Monday, May 05, 2008

Stealing Candy from a Baby...

...Who would do that, a lawyer that's who!


Well not candy, money, child support to be exact. What is the purpose of child support? If you answered to support the child you are naive. That's what the system says, its BIC of course. BIC is a myth, whenever you here it be suspicious, very suspicious.

First Time


The first example of stealing child support is when the child support enforcement agency (CSEA) intercepted my $15,000 end of year bonus. The reason for seizure was because my employer's payroll schedule was different than the CSEA collection schedule. This is quite common, the result is at any given time you can be up to one month behind. The law requires that any lump sum payment must be approved by CSEA before making payment to the NCP. If, at that moment in time, CSEA believes their is any arrearage, they will seize the entire amount. They claim they don't know how much you owe and usually conduct an audit because their records are so often incorrect.

How can you avoid this? You must enroll in the online CSEA reporting system and then check it regularly, especially before any possible lump sum payments, including IRS tax refunds. To avoid seizure, you will likely need to overpay at least one months child support (a windfall to your ex if you pay high child support as I do). Be aware that arrearages are collected immediately, overages are not refunded until after all your children reach age of majority (without interest of course).

My employer had under withheld about $500, less than one month of child support, so CSEA seized $15,000, or 30 times the short fall. The lawyers argued like vultures for 6 months about who would get this money, both lawyers, the guardian, the custody evaluator, or my ex. Uh what about the kid, oh nobody was speaking up for him.

One of the things that kept this going was the hired bitch's contention that I was lying on my financial disclosures. But she knew that to be false because she subpoenaed records directly from my employer (a large insurance company with legions of lawyers). But I became aware that she had done that, not through mutual discovery as required by the civil rules, but because the corporate lawyers knew me and complained of the hired bitch's harassment (not a good sign, winning negative points with my employer).

The impasse was only solved by me firing my lawyer on the spot, threatening the judge with appeal if he denied my motion to release (again), and me handing the judge the proof of the undocumented subpoenas and asking for the reason they were not filed with the court. But to really brake the impasse, I motioned the judge to admit my employer as a third party defendant (six defendants already, what's one more) and rule on their alleged perjury (what the hired bitch had implied). The judge found it amusing (actually chuckled out loud and smirked) that I had out foxed the hired bitch. To which the judge turned to the red faced hired bitch and asked "Are you prepared to do that at this time?" and her replay was "No your honor, that won't be necessary".

The end result - the lawyers got 2/3 of the CSEA seizure. And since this whole bullshit vulture attack on my son's child support took six months, I was listed as a deadbeat. That's right, CSEA had the money but would not payout child support without instructions from the judge, but called me, rather than the judge, a deadbeat.

Second Time


Now most recently, a creditor who refused to recognize the property division jurisdiction of the County Court - Domestic Relations Division, decided to go to the Civil Division (superior) Court to make their plea for property division outside Divorce Court Jurisdiction. This is a classic technique, shopping for a favorable or ignorant jurisdiction, even a Municipal (City) Court is considered superior to a County Divorce Court. This is why my litigation is in five jurisdictions.

Only the matter of law was ruled upon and my lawyer decided he would not defend me (unbeknown to me until after the fact) because "he didn't know what I wanted him to do". There is an interesting concept here, I took such an active role in my divorce litigation that when this creditor issue came up he was spoiled and continued to expect me to do his job while billing me for my work that he was responsible for. After three years I was exhausted and thought I'd let him do his job for a change. But in his defense he was looking at it strictly "as a matter of law" and not from a practical perspective. Only when I called his office and reported that my legal representation "dropped the ball" and allowed a judgment to occur "without opposition" that was against "explicit instructions of the client to oppose the action" did he put his thinking cap on and started coming up with practical alternatives. I knew he wasn't dumb, he was just lazy and uncaring, as most lawyers are (jqism).

Why did it take this terrible turn of events to get him to do his job, where he is literally on the end of a thin branch ready for malpractice. And this is not a dumb guy by any stretch. The issue is not giving a shit about accomplishing the client's goal, you are just a billing code (jqism).

The creditor received a default judgment due to "no opposition". They were aware of my divorce action and reviewed my divorce decree. In the divorce decree is an order requiring me to maintain two months child support in an escrow account, the details of the financial institution as well as the account number is listed in the order. This was an extra layer of administrative harassment that the hired bitch got into the final decree.

