In July of 2009, everything changed drastically once again. I was informed that my Ex had taken my children and moved to a location that was a 4-hour drive away (one way). Once again, I felt helpless in the pursuit to have some normalcy for my children. Since their mother had regained primary care of my children in December of 2008, they had been moved around and changed schools so much that I was beginning to fear (and still fear to this day) that it was all beginning to do irriversible emotional damage to them. Just as they would get settled somewhere and begin to make friends again, they would be moved away or have their schools changed right out from under them. Aside from the toll it was taking on my children, the move to the coast was also very difficult for me. How exactly was I supposed to have my visitation like I was supposed to if they lived 4 hours away?
It should be noted that at the time that this happened, and still to this day, my Ex and I have JOINT LEGAL CUSTODY, CARE, AND CONTROL of the children, with her having primary care while I have secondary care. This means that legally I am to be consulted in any big decisions in their lives including changing schools and moving FAR away. NEVER have I been consulted in any decisions regarding my children, and when I find out something is going on that I object to, she just ignores me and does what she wants anyway, most of the time in direct violation of the court order. I recently found out that she has even lied to their schools regarding custody, telling them that she has total custody of the kids. Nice.
Apart from that, she was not supposed to move the children out of the county we lived in without my expressed permission and/or the permission of the court. After the stunt she pulled when she kidnapped my children and moved across the country with them for over a month with me not knowing if they were even alive, it was not beyond the realm of possibility that she would do it again. It seemed to me that it was very easy for her to just pick up and move far away at the drop of a hat. Scary, huh?
So, on July 23, 2009, my attorney filed a Motion and a Show Cause Order to hold my Ex in contempt of court, yet again, for moving out of the jurisdiction. Also included in the Motion was my plea for a reduction in child support based on my inability to pay the amount ordered due to a significant change in circumstances.
Until we got into court, I was having to drive 2 hours one way to meet my Ex at a fast food restaurant in order to get my children for my visitation. Spending over 8 hours of my visitation weekends on the road was not only frustrating, it was completely draining financially. The gas alone was killing me. Not only that, but the Fridays that I had the kids were pretty much gone as far as quality time goes. Most Fridays were spent in the car driving and we wouldn't get home until very late, so it would be bedtime when we got there. I was also missing pretty much all of my Sundays as well because we had to get on the road by a certain time in order to meet their mother. All in all, Saturday was really the only day that I was really getting any quality visitation time with my kids. I was missing my Wednesday visitation completely because how exactly was that going to work? Drive 4 hours away once a week and get a hotel room for the night for me and my 5 children to sleep in and then leave the next morning? I don't think so.
I kept trying to figure out why she moved so far away. She didn't have any family there, or, for that matter, any friends that I knew of. She didn't have a job when she moved. She seemingly just decided to pack herself and the kids up and move 4 hours away on a whim with no care in the world. I wouldn't have expected her to care about how it would affect me, but how it would affect the kids should have been of great concern to her. Guess not.
Because she moved during the summer, I was able to have my kids for a week-long stretch at one point. It was really nice having them all there and not having to worry about driving so far away. It was nice being able to just be with them and talk to them and know that they weren't hundreds of miles away from me. When they were gone, it was very hard for me knowing that if something happened to one of them or if they needed my help for some reason, I wasn't just a few miles away. I couldn't go to any activities they had or go to their school. I couldn't be involved in the day-to-day because they now lived a world away. I finally came to the realization that that is exactly what my Ex wanted.
When we went to court, I once again showed every financial document I had at my disposal to prove that my business was making very little, if any, money. I produced bank statements, tax documents, receipts, bills....you name it, I gave it to the judge. The $2200.00 per month (total) that I was supposed to pay had always been an unrealistic amount of money for me to come up with and I had already been to court for contempt for not paying twice, so it should have been painfully obvious to anyone looking that I didn't even make $2200.00 per month and could not pay anywhere near that amount in child support and still be able to support myself.
However, in court, as had always happened in the past, the judge completely ignored everything and said that I "failed to carry the burden of proof" when trying to convince the court that I wasn't making any money. I was pretty much at my wits end at that point. I really didn't know what else I could do short of showing up in court unshowered with holes in my clothes and shoes to prove that I was completely broke. Of course, had I done that, the judge probably would have had me jailed for contempt of court for showing disrespect. I just couldn't win.
Her attorney kept bringing up the fact that I still lived in "the marital residence" with a hefty mortgage payment and that I was still driving a very nice vehicle. I showed documents to prove that the forclosure process had begun on my house and that my car payments were very far behind and at any time they were going to repossess my vehicle.
I guess the judge saw blank sheets of paper. In the end, it was ordered that the child support would stay the same, and I knew full well that I would end up back in court again for nonpayment. I just couldn't afford it.
When we finally got to the contempt portion of the hearing (her contempt), her defense was that she had asked me if she could move away with the kids and that I had said that she could.
Let me break this down for you....
A short time before she moved away, I did have a converstation with my Ex about her wanting to move out of the area that we lived in. She told me that there were too many bad memories there and that she wanted to try to get a fresh start. In all actuality, I honestly believe that she wanted to run away from all the people who knew what she did and looked down on her for it, but whatever.
I told her that it was ok with me if she moved, but that it couldn't be too far away. I also told her that she needed to tell me BEFORE she moved WHERE she was moving and WHEN. She did none of those things, and before I knew it, my kids were living 4 hours away without my prior knowledge.
In court, however, her attorney worked his magic and my attorney, once again, sat on his hands. By the time all was said and done, it was made to sound like not only had I given her permission to move that far away, but that I had packed them up and helped them move!
There was quite a lot of back and forth when it came to my visitation and the fact that I was missing one day a week and that I was having to drive all that way in order to get the rest of my visitation time. Her attorney once again weaved his web and asked if I had had my children for a week at a time while they were living so far away. I answered yes. He asked if I had ever had them for that long of a stretch since she was given custody. The answer was no; however, it was the summertime. My having them for that long of a stretch of time would have been impossible during the school year with them living so far away.
I presented evidence that since she had regained primary care, I had missed well over half of the visitation days I am supposed to have. Didn't matter. In the end, she got away with violating a court order once again. I could have gotten up on the stand and said absolutely nothing. I could have gotten up there and babbled incoherently like a baby. Doing either one of those things would have brought the same result. Instead, as always, I told the truth. Really did me a lot of good, huh?
By the time court was finished that day, the judge had me feeling like I was supposed to be thankful to her for even meeting me half-way. Her attorney had the judge convinced that she was doing me some huge favor by violating a court order! I was told that if I wasn't happy with the way things were that I could be made to drive the entire 4 hour journey myself, putting me on the road for 16 hours each weekend that I had the kids.
This just goes to show you that if you have a good attorney, he can make a murderer look like an angel. He certainly was good at making an adulterer look like a victim who was as pure as the driven snow. My attorney on the other hand, forget it. I actually wondered at times if he was even breathing, and after that hearing, he would no longer be my attorney.
Anyhow, the solution to the rather large problem that my Ex had created (again) was becoming clear to me, but before I could take the steps necessary, something would happen that would really alter my life forever.
Please stay tuned for the next entry. It's going to be a big one!
