And the winner is...

NOBODY!!!

When one party decides to play child custody games, everyone is a looser. If the system worked, the first incident of this would be greeted by mandatory inpatient mental health confinement until the offending party learned the folly of their ways. No instead, there is money to be made in these games, so there is an industry built up around supporting the custody abuser, insuring employment for all manner of magistrates, lawyers, guardians, evaluators, social workers, etc.

So it is simple math, BIC is statistically outnumbered by special interests who hurt children under the rhetorical banner of BIC. Oh sure its a lie, propaganda, but the trick is to keep repeating it and the constant dripping of the message will convince people.

So I knew no one would take my sucker bet, but the combined pressure from myself, my brother, the fact that my ex needs something in legal arena and the judge is denying it and that means she needs my cooperation (as I am Pro Se now) and I am not kissing her lawyer's ass as mine had was just enough incentive to almost get her to comply with the court order.

The key to being an NCP is to set your expectations low enough. To think that you, the NCP, the looser, could expect the winner, the residential parent, the only parent that matters to the system, to comply with asswipe orders is just not realistic. The very best you can hope for is close. You can also expect to have to fight for close which will cause you aggravation that you must conceal to prevent the self fulling prophecy of you being labeled a "poor litigant" with a "poor attitude", if you continue to push for what's right the system may retaliate by calling you "nuts", no one else is standing up for their rights so you must be "nuts" for doing so. Neat game, if your the winner.

So she only shorted my son by by one hour of visitation, a mere 10%. Not bad, 90% compliance with the law. My ex on the other hand had all of her visitation and extended it too, so she had 370%, which makes cheating me out of 10% seem all the more petty and unacceptable. Now if you don't have leverage or are not willing to put up with the aggravation, expect a much lower compliance level. You can not depend on the system to ensure compliance, only the good will of your ex in understanding the true meaning of BIC.

As an NCP, never expect to receive 100%, but do expect to give over 100%. (jqism).
Divorce court grief, the "gift" that keeps on giving. (jqism).

Place your bets...

... on what my son's visitation for Christmas will be...

Well it should be easy right? There is a visitation schedule, what does it say? Doesn't matter really, oh technically maybe, but practically, its just more asswipe (worthless court order) coming from an asshole (judge).

First off, since my ex wanted no visitation for me and I wanted shared 50/50 parenting, the plan concessions are unique and complex. There are four ambiguous schedules that need to be merged. Why? Lawyers wrote it, and they don't speak English so they can ensure future business.

After you go through that schedule merge, my son should see his NCP (previously known as father) from 10 am to 8 pm on Christmas day, by order of the court. Any deviation by over 15 minutes is a violation of court order (asswipe), and subject to motion to show cause, contempt of court citation and review of parenting plan for offending party. Happy Horse Shit, practical value, none!

First the winner (custodial parent) can do what they want with the asswipe including, using it as asswipe, hence the name. Surely the custodial parent is assumed to be making decisions, as they've been granted authority to do, in the best interest of the child (BIC). Now that's just bullshit. Seeing a pattern forming.

First, there is no way to get the order enforced in real time, police won't do it, courts won't do it, it just doesn't happen. Second, a simple denial of visitation done even on a major holiday like Christmas, won't be entertained by the court, its likely to not be scheduled. The victim must bear the burden to prosecute this violation that isn't likely to yield a correction of the poor behavior.

Why such a cynical view? Historic observation, plain and simple.

• The first year, I was notified on Dec 23, that new, impossible conditions were arbitrarily put on my visitation for Dec 25. Legal challenges were made until 5 pm Dec 24th before the issue was resolved, costing thousands of dollars.
• The second year, an extortion threat was faxed to my lawyer while I was meeting with him, threatening Christmas Eve visitation once again 4 days prior to the day.
• This year it was suggested that my ex's schedule, which includes Christmas Eve and two days prior didn't allow for meeting my son's 10 hours of court ordered visitation would be reduced by 4 hours (40%). After some bickering and because of my status as Pro Se, my ex updated her plans and will "try" to get "close" to the court ordered 10 hour visitation, but may be "off by" two hours.
• And since she can get away with this continuing aggravation, it insures the NCP will always be the looser, even if I do finally get the full visitation awarded by the court, because her goal of making my life difficult after I have been granted the "freedom" of our dysfunctional domestic relations court's divorce process has been achieved. (jqism)
  

So you want to place your bet, how much visitation will my son get? My bet is 8 hours, a 20% short fall, vs the 38 hours my ex will have. Not quite 50/50 is it? Not even 80/20. But nothing is fair for the NCP. (jqism).

Since...

...Domestic Relations judges main output is asswipe (orders that are meaningless and unenforced), then...

It seems that would make them assholes?

Well maybe not in the strictest sense, but surely there can be no argument that assholes and asswipe naturally belong together.

