Post by Jim on Jun 10, 2009 8:24:37 GMT -5
....Due to the State’s County Courtrooms Running Roughshod Over Citizen’s Rights
By Dean Gottschalk,
A seasoned American service man, whom I’ll refer to as Stanley, returns home from twelve months active duty overseas, longing to see his two elementary school aged children, both of whom have grown more than in inch each since his departure, and to embrace his wife for the first time in a year.
Stanley arrives via military transport to his unit’s nearby home base, a mere forty-five minute drive from his private residence. He desperately wanted to call home to announce his arrival since it had been a couple of weeks since he had been able to email or catch his wife at home on the phone. However, Stanley resisted since it was late in the evening and he figured the kids and his wife had already gone to bed and didn’t want to awaken them, seeing it was a school night.
And so, Stanley gathered up his civilian belongings he had left behind in storage on base, which now included a small stack of mail that had been held there for him during the couple of weeks preceding his return. Among the mail was an unusually overstuffed standard envelope with what appeared to be a return address of a well known local law firm. As he is driving off base Stanley tears open the envelope to reveal a thick stack of unfamiliar paperwork, of which the top page is entitled, “IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF A-B-C COUNTY, STATE OF GEORGIA .”
Unfortunately, unbeknownst to Stanley, three weeks prior to his scheduled return to the states, his formerly supportive and patient spouse had made a unilateral decision for herself that life’s grasses and fields of dreams might be a bit greener in someone else’s “back forty,” - someone who’s chosen profession does not periodically demand extended absences away from the home front.
The first few pages of the stack were a formal Petition for Divorce that had been filed on behalf of his wife by one of the partners of the law firm. An attorney well known throughout their mid-sized community as being slick, if not a bit shady, in how he had represented various past clients on issues such as car accident related injuries, company embezzlement, and domestic abuse cases. The attorney’s history also included a documented disdain for the military including campus demonstrations while attending law school. The second set of papers was what is referred to as a Temporary Order, which had been drawn up by the attorney and had already been signed by a judge and filed in the Clerk of Court’s office. The final two pages of the bunch almost caused Stanley to run his vehicle off the road.
For he was holding what is known in the legal industry as a “TPO” or “TRO” - Temporary Protective or Temporary Restaining Order. TPOs are typically used as a means to keep a known and/or convicted violent person from physically coming within a designated distance of another individual or group of individuals for a specific and finite period of time. However, it has become disturbingly common for TPOs to be sought as a “dirty” legal tactic in cases of marital dissolution. Especially those that may involve significant property interests, financial assets, or minor children.
Upon filing for divorce, Stanley’s wife’s attorney had counseled her to also pursue the TPO by pleading before the judge that due to her husband’s combat military training, and what she claimed to perceive as his overwhelmingly enthusiastic philosophical adoption of those necessary skills, that she feared for the potential safety not only of herself, and here’s the clincher, for that of their small children, once he had become aware of her covert legal actions she took while he was away.
During the ex parté court hearing (ex parté meaning without the presence and/or knowledge of one of the parties to the legal action) the judge, believing the coached outcry of concern of “possible” yet unspecified violent reaction from the father of the children, summarily agreed, “just to be safe”, to the issuing of the TPO against Stanley. The TPO stated that Stanley was not to come within 1000 feet of not only his wife, but that of his two children also, no matter where they were. Additionally, he personally was not to initiate any sort of direct communications with his wife nor his children. This meant that Stanley not only could not go home to kiss his children while they lay sleeping and to be able to collapse in his own comfortable after an 18-hour plane flight that night, but he also could not even call to let them know that Daddy was back home from overseas.
Just before the judge signed the TPO, the attorney hand-wrote in at the bottom of the previously type-written pages the names of Stanley ’s soon to be Ex in-laws, below that of his children’s names, just for good measure. The judge never inquired as to the reason for the last minute addition. “Inexplicably”[sic], both the attorney and the judge “forgot” to include an end date to what was supposed to be a temporary condition.