The creditor knew very well what the account was for. They informed the court that they had found assets and were entitled to seize them. They did not inform the court
  • How they found the assets (reviewing another court order)
  • That they deliberately circumvented another jurisdiction
  • That another court jurisdiction was involved
  • That it was a child support escrow account
  • That if they prevailed I would be held in contempt in another court jurisdiction
Why? Because the canons of legal conduct do not require them to be honest with the court. Lawyers are not sworn to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth", so they are free to tell a "partial truth" (which isn't really truth at all) if it suits their client needs and furthers their cause.

So the judge granted an ex parte motion to seize the child support escrow account (not knowing what it was). I received notice after the fact, I filed for an administrative hearing. I was told, those are a formality and of little practical value. I informed the court administrator of the other court jurisdiction and that the Civil Division was causing me to be in contempt of the Domestic Relations Division's court order (both are part of the same County Common Pleas Court).

So the court administrator picked up his various stamps and approved an administrative hearing to object to the seizure which was in possession of the court. The court on seeing this approval, granted it, journaled it and then a few days later released the seizure to the plaintiff before the hearing to object to the seizure. WTF!!!

So I had my hearing, my lawyer stifled me and warned me to stay back, it was continued because the other party wasn't there to explain why they should be allowed to steal child support money that is court ordered. Why couldn't the court make an ex parte default ruling considering the Plaintiff did not show when duly notified, had withheld pertinent info from the court, and had deliberately tried to circumvent another jurisdiction's ruling and order? The only thing I can see them explaining is why they didn't inform the court of the whole truth. So in the meantime my son doesn't have his support and I am once again, officially a deadbeat by the hand of another.

An aside


Our justice center complex holds three court jurisdictions, plus the central city police station, the county sheriffs, and a major jail in a large downtown campus, one mile away are are two more court jurisdictions. Our FBI office has been moved from our Federal Government Buildings to a new, very secure, unapproachable (on the side of a cliff) location. We also have a local Secret Service branch office and a Federal Reserve Bank.

I am a photo enthusiast and I really wish I could photograph/video the filing clerks, grabbing the legal files from the lawyers, two hole punching them, and then picking from at least a half dozen stamps and stamping the papers with the efficiency and stiff mechanics of a robot. It is almost funny, but sad too. The impersonal assembly line way the judicial branch treats the citizenry and their grievances. I have to see the humor and chuckle a bit so I don't cry.

Universal Theft


Lest we forget the biggest thief of all is when lawyers enter the marriage to rape and pillage the finances that would support the children. The divorce industry and particularly the lawyers are never BIC (jqism).


Status - First Draft - Last Update 05/05/08 6 PM

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey, you think you were robbed? I did not even get child support for my son for 7 years, most of which time I was unemployed due to the break down in our economy, loss of my main career (I had been a cop, but my son's father carefully crafted my demise there), and very little experience in any other type of work. My average income during those 7 years was $15,000/ yr., and I had a second son to support, so I was supporting 3 people on $15K in the SF Bay Area. you do the math. The father meanwhile was earning 6 figures as a cop, and another $645,000 in business income from his P.I. business. We were denied our rights to the child support because the judge said I decided to not take it from him anymore????? and had signed away my rights. sorry, but in CA, I had no rights to that money, or the ability to "sign it away". Under the Family Code, child support is the child's money and no one can deny that money to the child. It took 7, count them, seven years of litigation to finally re-instate the child support, but the judge denied any retroactive pay, and just ran the support from current day forward, at that point my son was 14!! I had finally re-trained myself in another legal field, as a paralegal, and was making decent money, so our monthly check was rather small. When I finally hit a point where I could no longer work due to my cumulative injuries from being a police officer, I was approved for SSI, a measly check of $610 a month. My child support was reduced by half of what it had been, $1200, and my son got a measly $600 for the next 3 years from a father who never saw him once, and now made over $1,000,000 in personal and business income. My son should have been getting at least $2000 a month for all the years he was alive, and we got less than 1% of his father's income when state guidelines calls for it to be 25%. I paid for his braces, a $5,200 expense, all on my own, and was never reimbursed the %50 as per the law and our court order. I paid for all his glasses and basically all his medical care on my own. Again, never got the 50% reimbursement. And now who is paying for his college? Me! We will never see another penny from that father, not a dime, as the child support is cut off effective the day my son my son graduates from high school, June 14th. You like to bitch, I can see that, but fathers are not the only ones who get robbed.