Love is a Crazy Thing
Love teaches you what you are willing to do. They say that men think with what is between their legs and not their brain, but what about women? They are no different, it is just easier to cast a stone at men in my opinion because men are characterized as the instigating party. It takes two to tango, so I will admit that knowing whether a person is married or not prior to relations is not always disclosed. If this were not true, the divorce rate in our country would be lower as infidelity would be down. I have been party to relations that led to the discovery of someone being married. In one instance, I cut off the relations and in the other instance I did not, which led me to my current 15-year relationship. So, for all those naysayers out there, sometimes divorce is a better option for all parties involved.
“Love teaches you what you are willing to do. ”
What I could have never imagined is that I would defend him the way I have. This story is a mini-series, but I will try and wrap it up in a few paragraphs. I got a legal lesson in child support and alimony like no other. A lesson that continues to this day. His ex-wife from a marriage that dissolved in 1995 has made it her life’s mission to try and destroy those around her. Her boundaries have no limits; from her parents, sibling, and children, her destruction is limitless. Although I would not consider her destructive behavior to be a positive influence on my life, it has taught me many things about the lengths I would go to defend someone I care deeply about and that justice can prevail if you fight hard enough.
It has also taught me patience in a justice system that does not see fathers and mothers equally. Stay at home fathers and mothers deserve the same level of respect and equal rights. I have learned that justice in family law is not in the facts, but in what is written and spoken to be taken at face value. If you want to win against someone who relies on written and spoken conspiracy theory, you must outsmart them at their own game. Watch what they do and apply the same rules. Oddly enough it has worked. Not my proudest moments, but sometimes you must fight fire with fire.
Anyone who would sue her parents, disown her son, keep a child from seeing their father for over twenty years, and borrow millions of dollars with no intention of ever paying one cent back, needed a taste of her own medicine and it appeared I was going to be that person. After assessing the situation and scouring all the legal documents over the last 20 years the facts became apparent to me that I was in for the fight of my life. One that hopefully will prepare me for law school one day.
Everyone wants to hear the poor mom story of the dad who leaves the wife and child behind to carry on other affairs and live high on the hog. Well that is not this story, although if you read the written pleadings of this case you would assert this to be the facts. So, I took it upon myself to discover fact from fiction and what I uncovered was shocking. The facts are; you have a mother who has a historical pattern of making false accusations against fathers (yes plural) and her son of wrong doings that are later proven inaccurate, a mother who manifests physical and mental health issues upon her children to further her ability to obstruct justice to get fathers to pay greater sums of support than are necessary, defrauding the courts by not disclosing bankrupting debt alimony all while staking claim and enforcement upon others to have to pay for what she discharged, and the references to child support payments not paid excluding the fact that hundreds of thousands of dollars that had been paid. It was clear that someone had to do something to stop or at least slow down this destructive pattern, so I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.
Knowing this battle was going to be costly, I took a second mortgage out on my home for $100,000 figuring that would be enough. I began my interview process with as many attorneys as possible given the circumstances as described above. Of course, when you tell this story no one can believe it and they think it should be a slam dunk case and that was not what I needed to hear, until I stumbled across one attorney who recognized that removing what had been engrained in minds of the judges outlined in the hundreds of legal pleadings would be a tall order. So, it began, we started to dissect piece by piece until we got our day in court. As luck would have it, the hearing was not set to allotted adequate time to hear both the extension of child support request made by the mother (due to profound disabilities of the 21 year old “child” as she defined) and a review of the debt alimony. We had to pick our poison so we went for proving that the “child” should now be deemed independent and no longer receive support. How did we prove this? By playing her game. She claimed the child to be profoundly deaf, yet she graduated from a mainstream high school with a scholarship for foreign language. Yep, you read that right. A profoundly deaf child in a mainstream high school with an ability to study (read, write, and speak) in not only English but a foreign language. In addition, we had to discredit the paid specialists by hiring a private investigator to follow the “child” upon which it was uncovered that her disability as described by the mother was in fact not a hinderance on the well-being of the “child” or her ability to be a mainstream adult. Given the facts and not the fictional writing we prevailed, and the child support finally stopped at age 21.
Unfortunately, we did not come out on top on the second topic of debt alimony. Why, because the facts were never presented as to the deceit of the court system by the mother and the judge ruled in favor of her on the debt alimony. We suspected this would be the case, so we appealed this portion of the case to the Appellate Judicial Court in addition to the fact that the order misrepresented the timeframe upon which the “child” was deemed independent adding an additional $30,000 of unjust child support owed by the father past the date of independence deemed by the court. Just as we were feeling good about the appeal and that the judges would assess the facts of the case and overturn the ruling, they came back with a one line statement, “The order of the court will stand and this court will give no opinion as to their reasoning.” Are you kidding me? No opinion? How do you justify that statement? Bankruptcy fraud is acceptable?! We were absolutely flabbergasted. So, if you have not figured me out yet, my next question was, “So, what do we do next?” The answer I was not prepared for, “Nothing.” It was the end of the judicial fight; we had exhausted all available legal remedies. I have never felt so deflated in all my life and it was the first time I had to give up on something I fought so hard to prevail. What an injustice!
At this point, I had to find solace in the fact that he was going to be able to be a wonderful father to our newborn son and that he would never have to endure the torture of someone like Sarah Eden again. Sarah hear me loud and clear; you must live with your lies and deceit, we do not. You cannot tear our family apart; in fact, you only make us stronger. And now that I am a mom, shame on you for disowning your son to further your lies to keep your daughter away from a loving father. And because I am a mom, get in line for your alimony that you bankrupt because our minor child comes first, and you know because you taught me that game play.
In the middle of writing this blog she struck again in a way that is worth mentioning so that everyone knows her level of disgrace. She filed a Contempt Order against my spouse for non-payment of child support and alimony and when she found out that his mother died, she orchestrated his arrest at his mother’s Celebration of Life. You read that correct, she laid in waiting for what is a child’s worst days of their life. Losing their mother. What a class act this woman is. She has now dug her heels in to try and get his portion of his mother’s trust. It is not about money, because the value of the trust does not justify the legal expenditures. We will end up spending the trust proceeds paying legal fees to defend her frivolous actions against the trust and the parties involved, which furthers my claim that her end resolve was not to get money from the trust, but to inflict pain and suffering on a family that lost their grandmother and mother. Sarah Eden your disgrace continues to amaze me.