So the Big Day #6 is here

and where are we?

• One year of mediation.
  
• Two years of litigation.
• Many motions and pre-trial hearings.
• Five Phase II (forced negotiations) Trial Dates.
• My legal expenses are over $50K, total expenses over $60K.
• I've managed and pushed my lawyers, my wife has let her's run wild.
  
• Signed parenting plan hasn't been journaled (judges decision to wait), so opposition could renege on it, as she has done so many times before.
• Parenting plan does not restore my visitation, it only provides hurdles for me to overcome and mediation as the vehicle to restore my parenting time rather than a full custody trial that would cost me another $100K.
• Why couldn't the court rule on my parenting time? They error on the side of "caution". Once a concern is raised (sleep apnea) then they "protect" the child until a custody trial proves the accusation false.
  
• Four month old financial settlement that has been ignored by opposition to date.
• Full settlement agreement, ignored by opposition to date.
• Opposition has listed hours, but not fees. At $300 it would be $50K. Her bill rate is estimated at $350-400.
• There is evidence of the opposition padding the bill, a 4 page financial statement was billed out at 17 hours, I did mine myself, billed 0 hours, I even brought the 5 copies for filing, one had to be light blue.
  
• My wife doesn't have the means to pay her highest priced lawyer in town that she chose, so the judge will want it paid by me. He would not want his long time lawyer friend to be screwed for fees. That was the reason for freezing 10 times the potential settlement.
  
• My lawyer's advice was "I can beat that fuckin cunt on this any day of the week".
• My lawyer's advice has changed to "It's only money, write a check and get it over with".
• If I pay her fees I'll loose the house. I have strong evidence, including recorded conversations and inter-counsel communications to refute the reasonableness of the fees. I also have a strong case on why I should not pay them. In fact I have a strong case that my wife should pay my fees, but my lawyer said that would never happen regardless of it being "right".
  
• I want my lawyer to argue this today, he claims that the judge will require formal introduction of evidence at a Phase III trial. The judge did not have this high of a standard for the opposition.
  
• In less than 2 weeks my house will move into foreclosure.
  

So where are we going?

After all the bullshit, I'm not holding my breath, I'm not too hopeful either. I will demand partial release of funds to prevent foreclosure (and if that fails, I have a Plan B & C). I will also demand that the senior partners be phone conferenced into the judges chambers to bail out junior (Plan D). I will warn my lawyer that if he pulls the same shit as last month and does something without my authorization, he can expect to be contacted by the bar before the day is out.

And I'll try to remember to breathe...

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What happened next...

Difficult night, hard to sleep. Not so much from worry, but just the frustration, aggravation, helplessness of the situation.

Gave my lawyer a wakeup call this morning, “to get on the same page”. [Remember me, let’s not get cases confused, remember what we’re going to do?] Yee Ha, he actually seemed to remember everything, I knew repetition would eventually work.

I’m sitin in the hall, waiting like a jackass as usual, typing this on my laptop. My lawyer walks by occasionally, kinda risky he could see me typing into this big word document with all my recent and draft posts to my Blog.

He and one of the partners are putting on a seminar on collaborative law later this week, and he’s going to use some of my written material (not from the Blog, stuff I’ve sent him on the case) as an example of how bad adversarial law can be. I joked, “I should find a way to publish this stuff”. It went right over his head. Ah, thank goodness for those little moments when I can get a huge internal laugh at him.

So we’re waitin and waitin, where the hell is the hired bitch, she’s 90 minutes late. Did she get hit by a bus? Nah, the old battleax would keep on walkin while half the people in the bus would be injured from hitting her cast iron ass. (more internal grins, breath, grin). Most fun I’ve had here in a while. Her being late should piss the judge off real good.

I challenged my lawyer, get my money released “ex-parte”, “We can’t do that”, “Sure, tell the judge it’s the price for not showing up”.

Whoa, little drama in the courthouse, some guy was screaming and crying at the top of his lungs in Spanish, he got close to his wife to say “I love you” and some court employees told him he had to go, he hung around for some time and they couldn’t get a sheriff up to the floor. Finally 10-15 minutes one came. At least they have metal detectors and bag screening. He seemed truly a broken man. About 30 minutes later I hear this angry female yelling and other male voices (trying to calm her down).

Finally, almost two hours late, she shows up with a counter proposal….. And she claims she is too sick to be working, what a load of horse shit. Horse shit, Bull shit, this lady is full of all kinds of shit. She’s actually got the judge buying it too. Teacher, my dog ate my homework… To think we’re at that level in Family Court.

What a match made in hell, how did my wife find someone who could act, lie, and manipulate as well as her? The goofy bitch (wife’s lawyer) actually talked to me, making chit chat about my Logitech Marble (as if she knows what to do with a computer).

Either she doesn’t know me, or her acting is so automatic that she can’t turn it off even when it isn’t going to work. In the former case, let me be clear, I know your game, it’s the same as my wife’s, I will not take my eyes off you or the ball for a minute because you both live to screw me given one moment’s chance. Like I said to the cop at the kidnapping, “What?, protect the weaker party, I’m the one sleeping with one eye open so I don’t wake up with a Lorena Bobbitt.”

Sick? Like a fox. It was all a ruse to waste more time and to help people forget her tactics. [I’m so sick, I ‘m being reasonable today, Oh here’s a few changes for you to take up the ass.]

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So how did it end ?

Well on the surface, it could have been worse, my expectations are extremely low. She made a giant counter proposal and I'm going to be reading for a while to figure out how bad it is. On the surface she wants another $30K (no particular reason or justification, hey I want a million bucks and my child, but I don't have either) over what we calculated as equitable split and another $30K for her lawyer.

But my lawyer did hear me. I guess it might have been when I said, "Look you are doing this or you can ask your partners how I should spell their name for the local newspaper, tomorrow's edition." He responded, "Don't do this now". I said, "Hey is any of this new, I'm tired of waiting, desperate times, call for desperate measures". But see his desperate measure is I should write a check, mine is to blow the whistle.

So what did he hear and get? He got money released to prevent foreclosure and he got the judge to order the parenting plan so she can't renege on it and as a side benefit that replaces the bias friend of my fired 2nd lawyer with a mediator.

Ah shit. I finally started reading the counter proposal, I can hardly wait to hear how the pussy tries to sugar coat this turd. Of the 12 pages, every page is at least half marked up, then she adds 6 more pages. And guess what it does, leans everything her way. My lawyer makes a good faith, down the middle offer, and she tips it over on the side. And she proclaims this can be resolved, that she doesn't want it to go to court. Bullshit!

Status: Second Draft - Updated 03/13/07 10:30 am
Third Draft - Updated 03/24/07 9 pm - added "What happened mext" middle section...