniffling and crying; apologizing profusely to Ms Savina for his emotions and her having to read such lengthy documents that i had submitted.  I also knew immediately that something was wrong.  She looked at him empathetically and darted evil scowls towards me.  My ex has the most uncanny ability to appear to be a victim, though i am just 5’2″ and have wrinkles embedded in my face from laughing and smiling.  I guess what i’m saying is that i don’t look mean or cold; my boss even tells me i need to stop smiling and laughing so much in meetings.  “uh oh”, I thought; she believes him.  This man that I have found no less than 100 lies in all of his court documents and depositions; honestly, it would be easier to count the true statements, like his age or sex.

My attorney tried to speak and was cut off nearly every time with, “that is hearsay.”  Which made us all seem to believe that she had not read the 3rd party declaration from the mother of the other girl that had been victimized and allegedly touched by this boy.  In all fairness, we could not thoroughly dispute all the claims due to the King County mandated page limits.  We were only allotted 40 double spaced pages of declarations to dispute all 8 of these contempt allegations.  There were over 10 declarations from 3rd parties that we could not submit, because they brought us over page limits.  Still, there was no legal basis for the contempt charges as they did not meet the criteria or have purging mechanisms.

In the end, Ms. Savina apologetically told my ex that she could only find me in contempt of 2 of the 8 charges.  The text messages and not allowing him the vacation time.  When my attorney brought up that there was no evidence for the text messages, Ms. Savina claimed that my ex and his new wife’s recount of the texts was enough.  Ms. Savina also stated that she beleived i purposely made up the allegations of the step brother to interfere with the father’s time.  My purging mechanism was to provide all 3 children for a week of vacation the end of August.

All my friends and family in the courtroom that day sat dazed and in shock for minutes.  My attorney was literally dumbfounded.  She told me would should do a reconsideration and include medical records when i received them. This was the beginning of the worst times in court for my children.

The effect of having these contempt charges against me has colored every ruling afterwards and permanantly tarnished my character in the courts.  I was just being a mother and trying to do whatever i could to protect my daughter.  This woman has caused me to now have an anti-harassment protection order against me.  This has been used by my ex and his wife to have me flee from my kids’ school events, extracurricular activities and exchanges.

I keep replaying this day in my mind and wondering how any woman could have ruled the way she did.  I researched Leslie Savina online and found that she works as a legal advocate to ensure representation of low income people in court.  This seems to be a clear bias against me and for my ex, who is pro se and whines about how he has been unemployed for over 2 years; to start off with, he should actually look for a job.  Additionally, I found a very interesting article written by Leslie Savina that clearly shows another bias she has against specifically young, aggressive women attorneys.  She obviously is one of those insecure women, that wants to evoke her power and hold other women that threaten her to higher standards than that of a man.  Being that i walked in with an aggressive female attorney and the fact that i am employed in a large technology corporation that employs mostly men, this really left nothing but a big hole for her to bury us in.  I was shocked that this type of discriminatory article exists and is written by a pro tem commissioner.

Here are the highlights:

“Since that long ago hearing (when women lawyers were more of a rarity in court) I’ve had many opposing counsels. The ones I’ve enjoyed the least – okay, the ones who have made me seriously consider a career move – are the young women who learned their trial practice skills watching “Conan the Barbarian” re-runs. There seems to be a prevalent myth among recent, female, law school graduates that to be successful in a male-defined field, you had to litigate like a guy. This was loosely translated into being aggressive, uncooperative, curt, and (did I mention?) rude.”

http://www.law.washington.edu/PService/Voices/011Savina.aspx

My First Experience in Family Court

After a number of years living in absolute relationship hell, I gained enough courage to petition for divorce. I had been a stay at home mom for 3 years and my children were only 1 1/2, 3 1/2, and 5 1/2. It took weeks to finally coordinate my life to be able to meet with an attorney. Between breastfeeding, potty training, cooking, cleaning, unpacking, searching for a job and managing a yard and home; nothing was simple.

My attorney, Christine Hook, was helpful and straightforward. I was able to get all the finances in order and get my own cell phone. We arranged to have him served when I was visiting family in Oregon for the week, to ensure he did not blow up and get physically or verbally abusive in front of the kids again.

The whole temporary parenting plan and financial declarations and all that other stuff was absolutely foreign to me. All I knew was that I needed to protect my children from the conflict and abuse that was happening with their father in the home. They were all scared of him and slept in bed with me, while their father had slept in a different room for months. I hoped that by removing myself from the relationship with their father, that he would stop trying to be mean to them to hurt me. I did not want to ask for restrictions, or expose his prior abusive behaviors since I had thought I was responsible for causing them. Apparently this is common.

When I received his response to my motion and petition for divorce, I nearly collapsed. The entire document was full of accusations of me being the abuser of him and that I had serious and untreated psychiatric issues. He was still calling me regularly professing his love and begging me to give it another try.

I was incredibly hurt and betrayed by his comments. I was caught back in the same trap of our marriage; if he loved me so much, then he must be telling the truth. I went to see therapists and psychiatrists, thinking there must be something wrong with me if he said so. This was my first time where experts told me that I was abused and there was nothing wrong with me. I did not want to believe that either. I am a strong woman, and I never would admit to being a victim.

I went to King County family court to motion for temporary orders on February 11th, 2005. We had our proposed parenting plan, which I had worked on with my attorney. It allowed for one overnight, plus two weekend days for my older 2 every other weekend. For my baby, it would be 2 weekend days until she turned 2 at which point she would move to one overnight. I had my older 2 kids in therapy at the time, because they were so frightened of their father and they were crying to not have to spend the night at his new home. I assured them they would be together and it was only one night.

In the hallway of the courthouse that day, I was unprepared. I thought we would talk to a nice Judge that would see how my kids were really frightened and we could ease them into full weekend visitations after a few months. Instead, we never saw a Judge. My attorney went over and talked to his attorney and they scribbled on and scratched out items on our proposed parenting plan. My attorney would come back to me with an “offer” and I would send her back with a counter “offer”. It was like buying a used car.

In the end, I had to agree to my older daughter spending 2 nights every other weekend with her father. I was crushed and did not know how i could explain to her that she would have to go. My attorney then blurted out, “well, you better take this offer. If we have to present to the Commissioner, he may believe all this stuff your ex wrote and you could end up with worse.” This baffled me. Who the f##k is thinking about what is best for the kids?

I accepted and the attorneys went in to get the agreed order signed by the judge. I sat out on the bench and cried. Minutes later my attorney comes rushing out asking me if i need help. Apparently, my ex had gone into the courtroom right in front of the Commissioner and told my attorney that I was having a complete nervous breakdown and needed medical attention. I just needed a tissue, and maybe some friggin duct tape to shut his mouth.

We were the last ones sitting in the hallway that day, and true-to-form, my ex starts acting creepy as hell. Down the long hallway, he starts whistling all the songs from our wedding over 8 years earlier. Loudly echoing down the hallway I could hear his whistling rendition of Unchained Melody, the Righteous Brothers would not have been proud that day. He went on like this for over 15 minutes. I really needed that duct tape.