Topics

I am hoping this is an easy one for you.  All parties are in PA but it is a more general question than that.  
Do you know if there may be an example of what a pre-trial statement (to go to a trial not a custody master) should look like somewhere online or can you give me something to go on here?  It seems everywhere we turn we get, "The lawyer files it" or "The lawyer does that"...but we are pro se.  We have done VERY well so far but we are not sure what this should look like (including the custody master telling the opposing side, at our last hearing, that they know they don't want this going to trial because we have a strong case.  He said they needed to sit down and talk to us, but they have been unwilling to date.  This of course is niether here nor there...).  
I am assuming that it needs the header up top with all of the case info...but after that should it be just paragraphs siting attatched evidence?  Should it be more like an outline?  Should it look like the one going to the custody master but more indepth?  
TIA

Edit to add...in the county where this is being heard ALL evidance and purposed witness testomony must be layed out in this pre-trial statement as it would be in a criminal matter.  This is a change that is less than a year old.  They have found their way around the lack of discovery clause in the law, thus our reason for concern regaurding this matter.

All parties are in PA.  Temp order was put in place by the custody master.  Home evaluation court ordered through the County Children and Youth offices.  Both parties have met with the evaluator and are awaiting her written recommendations before proceeding to trial or private mediation.  

You may recall that there is an issue of medical neglect in our case in which custodial parent did not act to care for child's dental issues until Children and Youth was involved in the case nor was the child taken to the doctor for over 8 months by custodial parent (again, until children and youth was brought into the equation).  There is also an issue of child not being provided with fitting clothing ect in the custodial parents home (custodial parent has blamed this on lack of cash dispite child support being paid on time).

Children and Youth has apparently ended their investigation, but that is another story, and CP has since stopped taking the child to the doc again.  We have had her there 2x in the past month (05/20 and 06/03) during our limited weekend time.  Both times she had an upper resp infection again.  Custodial parent has not taken her for follow-up visits.

Custodial parent's job was terminated last week.  We do not know all of the details although the place of employment was closed (something about an FDIC violation and custodial parent was the manager).  Custodial parent is doing everything possible to hide this from us.

Child had a dental appt yesterday that was made by the custodial parent.  This was an appt to have some teeth filled which is a pressing issue because ear nose and throat doc will not treat the child until the majority of dental work is taken care of as to not open the child up to more infections (he believes tonsils need to be removed ASAP due to severe scarring and reaccuring infections ect).  Custodial parent didn't advise the non-custodial parent about the appt but we have been in close contact with the dental office.  Appt was missed- no call, no show.

My question?
Would it be appropriate or expected for us to call the evaluator and tell her about the current situation and the things that have happened since she has met with both households?

As mentioned in a previous post, we have a court ordered home evaluation.  We are in PA and Pro Se.  The evaluation is being done by Children and Youth and I don't understand the setup, but I guess we will figure that one out later today as we are hoping the evaluator shows this time.
The evaluator is meeting with each party one time for about 2-4 hours.  We were told that everyone that lives in the household including the child in question needed to be present for the full length of time that she is in our homes.  
The other party has someone "just hanging out with them" as they have trained the child to say.  He sleeps on the couch every night and is the nephew of the new mate.  He is also the fiancee of the director of the childcare center/ private kindergarten that they are sending the child too.  There have been some rumors of this person being associated with some drug use so obviously this situation is a concern to us.
Their in home evaluation was on Monday, and we understand that he was not present.  We have come to this understanding through our discussion with the evaluator last night who mentioned meeting "everyone in their home."

1.  Is there a proper way to bring this up?  Should it be brought up to the evaluator or the judge when we go to court?

2.  Would this invalidate any part of their evaluation?  Or is there something else that this could effect?

Thanks for your imput on the matter.  This situation does not seem to be listed anywhere to find out what to do.  

We have a court ordered home evaluation to be done.  We paid the cost of the evaluation within 2 days of being contacted by the county Children and Youth office mailing us the letter explaining how to pay it and waiting to hear something.  The evaluator called us a week later to set up an appt to come to our home for the evaluation.
The first appt time that she gave us was excepted although some visitation issues needed to be cleared up before it was set in stone.  She was made aware of the time restrictions and that people had to rearrange work schedules and visitation schedules to make the time possible.  We contacted her numerous times as the plans were layed and set.
The day of the evaluation came.  Everyone was here (although one child missed a class, another child missed a half day of school and my significant other took the day off of work to be here of course)  The child involved in the custody issue was picked up at noon which was outside of normal parenting time (normal parenting time begins at 4pm).  
The evaluator never showed.  We tried calling her numerous times throughout the afternoon and were finally able to reach her at 6pm.  She stated that she forgot that it was that day and thought it was the following day.  She had the court order stating that normal parenting time is only one day a week and EOW.  She was involved in numerous discussions regarding needing to pick up the child earlier and primary custodial parent not wanting an earlier time.
It is now rescheduled for next week and we are hoping that she shows this time.  Also, primary custodial parents appt is now before ours (and everything that we have read states that you have an advantage if you get your story out first, but we have never done this so we could be all wrong).  School and work alterations are being made again but deposits on classes and things are lost.