The divorce Temporary Order included “agreements” concerning issues of spousal and child support, current and anticipated financial obligations such as mortgage, auto, credit card, and utility payments, etc., child custody and their living arrangements, and so on. Typically standard stuff as Temporary Orders go. However, Stanley ’s Temporary Order was anything but ordinary. For due to the trickle down effect of the questionably obtained TRO, Stanley was forced, through threat of coercion, from his place of permanent residence, the judge assigning usage of the marital home to Stanley ’s wife in order to maintain “continuity” for the children and their living arrangements.
Stanley was “awarded” by the court the opportunity to retrieve needed personal effects from the residence upon his providing notification within fourteen days from the issuance of the Temporary Order as to what day and time he wanted to do so. Personal effects did not include any common household items such as furniture, kitchen supplies or appliances. Additionally, at least a 48-hour notice was to be provided by Stanley so as a local Sheriff deputy could be arranged for to provide protection to make sure the children were not present or that Stanley “didn’t do anything unauthorized.” However, since the TRO prevented Stanley from initiating any sort of communications with his wife, he was unable to place a phone call to make such arrangements himself. By the time Stanley had arranged for his local CO to contact his wife on his behalf, the fourteen day court-ordered timeline had passed at which Stanley’s wife indicated that she and the kids were simply “too busy” with school, extra-curricular, and household activities to arrange for a mutually agreeable time for Stanley to come by to simply get some clothing.
A childhood custody evaluator was demanded by Stanley ’s wife’s attorney reasoning that the court would be needing professional “guidance” when determining final custody arrangements following the temporary period, guidance of which a licensed psychologist could only provide. Without the blink of an eye, nor applying any scrutiny to the demand, the judge ordered a full custody evaluation, including a complete psychological assessment, to be administered not only upon Stanley and his wife, but also upon the minor children. This was to be paid for at the county’s expense to the tune of $7,000.
To make the matters of the Temporary Order even worse, Stanley’s wife also stated that Stanley’s respectable, yet meager rate of military compensation was 75% higher than his average monthly paycheck actually was; that she had been a full-time, non-employed, stay at home military Mom for over 10 years, a fraudulent statement due to the fact that she regularly provided in-home childcare services during the school year for up to 6 children per day, three to four days a week, regularly earning in excess of $15,000 per year while doing so; that their monthly mortgage note was hundreds of dollars more that it truly was; that they had two monthly car payments when in fact there was only one; and finally that Stanley maintained “private” banking and investment accounts apart from their joint family accounts that Stanley’s parents periodically deposited family estate monies into so as he could apply towards, at his discretion, either re-investing and/or personal use. His wife then claimed she was “afraid” that Stanley could wipe out their family accounts and put the withdrawals into his other accounts. No documentation was presented to the judge substantiating any of these claims, nor did the judge ask for any either.
In response, the judge “awarded” to Stanley’s wife in the Temporary Order not only monthly child support, but an inflated alimony payment to cover the fabricated additional “family” expenses. To add salt to the wound, the judge ordered the freezing of all financial accounts owned by Stanley . This resulted in a “temporary” financial windfall for Stanley ’s wife to the tune of thousands of dollars a month, approximately 85% of Stanley ’s take home military pay.
Aggregated, all this left Stanley with no where to live, virtually no household possessions, no financial resources in which to fall back on, no way to directly contact his children, and of course, no way in which to afford proper legal representation.
Fast forward nine months later.
During the temporary period, Stanley ’s wife had filed not one, but three separate additional legal Motions with the court requiring a total of two and a half days of court time to address. Two of the motions were labeled as “Emergency Motions” by Stanley ’s wife, one involving attempted allegations of “abandonment” due to Stanley ’s extended military commitments. Following hours of legal ramblings by the attorney, it was finally determined that the emergency motions were not warranted and resulted in no judicial rulings being issued. No sanctions were levied against the attorney nor Stanley ’s wife for the frivolous waste of court time. The third motion, where numerous demands for Stanley to make additional “willing” contributions to the planning of, and of course paying for, a holiday trip for the children, their mother and the maternal grandparents, along with an elaborate birthday celebration for Stanley’s oldest child, even though Stanley had been barred from participating in any of it due to the TRO, ended with the judge issuing a formal court Order asking Stanley to buy a nice birthday gift and use his military connections to secure reduced hotel rates for the holiday trip.
