Fathers have no rights in Florida

[kjunsniper]

Hi, I'm Jeff; I have an 11 yr old autistic child and a 4 yr old. I put 21 years in the military, 18 of them in Special Operations. And the one enemy I couldn't defeat was the Florida Legal system.

  I got screwed my first time in court. I separated from my wife in October of 2004, by the time I hired an attorney and got before the judge, it was Feb of 2005. I was ordered to pay all the household bills and her vehicle note. Leaving me with about $100. To live off of for the month. In essence I was homeless and had to scrounge for food. A three time combat vet, living in his car and showing at the base gym. I had to have my visitations with my children at parks and at what now was my wife's house. Because I didn't have a home.

  My wife's attorney chewed up and spit out every attorney I got. My family paid their retainers. I had three of the most worthless attorneys to practice family law. I started the divorce at my 18th year of marriage, after finding out my wife was sleeping with everything she could while I was being sent to every s**thole on this planet. She took our cleaned out our savings account ($70,000), the day I moved out of the house. And locked it away in a private account, and my attorney or judge thought that was strange. My wife's attorney dragged out the divorce until after my 20th year in service and i could retire. Making sure all her client got her benefits.

None of my attorneys or the Judge seems to think it was out of the ordinary. It was July of 2005 before I could get up enough money to get an apartment and see my kids every other weekend. From that July to February 2007 my wife made my life a living hell not to mention controlling all my visits with my girls. Drive by's, stealing mail, vandalizing my car, calling the police and making up stories. Nothing like getting woke up at 3 am by cops knocking on the door to question you about your were abouts, because your wife accused you of trying to run her over with your truck. Or being called in to your commanding officers office because your wife called them and said I had threatened to kill myself.

Oh and the time I broke through the DOD computer security filters and emailed her treats. Yeah, what fun? A living hell I tell you. Police interrogations, Mental Health evaluation, and OSI agent's interrogations. And my sitting there clueless; why would my wife do all that. Poor thing, left all alone with no job, a 6 month old and a special needs child. What a dirt bag I am.  HELLO, she cheated on me!! Yeah I did the marriage counseling thing. If you call sitting there watching him argue with my wife for 30 minutes week after week counseling, as soon as she left on that final session, he told me to run, how in the hell did we stay married as long as we did? RUN.

  Well I'm divorced now. I'm $100,000. In debt to lawyers who did nothing but promise things they never delivered. And to get the divorce to final hearing I drew up a nice and fair settlement offer, gave it to her attorney and everyone agree. Why in the hell didn't my attorney's do that three years earlier?

I sat down with her attorney and we agree on the pre-hearing stuff. My dumb ass signed it, assuming that my wife had signed her agreement. We discussed the final hearing and the time to show up 3pm, we even agree to show up a little early and make sure everything was good to go. That Friday I got there at 2:45, got to the judge's secretary to check in and she told me the hearing was at  2pm, I missed it. The judge ordered me to pay all her attorneys fees, and everything in my settlement wasn't even heard.

  We have joint custody of the girls. Now, my X and her boyfriend moved out of the state without telling me until she was already gone. Sitting at a McDonalds waiting to exchange the girls and she never showed up. I called and when she finally did answer, she told me she moved and if I wanted to see the girls I was going to have to drive to Louisiana. That was August. I have to work 12 hr days just to make ends meet, thanks to over 54% of my income going to my X. I was able to drive to see them for a weekend in October, but I had to put up with allot of flack from the X.

And she has mentally screwed with my girls heads, which my littlest one didn't want to leave her to be with me. My oldest, well, MY X never really had anything to do with her from the time she was diagnose with Autism. So I spent all my free time with her and we are really close. She was going to give me full custody of her, but when the X figures she could get money for her and use her as a pawn to control me, she has held her close. I get about 3 phone calls a week with them, less than 2 minutes most of the time, and most of the time my 4yr old is never there. She's with my X's mother.

My X won't let them see the girls. How can the court system be so blind? The Florida Child Support people can't get there stuff straight either. My X is only supposed to get $1100. In child support and $500 in alimony. But they take half my civilian paycheck and half my military retirement over $2300 some months and $3000. Others. So the X is making out like a bandit. I call and call, but it seems that there is nothing they can do.

  Here's the last kicker. Her attorney had the judge order me to get a life insurance policy, and make my X the beneficiary. I'm supposed to supply her or my X with proof of the policy. I have insurance, but not in the x's name. I'm trying to negotiate a visit with my girls for Thanksgiving. Now she's demanding the policy and wanting to know when I will be leaving and coming to Louisiana, exact times and stuff like that.

  She's going to have me killed.

<edited by Admin for clarity>

[Ref]

Hi Jeff

I am so sorry to hear about your situation. My husband's ex and daughter live in the Panhandle of Florida. I am guessing that you are in this area as well. If I am right, please send me a PM and I would love to give you the name of my husband's attorney. He was fantastic.

If you have the same shared parental responsibility/visitation agreement as my husband, there is a provision called "relocation of a parent". You may want to read this carefully. It states that if a parent moves more than 50 miles away, you have some remedies. My husband had his child support decreased to "share" the cost of visitation. He put together a spreadsheet with all the costs of visitation and put it in a binder with all the receipts that proved these expenses. We went to court and had it changed.

