Posted by NCWayne on November 26, 2009 at 03:44:53 from (173.188.168.35):
Hey guys, most of you that 'know me' from here know I've been posting on here for around 4 or 5 years and those that have actually met me know even better that I'm not just some sorry good for nothing who is too lazy to do things for myself. I own my own business and work my a$$ off to take care of my family. In other words I wouldn't be here asking this if I hadn't nearly reached the end of my rope with this.
That said if any of you remember I posted on here about about year ago about the court battle my wife and I were going through with her daughters bilogical father. For reference purposes the little girl will be 7 in December.
Long story cut down alot but still kinda long (SORRY for the length): Basically the biological father was given the chance to stand up and be a man when the pregnancy was discovered but claimed the child wasn't his, she wan't pregnant, etc. In other words he had dumped her,found another woman, moved on, and didn't care. My wife suffered a very complicated pregnancy where the child was born nearly 3 months premature and both of them nearly died several times over the course of the pregnancy and ultimate delivery by C section due to the baby being in distress. Given all she was already going through she didn't have the time, energy, or financial means to go after him right after birth. Further, as she had time to think about things, she figured it better not to 'force' someone to be around that didn't want to be and then to have to put up with the BS associated with all of it. She had a good job and though she struggled she got by and got back on her feet on her own.....WITHOUT GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE I MIGHT ADD FOR THOSE SO INCLINED TO CLAIM OTHERWISE.
So she toughed things out, and afer a few years finally got back on her feet, and was going back to school, only to get hit with a lawsuit four years after the birth. At the time he had never had any contact with the child beyond a once a year call to her parents house on Christmas Eve (where he knew she would normally be). This was (and has been verified true by his current wife/girlfriend at the time, usually when he was drunk). The typical call consisted of saying," I want to see 'er", but then when asked to shoulder the responsibilities stated that she wan't his. Needless to say he never saw her. When the lawsuit was filed it was asking for FULL CUSTODY AND FOR MY WIFE TO PAY HIM SUPPORT. Needless to say when we got to court he didn't get what he wanted.
As it turned out my wife got FULL LEGAL AND PHYSICAL CUSTODY and he wound up with nothing but an order for temporary visitation, and an order for ongoing support and three years worth of arrears.
At 4 years old the child was a bit freaked out, to say the least, about this guy popping up into her life so as part of the order there was also therapy ordered. Here the judge screwed up and ordered visitation before a therapist could even be found. As such we tried to wipe the slate clean for this guy and make the best of the situation but from the start he kept pushing for more and more visitation/time over and above the order. The more he pushed the more stressed the child became and she began to get very clingy, have nightmares, etc. We tried to tell him this but the response we always got was that he(and his wife who is studying therpy) just couldn't believe these problems were occuring. When therapy was finally started we were told by the therapist to go back to the order and follow it for the only the time stated, no more. This was something she later denied she said in front of my wife and the biological father. The loss of his extra time had already made him very unhappy and the denial by the therapist made things even worse. From that point on things went further downhill. Given the loss of trust with my wife the therapist recommended we find someone else, something we had already planned to do given her "retraction" and subsequent placement of blame for stopping/reducing the visits on my wife.
We eventually found another therapist and once again she stopped the visits completely until she could asses the situation. During that time the nightmares, bad thoughts, etc all stopped. The personal visits with just the child and the therapist eventually progressed to joint sessions with the biological father and the child together with the therapist. Once again the nightmares and 'bad thoughs' started. The problem is everything is being blamed on us due to the tension between the adults, and not on him for forcing the situation. Even though that is what the child has told us more than once is causing her the stress. (and yes she can tell you what stress is, even at 7, and it's real close to what I feel when I'm stressed so she has a good handle on her feelings) She has even stated she doesn't think he is a bad guy if he would just listen to what she tells him and quit forcing her to visit and play with him.
Let me note here that he put both myself and my wife in debt up to "HERE" in lawyer fees fighting a 'full custody' lawsuit, but when he got to court all he said was I don't want custody, instead 'I just want to see her'. As it stands now, since day one, he has never paid a full month of support, and hasn't paid a dime toward arrears. We have had him back to court over it twice and the second time now have a suspended 30 day sentence hanging over his head, contingent on him paying in full and on time. That was three months ago and he didn't even make the first payment after court in full or on time. Basically it seems he wants all of the "rights" of fatherhood but can't handle the responsibilities. We have heard several times from he and his wife that they didn't think the support was going to be so high.......does that mean they wouldn't have gone through with this mess had they known otherwise???? Any way it goes he shows up in court every time with a lawyer who has told us he hasn't been paid completely yet and is working semi pro-bono. In the meantime my wife and I are doing this all ourself, Pro-Se, plus trying to work and take care of a child. Top all of this by the fact that we have caught him/his wife in several lies, things said and things observed just don't match up, etc etc etc. I just keeps getting worse.........
Even though we have done nothing but voice the childs thoughts to us on the situation, when they don't go along with what the father wants we have been called every form of liar you can think of for every reason you can think of. Supposidly she isn't old enough to form her own opinions as to whether to have the relationship or not..UNLESS she chooses to have it. You know as well as I do you can't force any kind of relationship. Moving on we've been accused of telling the child he was a bad person, not urging her to have a relationship with him, etc etc etc. and that is all the reason she really doesn't want a relationship with him. In other words he can't seem to form a relationship with the child because she doesn't really want it, and that's just because we don't want it. On the contrary we have urged, conjoled, and even had to force her to go to the visits whether she wanted to or not. We have gone out of our way to not make him look bad but the child sees it on her own, and it's not our fault she sees it.... Ultimately we had to tell her to just go, play, and have fun and not worry about everything else that we would handle the adult stuff. Now the child is seeing that her playing and having fun has given the wrong impression to the therapist. We then pass on what we're told by the child but the fact she goes and has fun whether she wants to be there or not has made the wrong impression and now we're having to try to deal with that as well. It feels like a lose lose situation any way we turn. Do what they say and it has to opposite effect,do the opposite and it doesn't work either. In the end YOU CAN NOT FORCE A RELATIONSHIP WITH ANYONE,ESPECIALLY WITH A CHILD.