On a personal level, Stanley had been bopping back and forth staying on base or in a buddy’s unfinished basement guest bedroom. His parents shipped him some of his old clothing they had been keeping at their home, but have been unable to help out financially due to the fact that they had just deposited a year’s worth of discretionary funds nine months prior into the accounts that were subsequently frozen by the court.
At the Final hearing for the “no-fault” divorce (commonly referred to as a Unilateral Divorce on Demand), designated in Georgia as being Irretrievably Broken, as customarily happens, the “temporary” divorce orders from nine months prior were rolled over almost word-for-word into the Final Judgment and Decree of Divorce and rubber-stamped by the judge due to a lack of adequate legal representation to argue for Stanley’s and his children’s rights against a cunning and well-prepared opposing counsel. Following the Custody Evaluators summarizing report “suggestions,” the TRO was dropped but replaced with an order that Stanley undergo “anger management” counseling, at his own expense, for a period of not less than six months, at the end of which the counselor (a personal friend of the Psychological evaluator) was to make a report in open court as to the nature of Stanley’s “progress” during the six month counseling period. Stanley was then “awarded” restored contact with his two children, but that any contact must be done in the presence of a court authorized visitation supervisor, also to be paid for at Stanley ’s expense.
Stanley ’s investment accounts were eventually unfrozen after his parents drove 14 hours to testify for 15 minutes to show the court that the monies populating the accounts had been gifted or transferred to Stanley from them in order to manage their re-investing. Stanley was forced to cash out those investment savings, incurring huge tax and early withdrawal fees.
However Stanley was not able to utilize these additional resources to better his lot in life. For during the last part of the nine month temporary period, and the months immediately following the issuing of the court’s Final Order, through divorcé support groups and online research, Stanley became keenly aware that many of his, and his children’s, Constitutional Civil Rights had been repeatedly violated during court proceedings and in court orders issued by the presiding judge.
Stanley quickly located an attorney sympathetic to victims of ongoing civil rights violations and subsequently filed a Federal lawsuit challenging the malfeasance and complicitous behaviors of all the actors involved in the forced dissolution of Stanley ’s family and the resulting estrangement of he and his children. This lawsuit stretched on for years, involving many attorneys representing a defendant list that included numerous state and county elected or appointed officials, countless weeks and months of evidence discovery, depositions, paperwork, motions, court hearings, postponements, etc., etc. The toll exacted upon not only Stanley, but his children as well, was extraordinary.
Does the preceding scenario seem a bit far-fetched? Well, it isn’t. Not even close. This hypothetical story, and ones similar if not quite so dramatic, are carried out on a disturbingly regular basis in county level Superior Courtrooms throughout the state of Georgia . Although statistically much more common, the “target” of such legal antics are not always fathers. It can, and does, happen to mothers too. Yes, right here in the sleepy little ol’ state of Georgia .
One may think, well yeah, as disturbing as this story reads, how often can such cases occur in reality? Well, reality, supported by irrefutable statistics generated by such organizations as the US Census Bureau, is that upwards of 45% of ALL first marriages end in divorce. The statistics are even worse for second and third marriages. And of those lasting more than a year or two, many commonly involve children.
I don’t have statistics to support this, probably because little, if any, are gathered by county or state mandated reporting agencies, but I suspect a significant percentage, if not all, divorces that include children end up demanding, if not necessarily requiring, the allocation of court and judicial resources, due to one reason or another. The most common reason being that the state of Georgia has saw fit to adopt a parens patriae philosophy over its minor children, but only when involving the re-organization of parental living arrangements due to divorce or other factors.
1. Did our hypothetical character Stanley deserve to endure the oppressive, uncalled-for, yet all-too-common, deep-rooted mechanisms of our state’s divorce industry? Did he have to be forced to pursue relief for himself and his children through the filing of a Federal complaint? My answer to both would be a resounding No.
The reactions to court and judicial misconduct out here in the non-hypothetical world is happening with all too increasing regularity. The citizens of Georgia alarmingly are NOT happy with the behaviors of our elected judicial branch officials.
For example, since January 1 of 2009, there has been no less than 15 Federal lawsuits naming state-level judges, county courts, or other state government judicial entities as defendants in various Civil Rights actions filed in the United States District Court, Northern District of Georgia alone. In just in the last 60 days, not one, but four Federal lawsuits have been filed against one sophomore Cobb County Superior Court judge due to his alleged cavalier disregard of litigant’s US Civil Rights in rulings he has issued from his court!