1)  Do we have any recourse in this situation as work time is missed so only base salery will be paid for a 2nd day and classes that were previously paid for will not be refunded?

2)  Should we be concerned that this woman who appears to be terribly irresponsible is the one determining the "fate" of our case as we understand that her opinion will weigh heavily on the outcome of the case?

3)  We understand that if we have a concern we need to bring it up early on and not after the evaluation is complete, so would it be wise to do this?    The thought is that she would almost have to be given "points" for being willing to comply with this womans whims and mistakes...but I don't know.

I guess the major question is, should we be concerned and is it worth it to try to do something about it???

Thanks for your time and consideration in this matter.  

All parties are in PA.  I am pro se.
The temp order states:
In the inteim and pending receipt of the home evaluations, the parties agree to maintain the status quo regarding legal and physical custody as follows: Legal custody of the child shall be shared by her parents above captioned.
XXXXXX shall have primary phyiscal custody of the child.
XXXXXX shall have partial custody every other weekend from Friday at 6 pm until Sunday at 6 pm, and each Wednesday for a dinner visit from approximately 4 pm until 7:15 pm, and any additional time by afreement of the parties.

Now onto the situation.  The child is sick and has been off and on for quite some time.  Primary parent has ignored the illnesses stating that child has "seasonal allergies."  Primary physician ordered nasal spray for the allergies.

Friday, April 7th, child was picked up for a weekend visit and medication was not exchanged for the weekend.  We called to find out why.  Parent said that the doctor wanted it held for a week.  Child said that was not true and doctor just gave her more that morning.  Doc office was called and situation was explained.  We were told that the child was right and they called in an order for the  medication which was promptly picked up.

Primary parent told us that there must be some confusion, this is not what the doc said.   Told us to keep the medication at our house for future visits since they already had some at primary household.  We called back to doc office several times to request doc findings and orders in writing and have yet to be provided with them.  They keep saying that they will call back after they contact primary custodial parent.

No future doc visits were reported by primary parent or by ins company.  

Wednesday May 3rd, child is picked up for dinner visit and she has green snot again and is coughing.  As it is my understanding the this is a visit and not an excercise of shared custody we report findings to primary parent.

Friday, May 5th, child is picked up for shared custody time.  Primary parent says that child's allergy medication was started again that day because "she felt she needed it."  She was not taken to the doc.  We immediately took her to the emergicenter that is on our way home.  

Child is sick again, which we knew, and they don't want her on an antibiotic because they have perscribed her one 5 times this year already (yes, taken there only by parent with parital custody because we live an hour away from primary physician and they don't have doc hours when I have parenting time).  They want to see her back in 5 days if there is no improvement.

My questions-

1)  If what the doc office said or what the primary custodial parent said were to be believed as truth, would the script for the allergy medication still be valid, and therefore she should be given it daily?  I am wondering because if it is valid, I would like to get a doc order halting it as this is an infection issue not an allergy issue).

2)  If primary custodial parent does not step up to the plate and take her back to the doc if there is no improvement, can this be done on a dinner visit?  I guess if I am asking if my understanding is correct that  this time can not be used to take her to the doc.

3)  What should my next step be here, if any, beyond waiting it out (we have the evaluation in a week and a half but don't know exactly what to expect after that) and hoping for the best??

4)  What can we expect after the evaluation...I am assuming that we have to wait until the next court hearing for a change in the order...but we don't have a date for this as of yet and I am sure you can see some sense of urgency here as her health is suffering due to the current situation.
I do appreciate your time and consideration in this matter.

First let me say hi there...and thanks for being here for us...
We live in PA, we do not have a written order as of yet (court on the 7th of April) that defines who has legal or physical custody.  We are trying mother and father are still married and as they where at the time of the child's birth.  There is nothing barring access to records of anykind although their was a temp PFA which was dismissed at the time of the hearing for it.
1) We know that the father SHOULD be able to access medical records for the child under state and federal law...but what laws would govern this?

