Sounds like a familiar story. I hope my experience here is worth bringing into the debate. Firstly there is a list of things that generally a hostile parent will do, it is a long list and very extensive and lots of people out here have stories to tell, at times these are creative if not soul destroying and a reflection of American culture. They range from parents drugging their kids so the kids practically sleep through the whole visitation, to of course your current experience which is alienation, which does not legally exist, but in your case is in a form that may best be described as mild, so far, and not unusual, but for you it is absolutely real and devastating. Commonly and mostly it is dads who are affected by this phenomena who just end up paying and walk away, so I give you great Kudos for hanging in there. Generally the tide is changing slowly and I am hearing about more dads doing the same thing to their former spouses who they no longer like and with more females becoming the primary bread winner the state will generally follow the practice of punishing the one who makes most money.
Secondly and more importantly is what is 'evidence' in a family and probate court, and what do you actually have. thirdly of course is what the courts will accept as evidence and how they will perceive it. I hold to the rule of KISS (keep things very simple). The more complicated the issue the less likely anyone will hear or understand your complaint, if it is presented, and you fail to state a valid claim in equity not a moral or constitutional claim. Sticking with facts is another issue, and of course it is what your attorney will do and what they actually present in court as your advocate. A court action is nothing to do with what goes on between the attorneys, interrogatories, extra litigation and discovery which are normal to civil actions. These are really fishing trips for attorneys to see if anything is worth fighting about or missing. Of course everything is billable for everyone in the profession concerned with your case but do attempt to keep things as simple and under your control as possible. What you can control is your dignity and self respect, the rest I am afraid got owned.
I believe Ocean, Mixed Bag and a few others helped me in more ways than I can thank them for in their advice and reality checks. SO pay attention to seasoned contributors and understand what they are saying. One of the things I have discovered is of course, this is a game to a few people with no holds barred. You are fortunate to not have the old DV or sexual abuse allegations thrown into the mix, so be weary of those as that particular silver bullet is very tricky and usually dependent on the age of the children. However, if you are relying on discovery and you have not seen what you have paid your attorney to discover, or share discovery with the other attorney I would question why and what is it. What your attorney sees, knows and is doing is all paid for by you, so make sure nothing is done without your knowledge or approval, get what you are paying for everything even the court conferences.
Videos are subjective, what you see or heard may not be seen by yourself objectively, so be very careful and ask for unbiased reviews from people who have absolutely no knowledge of what is going on. You will be surprised at what people actually see and hear and how much it is different from what you see. When evidence is presented into a court it can be done in two ways, one as exhibits and the other as evidence. In my opinion an exhibit can be seen, shown but ignored as what it is, it is an 'exhibit', evidence it is not as it was presented as an exhibit. You may like to see lots of exhibits but without evidence they can be legally ignored and what you think is evidence or information that the courts will use is actually never used but you think it is, that is why lots of people are often questioning a judges decision. They are supposed to rule on the evidence, rules and procedures anything more and you have an attorney on the bench. Exhibits are there to support evidence. When you go into court watch the exhibit, evidence and orders carefully, and listen carefully to the legal conversations or words as to evidence, exhibits and testimony. Keep track of them. For example I believe I spent quite a lot of time assembling everything from doctors reports, medical reports, psychiatric reports, police reports,
CPS reports, videos etc. while I also used on advice, the batestamp system through the lawyer. They were all presented as exhibits, not one piece of that information was accepted, nor were the police reports without the officer who wrote the report, nor were the CPS reports without the officer, nor were the psychiatric reports nor even the testimony of the psychiatrist who was deemed not credible. So you must study up on the rules of evidence and learn what is practiced by attorneys and judges in your area. An old friend of mine who spoke of these issues long since passed stated that the family and probate courts work on averment, omission and 99% of your ignorance of the law. It is a practice that is abhorrent to lay people who understand it when they see it, but under statutory law it is a case of first past the post is the winner and legally ethical. So do learn rules of evidence, timeframes, how it is presented and how they cannot ignore it or omit it, otherwise you will spend many years doing navel examination as I did and well after the facts and law are long gone with a campfire that has gone out. As for the best interests of the children I assume that was decided when you were given every other weekend and a
child support order or whatever were the temporary but now permanent order. But for the other parent that will be too much time but you will have to pay anyway whether you see the kids, like it or not.