The result of our overly-litigious society, and how that is regularly unwillingly forced upon people during one of the most traumatic times of their lives, is a bloated, over-docketed, over-worked, judicial branch of our local and state governments. And how is our county and state courts responding to this situation? Not by promoting incentives to seek alternative solutions to protracted “family” court litigation, or better yet, compelling DIS-incentives to the same. Georgia counties are responding by allocating more and more resources to handle the ever-increasing caseloads.
For example, my county, Cobb, just broke ground on a new County Court “Campus”, because the three, multi-storied, with dozens of courtrooms and sitting judges, hundreds of county employees, existing court buildings are simply not enough to handle the stifling amount of civil and criminal litigation that falls within its jurisdiction. I’ve heard stories of other county level judges holding court as late as midnight during the week in order to plow through their assigned cases.
All of this requires funding. For base salaries, bonuses, overtime, supplies, building maintenance, support services, construction, et al. Based on the amount of civil litigation involving families, I can only begin to guess how much this is costing the state of Georgia each fiscal year. According to US Census Bureau estimates, the state of Georgia currently has well over 9.5 million residents. Out of those, if only 35% of the total population are married (low-balling probably), there are around 1,663,000 marriages out there right now in our state. Statistically about 45% or so of those will fail (1st marriages) or end in some form of separation within eight years time.2 Of those, let’s estimate half will involve kids. That’s about 375,000 cases of family dissolution per year in the state. Let’s low-ball again and estimate only half of those end up in some form of litigation requiring court resources, resulting in a count of around 187,000.
I’ve recently read that the average cost of a “contested” divorce (read those involving children here), is about $70,000! That’s monies that come out of the pockets of parents who would’ve put that back into their local communities through common family expenditures or investment savings, like for college. Take that a step further and imagine the accompanying court costs that have to be expended to administer that “average” $70,000 divorce, then multiplied by 187,000. We’re not talking millions here folks, but literally billions of dollars each fiscal year here in Georgia . All at taxpayer expense. Not only should divorcing parents be irritated at this, but the state’s tax-paying population should be really pissed at the untold amount of money the state’s courts are sucking into their collective vortices. Monies they could be using, through graduating tax breaks, to help better their family’s lots in life.
Where is the outcry to this fiscal callousness and obstinacy forced upon our citizens? Well, there has been some constituent rumblings in the recent past. And some even resulting in a modicum of changes to Georgia family law and divorce statutes. However, I suspect most is swept under the proverbial governmental carpet due to the personally sensitive and unpleasant nature of the topic(s) surrounding marital failures and it’s impact upon our state’s most innocent victims, its children. But that’s where the illusion fails. The impact of the flagrant and unbridled endemic behaviors regularly being exhibited within our local court systems doesn’t exclusively fall upon the direct participants, it falls upon each and every one of us every year in mid April.
Our judiciary, and by association, the administrative and legislative branches of our governments, has been charged with the responsibility, through oaths of office and other ethical guidelines, to earn the trust and confidence of the electorate through the upholding and equal application of the laws of the land, nor make or enforce laws that conflict with existing or pre-existing laws. Mistakes have been, and most likely will be, made in spite of the best intentions of those we have empowered through positions of authority.
However, immunity from accountability, especially judicial immunity, to ones’ mistook behaviors as an elected representative, intentional or not, is an obstinate self-aggrandizing abortion of governmental oversight.
The recent national tea parties organized this past April seemed to successfully bring attention to the grievances of our nations citizens on a national scale. We here in Georgia need to consider similar type gatherings on a more local level in order to show our elected officials that collectively we are not in agreement with, no, better yet, that we are fed up and outright mad, at the blatant lack of accountability of the behaviors of our elected or appointed government officials. Particularly those officials that currently have little, if any, viable scrutiny of actions that routinely have immediate and direct impact over the private lives of our children, our parents, grandparents, co-workers and neighbors.
- Dean "The Banner Guy" Gottschalk,
A currently state-sanctioned disenfranchised father of two Georgia children.
