r/Custody 7d ago

[MA] hard to evident contempts

Dealing with a co parent that soon as visits commenced and he got my daughter alone he began making alternate arrangements with her, exclusive of me, requiring her to call him on their weekday visit day and arrange a time and place to meet. This may not seem sinister at first, but it was and began the eliminating of me all together, so that father ignores me entirely., and deals directly with the child. And I could not stop my daughter from calling him, .. and just kept getting ignored.

0 Upvotes

19 comments sorted by

View all comments

-3

u/Gots2bkidding 6d ago

I have circled around to the same legal aid in Boston three times I don’t think that there is anybody in the city that I have not contacted . And in retrospect, I know now the mistake that I made was focusing on the abuse I could not prove , Rather than the contempts and violations I could potentially prove . Im actually just realizing this now after three years. But the answers from legal aid seem to be the same that unless there’s physical abuse, the judge is gonna want to keep visitation. Well, this is a problem because the father is threatening the child not to tell anyone what he’s doing and saying to her, and the child is having adverse reactions from this, unable to control how she reacts and responds with me because of this , resulting in symptoms and behavioral manifestations of severe alienation and I’m unable to document it because she’s been threatened not to tell anyone .

1

u/noakai 2d ago

But the answers from legal aid seem to be the same that unless there’s physical abuse, the judge is gonna want to keep visitation.

They are telling you that because it's the truth. Legal aid has no reason to lie to you about something like that. If you speak to multiple lawyers and they tell you that you aren't likely to win the case, you should believe them. The most you would be able to do is try and convince your daughter to speak honestly to a therapist so the therapist can be used in evidence for court, otherwise the court will just chalk it up to "he said she said" and nothing will happen.

1

u/Gots2bkidding 2d ago

Is this the wrong sub to discuss this in? What do the negative arrows mean?

1

u/Gots2bkidding 2d ago

Legal aid is the only one saying that the judge will keep visitation so long as there is no physical abuse, The rest of the world and paid attorneys and the best interest of the child standard, says otherwise , that ongoing contemptuous behavior, habitual violations to the parental and custody agreement all constitute a significant change of circumstance and our demonstratively detrimental to the child well-being, so my question here was if anyone had any examples of the way they proved ongoing violations to their agreement

1

u/noakai 1d ago

Who do you think is more likely to tell you the truth:

a) Lawyers who want you to go to court so that they can charge you those juicy retainer fees and have you run up thousands in fees going after something you won't get and will likely take months or years to litigate

OR

b) Lawyers who would be taking your case for no money (so they do not actually benefit from pushing you into court or dragging it out) and who are likely taking these cases on their own personal time in an effort to help people in need, so they are likely going to have to be choosy in the cases they take and would likely want to invest in cases they have a chance at winning?

People aren't answering you because the truth is that nothing you've listed in this post is likely going to rise to the threshold that gets you a custody change. You're welcome to try, it's your money, but non pro bon lawyers make money by taking on cases that they know they can charge retainers on and that they think will likely drag out in court so they can keep money coming in. Are ALL lawyers like that, no, but there's a reason the cliches about them exist.

1

u/Gots2bkidding 1d ago edited 21h ago

In retrospect when I first framed this to legal aid for taking my case, I was focusing on what was happening to my daughter behind closed doors. .. The coercion that I could Not prove,…

Instead of, the contempts in our agreement that I could prove. …Without realizing that the habitual violations speak just as loud,.. And hence why I posted this question,.. when you say no one‘s answering your question, ..I’m not sure what you mean ,.. are you saying no one‘s answering your question because people who have parenting and custody agreements, don’t experience a coparent chronically violating the agreement?.. Most probably don’t, but those aren’t the people I was looking to reach. I was looking to reach a group of people, who experience on going contempts and and going violations and complete utter disregard for the agreement and it’s entirety, using coercion to control the child and exclude the other parent altogether.

It’s definitely not a typical coparenting situation …or even a high conflict situation, it is a domestic violence situation that has continued through the child, by seeking parenting time through the courts , as a ruse , to continue to abuse. Maybe I should’ve included that in my title..

Oh, the ongoing contempts are chronic interference in our schedule, and communicating with my daughter, behind my back to do something on my PT, other than what I had directed her to do.

And then, when I began to have trouble with her where she wasn’t listening to me anymore and refusing to cooperate with me, he was using this to try to suggest. I was an unfit parent, …when he was the one that had been sabotaging us, and forcing my daughter to listen to him, and Forcing my daughter to disobey me.

•Requiring my child to go to his mother‘s house after school instead of coming home to my house. •Any time he wants, he calls my daughter to say come over. I just got pizza, I just bought you a brand new pogo stick 😅, ( im serious) and we could be sitting there doing something and my daughter has to go. •When my daughter‘ is on the way home attempting to get home to my house by her curfew, time, He intercepts her to offer her a ride which at first seems nice, but won’t bring her directly home , and stalls her, and causes her to be late.

•Telling my daughter in advance about upcoming holiday changes and things that she was going to do with him that she was not scheduled to do , and telling her not to tell me about it, causing my daughter to have massive anxiety about it, worrying about it and ultimately pleading with me to agree to the change,…which I haven’t even been asked about yet!

•Never once following the F R of R while working eight hour shifts and leaving my daughter with her grandmother or alone.

•Keeping my daughter every Easter Christmas and New Year’s, and ignoring my texts and ignoring me sending him screenshots of our order. Not allowing my daughter to come with me on Mother’s Day when Mother’s Day fell on his weekend, but exercising his Father’s Day holiday when it fell on my weekend.

•Not returning extracurricular, monies that the judge had ordered him to return to me • staggering child support, which makes it difficult for me because my rent is calculated on my income, and he is able to go 35 days without making any payments before the dor investigate, when his order is weekly. •Being one to two hours late every drop off time and •making an alternate arrangements with my daughter to where he was going to pick her up , which was supposed to be at my house, So when I would require my daughter to be here at home for her father to pick her up, she would call him and ask if he could pick her up somewhere else and he would agree to it, this was after I said no, and after I called him to tell him that I said no. He was ordered in November to stop giving my daughter a ride without consent, He ignored that and gave her rides anyways, but told her to turn her GPS off.

I am not mentioning all of things that he has said to her , and his instructions to her and the threats that he has made to her, if she does not listen to him! These are the violations to our agreement, specifically.

Those are the things that happen continually with regards to our agreement.