This all reached a peak several weeks back when the child had a sever nose bleed the night of one of the joint sessions and didn't get to go because she had to go the urgent care. Then the next week she "had an accident" at daycare and her reason she gave was she was stressed about the visits. (This has only happened once before and that was a year ago after another partucularly stressing visit).
The therapy sessions were bi-weekly with a joint session one night and a personal session the following night. She missed the session the night of the nose bleed so had that week and then missed last week too because he didn't want to meet and talk. So in that time span she hasn't seen him in nearly a month. This past weekend was the first weekend she has gone completely through without a nightmare. In the meantime she has drawn pics of herself kicking him between the legs, of him taking her away from me and her mom, etc etc. She has done all she knows to put her fears down on paper and express them to us but it all seems for nothing because it's all deemed to be out fault for causing her the stress when we pass the info on. She has said she doesn't/wouldn't mind having a relationship with him but she wants it on her terms, not something manditory or forced. The therapist is in a near impossible situation because she wants to schedule visits but my wife and I have pretty much refused to schedule anything manditory because he uses that small "right" to get his foot in the door and to push for more. Which we know from experience he will do and then get mad if we have to back things off again or even more. I've already let it be known that anytime she didn't want to go with him she will not go and if he wants to make trouble and force his right then THERE WILL BE TROUBLE.
Ultimately all we have asked is for him to back off and let her come to him in her own terms and in her own time...Still he doesn't trust us to do it even though we've stated numerous times we would. Heck we even offered to give him visitation "rights" and have it typed up and somehow "legalized" even if he signed away his rights and let me adopt...this would even let him off of the hook for support but he doesn't seem to care, I guess since he isn't paying anyway. No matter what we try it's never enough to make him happy. We even offered to set down last week and have a meeting in the therapist office with him to let him know what was going on and ask him to simply back off and let the relatinship developt naturally, at the childs pace, if he really wanted a good relationship with her out of this mess. His response was to deny the meeting and say something to the effect of he'd just have to go talk to his lawyer about it.
This leads me to today and us needing help. As it stands my wife and I have been working our butts off trying to be both parents and lawyers through this mess. We had a lawyer until just after court a year ago and just paid the final installment on their bill a month or so ago. Now we're broke and still trying to do this all ourselves. Granted we've learned alot and done alot over the past year doing this ourselves. Heck the judge last time told both my wife and I we should be lawyers given our knowledge and preperation for the case. Even then it has all taken a major toll on us and now we're down to having to go back in front of a judge at some point after the first of the year to #1 send his butt to jail for not paying support, and then maybe/also probably getting called in ourself for contempt if we don't follow the order or the therapist recommendation and FORCE the child see him. The thing is we NEED a lawyer now as much or more than ever but can't find anyone that is willing to work for us Pro-Bono. It's sad that 'he' can get a lawyer to work for him that has said(told us face to face) he hasn't been paid completely for the parts he was supposed to be paid for yet is now working for him for free. Meanwhile my wife and I are busting our a$$es trying to do it all, survive the bad economy along with shouldering nearly a years pay worth of lawyers fees that deleted all of our savings.... and now when we need it we can't find anyone to help us......we just have to keep on busting our a$$ and doing it all ourself. Which we can and will do if we have to, that's just what parents do.
Sorry for the long post but maybe you get some idea of the mess my wife and I and more so our little girl has been going through over the past year. That leads me to my final question,DOES ANYONE OUT THERE KNOW OF A LAWYER IN THE STATE OF NC, MORE SPECIFICALLY IN MECKLENBURG COUNTY THAT MIGHT BE WILLING TO AT LEAST TALK TO US AND OR, MAAAAAAYBE BE WILLING TO DO SOME PRO-BONO WORK FOR US IN THIS MESS????????? Even though I can do alot of the behind the scenes research and stuff to prepare the case my wife is still the only one really legally able to do anything here. That puts alot more stress on her than she needs right now. Especially when she's already faced with the Wells Fargo take over of Wachovia and no guarantees on her job, plus my slowdown in work, the bills that we just are able to pay every month...after we've spent nearly $100 a month on a therapist paying to teach dumb a$$ to be a father, having him not pay his ordered support amount ($300 shy every month or over $3000 to date), having not been reimbursed for his share of medical expenses (his half of the therapy sessions included) for a year (nearly $800), all on top of having no savings to fall back on because of paying the lawyers the first go around. IF ANYBODY KNOWS ANYBODY OR HAS ANY IDEAS WHAT WE CAN DO PLEASE LET US KNOW. WE ARE AT OUT WITTS END WITH THIS GUY, AND THIS WHOLE MESS AND IT'S NOT GETTING ANY BETTER.....Plus we don't qualify for any real "government" help because she never took anything from from the government in the way of food stamps, medicade, etc etc.......
I'm just crossing my fingers and praying that there are at least a few lawyers on here that knows someone, that know someone, ----- that can help, or even a non lawyer that knows someone that knows someone........If you know anyting please post back to me here or you can email me at Northwest80d@ctc.net THANKS FOR ANY LEADS AND/OR HELP PROVIDED....
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