By Dean Gottschalk,
A seasoned American service man, whom I’ll refer to as Stanley, returns home from twelve months active duty overseas, longing to see his two elementary school aged children, both of whom have grown more than in inch each since his departure, and to embrace his wife for the first time in a year.
Stanley arrives via military transport to his unit’s nearby home base, a mere forty-five minute drive from his private residence. He desperately wanted to call home to announce his arrival since it had been a couple of weeks since he had been able to email or catch his wife at home on the phone. However, Stanley resisted since it was late in the evening and he figured the kids and his wife had already gone to bed and didn’t want to awaken them, seeing it was a school night.
And so, Stanley gathered up his civilian belongings he had left behind in storage on base, which now included a small stack of mail that had been held there for him during the couple of weeks preceding his return. Among the mail was an unusually overstuffed standard envelope with what appeared to be a return address of a well known local law firm. As he is driving off base Stanley tears open the envelope to reveal a thick stack of unfamiliar paperwork, of which the top page is entitled, “IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF A-B-C COUNTY, STATE OF GEORGIA .”
Unfortunately, unbeknownst to Stanley, three weeks prior to his scheduled return to the states, his formerly supportive and patient spouse had made a unilateral decision for herself that life’s grasses and fields of dreams might be a bit greener in someone else’s “back forty,” - someone who’s chosen profession does not periodically demand extended absences away from the home front.
The first few pages of the stack were a formal Petition for Divorce that had been filed on behalf of his wife by one of the partners of the law firm. An attorney well known throughout their mid-sized community as being slick, if not a bit shady, in how he had represented various past clients on issues such as car accident related injuries, company embezzlement, and domestic abuse cases. The attorney’s history also included a documented disdain for the military including campus demonstrations while attending law school. The second set of papers was what is referred to as a Temporary Order, which had been drawn up by the attorney and had already been signed by a judge and filed in the Clerk of Court’s office. The final two pages of the bunch almost caused Stanley to run his vehicle off the road.
For he was holding what is known in the legal industry as a “TPO” or “TRO” - Temporary Protective or Temporary Restaining Order. TPOs are typically used as a means to keep a known and/or convicted violent person from physically coming within a designated distance of another individual or group of individuals for a specific and finite period of time. However, it has become disturbingly common for TPOs to be sought as a “dirty” legal tactic in cases of marital dissolution. Especially those that may involve significant property interests, financial assets, or minor children.
Upon filing for divorce, Stanley’s wife’s attorney had counseled her to also pursue the TPO by pleading before the judge that due to her husband’s combat military training, and what she claimed to perceive as his overwhelmingly enthusiastic philosophical adoption of those necessary skills, that she feared for the potential safety not only of herself, and here’s the clincher, for that of their small children, once he had become aware of her covert legal actions she took while he was away.
During the ex parté court hearing (ex parté meaning without the presence and/or knowledge of one of the parties to the legal action) the judge, believing the coached outcry of concern of “possible” yet unspecified violent reaction from the father of the children, summarily agreed, “just to be safe”, to the issuing of the TPO against Stanley. The TPO stated that Stanley was not to come within 1000 feet of not only his wife, but that of his two children also, no matter where they were. Additionally, he personally was not to initiate any sort of direct communications with his wife nor his children. This meant that Stanley not only could not go home to kiss his children while they lay sleeping and to be able to collapse in his own comfortable after an 18-hour plane flight that night, but he also could not even call to let them know that Daddy was back home from overseas.
Just before the judge signed the TPO, the attorney hand-wrote in at the bottom of the previously type-written pages the names of Stanley ’s soon to be Ex in-laws, below that of his children’s names, just for good measure. The judge never inquired as to the reason for the last minute addition. “Inexplicably”[sic], both the attorney and the judge “forgot” to include an end date to what was supposed to be a temporary condition.
The divorce Temporary Order included “agreements” concerning issues of spousal and child support, current and anticipated financial obligations such as mortgage, auto, credit card, and utility payments, etc., child custody and their living arrangements, and so on. Typically standard stuff as Temporary Orders go. However, Stanley ’s Temporary Order was anything but ordinary. For due to the trickle down effect of the questionably obtained TRO, Stanley was forced, through threat of coercion, from his place of permanent residence, the judge assigning usage of the marital home to Stanley ’s wife in order to maintain “continuity” for the children and their living arrangements.