Pinch me....

...LOL...Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while...

I have a stack of court notices I've saved up to open when I feel like being aggravated. So I open them up Motion to Compel the State Public Employee Retirement System (PERS), the usual heavy handed tactics. Opps a surprise, notice from assigned judge:

Plaintiff motion dismissed w/o prejudice, full costs assigned to Plaintiff

Yee Ha, who woke up the judge? Six months after the final decree and the Plaintiff is still issuing needless 10 page motions and the judge finally realizes she's milking a case long after the final decree. Thank God for the little miracles.

I just want to know what took the asshole so long. Maybe its because someone at State PERS asked what the hell the littlest court was doing trying to compel it. They say "better late, then never", personally in this case, I think that's splitting hairs.

Coincidence - I think not!

My mom was the first to make this observation, but the chance of it being a coincidence was completely blown away today.

My mom observed that the times that my son is allowed to visit her (or me) seem to be optimized to maximize the meals that his host provides. For me that is usually just one, because the most I get him is 4 hours. But occasionally my mom will get him for 6 hours timed to be between two meals.

Now neither of us have a problem with feeding him, but because we only get him for such limited time, this just further chips away at the quality time that we can spend with him. For example the time I get my son straddles his meal time making it impossible for me to do much at all with him. My ex is paid child support that is higher in dollar and percentage of anyone that I know of. In one case my support payment is 9 times higher.

Sometimes this has been very blatant. On school holidays she is ordered to allow him to visit at 2pm to 7pm, which she has trouble complying with. She has brought him over after 2 without lunch, so I am expected to feed him twice in less than 5 hours. I really don't want to sound petty, I feed my son well, but is it fair that of my extra holiday time of only 5 hours that 40% of that time be spent on feeding him. If she isn't going to feed him lunch, why not bring him over at noon, instead of after 2pm. Now if I had normal visitation where he was staying the whole day and overnight, then feeding him would not take such a large chunk of time out of our visitation. It also seems quite unreasonable that he hasn't had lunch by 2pm.

As an NCP I am nothing more than an unpaid restaurant and baby sitter to be used or not at the discretion of the "winner" who withholds visitation without consequence.

Well today, I was scheduled for a full eye exam that should have made me an hour late for visitation. I have had significant problems in my right eye and warned my ex that this could run over, but I had little flexibility for scheduling this appointment. Things didn't go so well, the techs could not get a consistent Rx on my right eye. A surgeon was called as a consult and intensive tests were done requiring several rounds of local anesthetic to the eye. I was told that a very dense cataract needed to be removed and replaced with an artificial lens. It would be a higher risk procedure because of other conditions with this eye, but they said I "was practically blind in that eye now", so that didn't leave me with much choice. Most people have no difficulty seeing the top letter in an eye chart, I could not see any formed letters and was only aware of the bright light and its general shape.

So I was delayed 3 hours with these extra difficulties and only had one hour of visitation left. Now by this late hour, he should have eaten. My ex is well aware of the intense exam I would have gotten. What did my son say as he walked in for a mere one hour of visitation as I just concluded 3 hours of poking, prodding, and bright lights shined into my eyes? Hi Daddy, what's for dinner? You mean you haven't eaten yet? Nope! If I feed him that late she complains, but then that's typical for her rules for me not to apply to her.

Well as usual I tried to make the best out of the limited time, talking from the kitchen asking him about various things. But it falls short of the fatherhood I remember when he was young.

Life as an NCP sucks, it does not even come close to being a real parent! (jqism)

The littlest court

The standing of Domestic Relations court is tragically and pathetically ironic.

Consider the following about the Domestic Relations court.

• is at the bottom of the US judicial system
• is extremely inefficient and error prone
  
• exercises more power and control of the litigants than any other court
• is routinely ignored or circumvented by entities that would sue a spouse for the results caused by the Domestic Relations court
• routinely denies the litigants their rights to

• -due process
• -self representation
• -trial by jury
• -trial by non-prejudicial bench

• routinely issues stranglehold restraining orders
• fail to properly oversee lawyer abuse
• allow lawyers to pad the case to fleece the litigants of the little money they have
• operate in secret, proceedings in chambers, no court reporter, no record of abuses
• suspend civil rules on acceptable evidence
• accept prejudicial statements from lawyers as evidence

There is no simple band-aid solution, the corruption must be killed as a cancer that it is on the justice system and the Domestic Relations Court needs to be rebuilt with citizen's needs and constitutional rights as the top priority.

This won't be easy as a Divorce Industry has grown up around the Domestic Relations Court corruption and is dependent on it for their own survival. This special interest lobby, as all of them, are working directly against the interests of the majority of the citizens interest. This is the process that has bastardized the democratic rule of the people.

This post will be the basis for follow up posts describing these issues in more detail. Feel free to comment on your experiences or which of these issues you are more concerned about.