I can personally attest to how men get raked over the coals in out family court system. My X girlfriend took our daughter one day while I was at work and took her to Illinois, where her family is. I came home to a half empty appt. And no kids.
In summary, she filed for custody, in Illinois I was served and I filed for custody here in Florida. I wrote the judge (Judge T, Olson) in IL a letter within my allotted time explaining to him that I filed for custody in Florida, before 6 months had elapsed after the X left. I included all of my paperwork, as well as a copy of the UCCJEA, a federal law that deals with interstate custody issues, which mandates that if I filed in Florida before the 6 month period since my daughter left the state, that Florida owns jurisdiction.
The next I herd from them was a letter in the mail that custody was awarded to her, I was docked $650/month for support and I was granted no visitation with my daughter, and possessed no decision making powers over her. I had to spend 8,000 dollars on an attorney to be able to get to the point where I could get a "joint custody" agreement. This judge completely ignored a federal law. I can only assume that he had me pegged as a deadbeat and he wanted to teach me a lesson. Mind you, I have no criminal background and was never even accused of abuse or neglect.
Fast forward 3 months later. The joint parenting agreement stipulates that the case be transferred to Polk County, Florida. The X turns violent on me, so bad that I had to get an order of protection on her. After being baker acted (committed against her will to the psychiatric ward) 3 times, she finally snapped and was found by the cops in her truck passed out on crack cocaine. My daughter was in the truck, all of 1 year old. She was committed and my daughter was placed in my temp. Custody by the dept. Of children and families. Well, it has been over 6 weeks and I still have not been able to convince a judge that I should not be paying child support.
The X has called me from crack houses, freely admitted taking ecstasy and smoking crack, blew off her first arraignment and calls me to laugh about my child support and how it's hurting me financially to still be paying. I submitted requests 4 times for Judge Yancey in the Polk county court to at least hear what is going on and abate child support. He has refused to grant me a hearing on an ex-pt basis. He doesn't consider this an emergency.
Well, guess what, I feel that if I was a single mom who needed child support, it would constitute an emergency. Want to hear the salt in the wound? The X's lawyer submitted a request to withdraw from the case and was granted a hearing within 3 weeks of the request. I showed up and the judge told me that my issue was not an emergency, even though he granted the attorney a hearing, so as to not waste the attorneys' money.
The judge was smug and seemed to take pleasure in my frustration. He told me he couldn't help me because he was reassigning the case to another judge. That was a big fat lie. He could have read the order granting me custody of my daughter right there, as I had filed it in my case and he could have abated child support before he relived the lawyer and transferred the case. This system really sticks it to men and it is next to impossible to hold judges accountable for their decisions which are far from innocuous and ruin lives.
I have spent over 15 years building up a good credit rating and wanted to buy a house within a year. Now, I am paying 100% of daycare, medical, transportation, food, etc PLUS child support and I'm getting no help from her. The court system is completely unjust when it comes to fathers. If anyone knows of a good support group for anally raped fathers in Florida, feel free to share and thanks for reading and allowing me to vent.
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