2) We know that a school has 45 days to comply with a request for records under FERPA, would it be the same for a medical provider?  I only ask this because FERPA is often mentioned when this subject comes up...but FERPA is for educational not medical purposes so this confuses us)

3)  Would a medical provider have the right to refuse to provide a part of the record that they "understood" we were provided by the other parent?

Thank you for your time in this matter...

I feel stupid here because we never thought that it would go like this.  What do you do when a parent just lies lies lies in an evaluation?   Do we bring it up at a trial?  Do we call that parents lawyer and call them on it?  Do we call the evaluator?  
We are confused with the whole evaluation process to begin with because we just got the report (5 days from the max time allowed for us to recieve the report from it) and there is no recommendation in it at all.  It just seems like a collection of statements.  So now, not only did it tip our hand to what we were planning on bringging to trial if it went that far because we were told that we had to bring all of our concerns to the table (not that we did though because the evaluator had some time constraints on us so we just hit the high points), but it also appears to be useless because there is no EVALUATION of the situation shown.  Then, we read through it and the other parent lied...about stupid things.  She says she has 3 brothers...she has 4 (she failed to mention the one that is an escaped convict on the run...who we can prove has contacted her BTW), she lied about doc visits (she said that they happened while we have documention that doesn't show it at all), she lied about the boyfriends criminal record (we have a PFA that was placed on him by his ex-wife that states that he has a criminal record...we are researching exactly what that is but he has one none the less).  We are dumbfounded and not sure where to turn with this or what the proper protocol is.
We were told that we would get the report and either both parties would come to an agreement based on the evaluation or it would go to trial.  There was nothing stated about truthfulness or anything really...I know that if we disagreed with the outcome we could dispute that at the time of a trial but it seems there is not an outcome to dispute which is why we are so confused...can anyone help?

I just need to vent and I am sure that some, if not all, here will understand.  
Without going into specifics, there is something going on with his daughter and there is zero communication coming from her mother's "side" meaning doctors, school, or mother.  We need to know what is going on with her right now.  They have refused to talk to him in the past and we have struggled to assert his rights in getting any kind of documentation and it wasn't even complete.  If we are going to be the only ones taking action on this little angel's behalf we NEED complete information...and he is dropping the ball out of frustration.  A week away from our home evaluation is not the time to drop the ball!  
I know that he will wake up in the morning with renewed strength and reserve to deal with this but for tonight, I just want to smack him!

GRRRRR...
Thanks for reading my vent...no need to respond!

Hi there.  I am pretty sure someone here can help me out.  We are in PA and Pro Se, please do not say seek counsel as we just don't have the cash right now and no way of getting it at this moment.  
We want to move forward and get my hubby's little one is counseling.  We has sent a letter to her mother and her mother's lawyer who have decided no (shared legal custody) because they feel that the child's confusion and comments are normal during a custody battle.  We do not, particularly if the situation is not being discussed with the child.  We have not even discussed with her that we are going for custody or why (we do not feel that these should be the worries of a 5 yr old ya know!).  Her mother on the other hand has.  We don't want to be caught in telling her that someone is not telling the truth in the situation because then we of course look like the bad guys.  We feel that she should have a neutral 3rd party to discuss the issues with and be a bit of a mediator.  We realize that the next step would be to file for court appointed counseling but are not sure where to start in doing this.  Can anyone help?  TIA

Silly question...but we go before the custody master on Fri and we are Pro Se.  I am wondering what kinds of "evidence" you would take with you for a custody matter.   Any and all answers are appreciated... without tipping our hands lets just say there are all kinds of issues in this case, but this is the first hearing and the parties have been seperated for 3 years with BM haveing assumed primary physical custody and BF having assumed physical custody everyother weekend and whenever else BM would allow (he works long hours 6 days a week so long assumed that it was in daughters best interests to be with her mother, this recently has shown itself not to be the case...).  Please go with any situation you can contrive in your mind...what would you take with you from medical records of child and adults...to PFAs...to pictures...to letters from anyone...to statements from anyone...We have been beating our heads against the wall here trying to figure out what we could possibly be missing and we want to have all grounds covered and at hand should any questions arrise...we have yet to see her pretrial statement...

Children and Youth is looking into a neglect situation....  Any opinions?

Hi there.  I am new to the forum and thought I would just jump right in here with a question.  I am in PA and I am looking for a law.  It basically states that in the case of married parents there is a presumtion of split legal custody until their is a court order stating otherwise.  I have found this law in the past and saved it to my computer but the darn thing crashed and now I can't find it anywhere.  Can anyone help? :)