Stanley was “awarded” by the court the opportunity to retrieve needed personal effects from the residence upon his providing notification within fourteen days from the issuance of the Temporary Order as to what day and time he wanted to do so. Personal effects did not include any common household items such as furniture, kitchen supplies or appliances. Additionally, at least a 48-hour notice was to be provided by Stanley so as a local Sheriff deputy could be arranged for to provide protection to make sure the children were not present or that Stanley “didn’t do anything unauthorized.” However, since the TRO prevented Stanley from initiating any sort of communications with his wife, he was unable to place a phone call to make such arrangements himself. By the time Stanley had arranged for his local CO to contact his wife on his behalf, the fourteen day court-ordered timeline had passed at which Stanley’s wife indicated that she and the kids were simply “too busy” with school, extra-curricular, and household activities to arrange for a mutually agreeable time for Stanley to come by to simply get some clothing.
A childhood custody evaluator was demanded by Stanley ’s wife’s attorney reasoning that the court would be needing professional “guidance” when determining final custody arrangements following the temporary period, guidance of which a licensed psychologist could only provide. Without the blink of an eye, nor applying any scrutiny to the demand, the judge ordered a full custody evaluation, including a complete psychological assessment, to be administered not only upon Stanley and his wife, but also upon the minor children. This was to be paid for at the county’s expense to the tune of $7,000.
To make the matters of the Temporary Order even worse, Stanley’s wife also stated that Stanley’s respectable, yet meager rate of military compensation was 75% higher than his average monthly paycheck actually was; that she had been a full-time, non-employed, stay at home military Mom for over 10 years, a fraudulent statement due to the fact that she regularly provided in-home childcare services during the school year for up to 6 children per day, three to four days a week, regularly earning in excess of $15,000 per year while doing so; that their monthly mortgage note was hundreds of dollars more that it truly was; that they had two monthly car payments when in fact there was only one; and finally that Stanley maintained “private” banking and investment accounts apart from their joint family accounts that Stanley’s parents periodically deposited family estate monies into so as he could apply towards, at his discretion, either re-investing and/or personal use. His wife then claimed she was “afraid” that Stanley could wipe out their family accounts and put the withdrawals into his other accounts. No documentation was presented to the judge substantiating any of these claims, nor did the judge ask for any either.
In response, the judge “awarded” to Stanley’s wife in the Temporary Order not only monthly child support, but an inflated alimony payment to cover the fabricated additional “family” expenses. To add salt to the wound, the judge ordered the freezing of all financial accounts owned by Stanley . This resulted in a “temporary” financial windfall for Stanley ’s wife to the tune of thousands of dollars a month, approximately 85% of Stanley ’s take home military pay.
Aggregated, all this left Stanley with no where to live, virtually no household possessions, no financial resources in which to fall back on, no way to directly contact his children, and of course, no way in which to afford proper legal representation.
Fast forward nine months later.
During the temporary period, Stanley ’s wife had filed not one, but three separate additional legal Motions with the court requiring a total of two and a half days of court time to address. Two of the motions were labeled as “Emergency Motions” by Stanley ’s wife, one involving attempted allegations of “abandonment” due to Stanley ’s extended military commitments. Following hours of legal ramblings by the attorney, it was finally determined that the emergency motions were not warranted and resulted in no judicial rulings being issued. No sanctions were levied against the attorney nor Stanley ’s wife for the frivolous waste of court time. The third motion, where numerous demands for Stanley to make additional “willing” contributions to the planning of, and of course paying for, a holiday trip for the children, their mother and the maternal grandparents, along with an elaborate birthday celebration for Stanley’s oldest child, even though Stanley had been barred from participating in any of it due to the TRO, ended with the judge issuing a formal court Order asking Stanley to buy a nice birthday gift and use his military connections to secure reduced hotel rates for the holiday trip.
On a personal level, Stanley had been bopping back and forth staying on base or in a buddy’s unfinished basement guest bedroom. His parents shipped him some of his old clothing they had been keeping at their home, but have been unable to help out financially due to the fact that they had just deposited a year’s worth of discretionary funds nine months prior into the accounts that were subsequently frozen by the court.
