Important advice,,, PLEASE READ

[stk_agn]

I would like to give the parents that are fighting for custody of their children a little advice. This is very important.

I have just come to the end of a 2 year custody fight over my daughter. I wasn't fighting her father,,, I was fighting my mother. We went all the way to the appellate court. Of all things to cause me to lose it was something that my lawyer was paid to do but didn't.

My lawyer let me run out of time to file an appeal. After the final hearing we had 30 days to file an appeal; at 35 days my lawyer filed to alter, vacate or amend because she knew that she screwed up. Through my own investigation of my case I found out that my lawyer never filed the notice of appeal (even though I signed it in her office).

I had her office copy everything that they had so I could check the file; that's when I found out that the Notice of Appeal was missing from her files as well. (Imagine that!!!)

My advice is this:
* Make sure you get copies of everything you sign from your lawyer even though they will be sending you a copy later on.

* If your lawyer tells you "Well, there isn't anything we can do about (insert your law/complaint) that the other party will be or was awarded. We can't fight it."  they are lying to you. All laws CAN be fought/challanged but it doesn't mean that it won't be granted.

* If your lawyer tells you that they filed a certain motion/petition,,, check with the court clerk to see if it was indeed filed. Because if you run out of time for filing,,,, it will cost you custody of your child(ren) in the end even if you know that there is no way you can lose your case.

* DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT,,,, this website  stresses the importance of documentation. Listen to them, use the Parenting Time Tracker save it do disk or print it out, use the comments column for your notes no matter how stupid they are. It will help you in the long run when you can't remember something.

My main point is DO YOUR HOMEWORK,,, read up on the custody laws for your state, find case law, read opinions of cases that have already been through appellate court you might find something that could help your case. Request copies of the tape(s) of your hearing from the Court Clerk for reference (a fee per tape will be required)

Always remember that your lawyer works for you and not the other way around.

I hope this helps everyone. I know that it's not much but it only takes filing a motion or petition one day late and you could lose the most important thing to you and that is your child(ren).

I have nothing else to fight my mother with to get my daughter back. My number one argument that I had did me no good because my lawyer didn't do what I paid her to do,,, her job.

[worriedmom]

What is the parenting time tracker? Is that a program or just a personal journal?

[4honor]

Parenting Time tracker is a FREE resource offered by SPARC tro help you log your contact and other involvement with your child. It is a wonderful resource found at:

http://www.deltabravo.net/custody/tracker.php

Read the information as you scroll to the bottom where you will find a link that says ptt520.exe for US. Click on that and save the zipped file to someplace you can find it on your hard drive. THen unzip into a file of your choice.

It is a pretty user friendly spreadsheet/table type format. Plug in numbers and it will tell you how long you had contact. You can add comments and there is a child support calculator in the last tab (see tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet for additional worksheets.

We were able to use 2 years worth of PTT spreadsheets to get a decrease in support even with WA state in the mix. We lowered it $113 a month and DH had an increase in wages. This was 3 years ago.

[stk_agn]

The judge wouldn't allow my records from the time tracker that showed that my mother denied contact between my daughter and me. I had notes in there that had to do with the mental abuse my mother was/is subjecting my daughter to and the judge ignored it.

(My mother calls my daughter, who is 10 yrs old, a fatass, lard ass and lard bucket and the judge ignored that and gave custody to her instead of me.)

Anyhow, hand written documentation works just as good.  I have had a few lawyers ask where I had gotten the Time Tracker and they were extremely impressed with it. They were expecting me to hand them stacks of notebooks, napkins and calendars full of notes. But when you give a lawyer a CD-ROM or floppy disk and tell them to go over it and get back to you they can't get over how ORGANIZED you are.

I hope every one's cases are going in their direction and I hope no one ever has to go through the heart ache that I have been through over the last 2 years.