My husband had life insurance required too. I think it is pretty standard. I completely understand how you feel about having a target on you because of this. Every time we went to pick-up SD, I was worried that the mom would have one of her thug friends out there to kill my husband. The purpose of the life insurance is to make sure your children are paid child support even if you aren't around. I recommended this to my husband, but he didn't listen. I recommend that if you go back to adjust the child support, that you ask that the life insurance you are required to hold decreases every year for the amount of child support you paid for the year. I would also ask if the insurance could be set up in a trust to make monthly payments. Whatever funds are left over your children can get when they are 25 or 30.

About the amount taken out of your check, I would contact your employer and the pension office and let them know about that issue. They should be the ones to fix that problem for you.  Make sure you have the court order stating how much they are to take out. They are likely the ones with the problem. If that is the case, you can have them reimburse you for the amount they overpaid.

Take care,
Ref

[Gestalt]

First things first, kjun- thank you so much for your service and sacrifice to our great country.

If your wife just moved in the last couple months, you may still have a fighting shot at a modification of custody. I would recommend having a (good) attorney handle that if at all possible. At the absolute very least you need a modification to reflect the new distance, AND to have mom 100% responsible for the transportation of the children or if you are to provide for some transportation then possibly your cs obligation can be offset by the amount you provide for transportation.

Mom basically leaving in the middle of the night is a big no-no...but you need to jump on it asap.

[Kitty C.]

One other thing to keep in mind.......If a child's parent dies before that child graduates from HS, the child is entitled to Social Security survivor benefits.  The amount of the monthly payment will depend on how long the parent had been paying into SS.  When my son's father died of cancer (DS was 13), he was 62 y.o. and DS's monthly SS check started at $625 and ended at $750 when DS finished HS in Jan.  Previously, I had only been getting $250 a month in CS.

I understand how you must feel........either way (ins. or SS benefits) you're worth more dead than alive, but then so is she.  It's a chilling fact, but it's the truth.  I hope that Ref's suggestions work for you and I would certainly double check your order, specifically in regards to move aways.

Thank you SO much for protecting our freedom!     

[kjunsniper]

[COLOR=#NaNNaNNaN] Thanks for the advice. It gave me some ideals and some avenues to pursue. I do not really want to go back to court here in the panhandle. I get screwed every time in court here. Her attorney is just too much for the three I sent against her. I just don't trust attorneys anymore. My last one Steven Holman promised "father's rights" and seemed sincere when I hired him, 3yrs into it. It's not like there was much left to do. He took his retainer and the most I got out of him was one court appearance(15 minutes) and the deposition(2 hours), neither of which was $2500. Worth.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#NaNNaNNaN]  My X was getting SSB for my autistic daughter. But I found out that she told the SSN office she was only getting $250/month in child support. When she was getting $1500/month. I reported the correct amount to them and they stopped her SSB. I have two life insurance policies, one term and the other accidental. I made my mom the executer of my estate and I have a living will. Trust me my girls are going to be taking care of. I just don't want that psychotic demon to hit the jackpot, dump her kids and see the world. I've known her since she was 14; she's 39 now, so I have an insight in to its mind.<o:p></o:p>[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#NaNNaNNaN]  My thinking now is that once she has been in [/COLOR]<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:State><st1:place>[COLOR=#NaNNaNNaN]Louisiana[/COLOR]</st1:place></st1:State>[COLOR=#NaNNaNNaN] for 6 month she will be a resident. Really she became a resident the moment she enrolled my daughter in school. My sister use to be a paralegal for an attorney in [/COLOR]<st1:State><st1:place>[COLOR=#NaNNaNNaN]Louisiana[/COLOR]</st1:place></st1:State>[COLOR=#NaNNaNNaN] and she would run most of my case by him. Needless to say they were shocked at the stuff [/COLOR]<st1:State><st1:place>[COLOR=#NaNNaNNaN]Florida[/COLOR]</st1:place></st1:State>[COLOR=#NaNNaNNaN] left my wife and her attorney get by with. With all the threatening emails, voicemails and her past actions with local law enforcement (they actually had to change procedure protocol) (It's a long and good story), anyway. He said that they could have gotten her Psychological Eval. This would show she's mental. But all the Parental Alienation she has done since the divorce alone would probably cost her custody. And I would have a better chance in a [/COLOR]<st1:State><st1:place>[COLOR=#NaNNaNNaN]Louisiana[/COLOR]</st1:place></st1:State>[COLOR=#NaNNaNNaN] court, their not so blind to women playing the "poor me" card. All she has to do is say it and they take it as GOD's honest truth, here in Florida. At least in Louisiana they want proof before they ruin someones life.[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#NaNNaNNaN]   Not to mention her live in boyfriend friend has 2 felony protection orders against him. He did have another D6 warrant out for his arrest but he cleared it up, amazingly the same day my X got her child support. AMAZING!! The last time I saw my girls I had to take them to get winter clothes and my oldest a new pair of shoes, because she was wearing a size 7(her mom's old shoes). Her new ones were a size 9 1/2!! My poor baby. She told me her feet felt so much better. And her clothes were 2 sizes to small for her also. My X buys my youngest new shoes and clothes all the time, but my oldest gets nothing. I asked her why her mother doesn't by her shoes when she's buy her sisters. She told me that her mommy told her that if she wanted anything she would have to ask her father for it. So sad. The woman is unreal. I could go on and on but you really wouldn't believe how uncivil and inhuman she was and is. I could write a book. <o:p></o:p>[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#NaNNaNNaN]  And her mother and father, aunts, uncles, grandparents, all Ordained Ministers. LOL<o:p></o:p>[/COLOR]
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