At the Final hearing for the “no-fault” divorce (commonly referred to as a Unilateral Divorce on Demand), designated in Georgia as being Irretrievably Broken, as customarily happens, the “temporary” divorce orders from nine months prior were rolled over almost word-for-word into the Final Judgment and Decree of Divorce and rubber-stamped by the judge due to a lack of adequate legal representation to argue for Stanley’s and his children’s rights against a cunning and well-prepared opposing counsel. Following the Custody Evaluators summarizing report “suggestions,” the TRO was dropped but replaced with an order that Stanley undergo “anger management” counseling, at his own expense, for a period of not less than six months, at the end of which the counselor (a personal friend of the Psychological evaluator) was to make a report in open court as to the nature of Stanley’s “progress” during the six month counseling period. Stanley was then “awarded” restored contact with his two children, but that any contact must be done in the presence of a court authorized visitation supervisor, also to be paid for at Stanley ’s expense.
Stanley ’s investment accounts were eventually unfrozen after his parents drove 14 hours to testify for 15 minutes to show the court that the monies populating the accounts had been gifted or transferred to Stanley from them in order to manage their re-investing. Stanley was forced to cash out those investment savings, incurring huge tax and early withdrawal fees.
However Stanley was not able to utilize these additional resources to better his lot in life. For during the last part of the nine month temporary period, and the months immediately following the issuing of the court’s Final Order, through divorcé support groups and online research, Stanley became keenly aware that many of his, and his children’s, Constitutional Civil Rights had been repeatedly violated during court proceedings and in court orders issued by the presiding judge.
Stanley quickly located an attorney sympathetic to victims of ongoing civil rights violations and subsequently filed a Federal lawsuit challenging the malfeasance and complicitous behaviors of all the actors involved in the forced dissolution of Stanley ’s family and the resulting estrangement of he and his children. This lawsuit stretched on for years, involving many attorneys representing a defendant list that included numerous state and county elected or appointed officials, countless weeks and months of evidence discovery, depositions, paperwork, motions, court hearings, postponements, etc., etc. The toll exacted upon not only Stanley, but his children as well, was extraordinary.
Does the preceding scenario seem a bit far-fetched? Well, it isn’t. Not even close. This hypothetical story, and ones similar if not quite so dramatic, are carried out on a disturbingly regular basis in county level Superior Courtrooms throughout the state of Georgia . Although statistically much more common, the “target” of such legal antics are not always fathers. It can, and does, happen to mothers too. Yes, right here in the sleepy little ol’ state of Georgia .
One may think, well yeah, as disturbing as this story reads, how often can such cases occur in reality? Well, reality, supported by irrefutable statistics generated by such organizations as the US Census Bureau, is that upwards of 45% of ALL first marriages end in divorce. The statistics are even worse for second and third marriages. And of those lasting more than a year or two, many commonly involve children.
I don’t have statistics to support this, probably because little, if any, are gathered by county or state mandated reporting agencies, but I suspect a significant percentage, if not all, divorces that include children end up demanding, if not necessarily requiring, the allocation of court and judicial resources, due to one reason or another. The most common reason being that the state of Georgia has saw fit to adopt a parens patriae philosophy over its minor children, but only when involving the re-organization of parental living arrangements due to divorce or other factors.
1. Did our hypothetical character Stanley deserve to endure the oppressive, uncalled-for, yet all-too-common, deep-rooted mechanisms of our state’s divorce industry? Did he have to be forced to pursue relief for himself and his children through the filing of a Federal complaint? My answer to both would be a resounding No.
The reactions to court and judicial misconduct out here in the non-hypothetical world is happening with all too increasing regularity. The citizens of Georgia alarmingly are NOT happy with the behaviors of our elected judicial branch officials.
For example, since January 1 of 2009, there has been no less than 15 Federal lawsuits naming state-level judges, county courts, or other state government judicial entities as defendants in various Civil Rights actions filed in the United States District Court, Northern District of Georgia alone. In just in the last 60 days, not one, but four Federal lawsuits have been filed against one sophomore Cobb County Superior Court judge due to his alleged cavalier disregard of litigant’s US Civil Rights in rulings he has issued from his court!
The result of our overly-litigious society, and how that is regularly unwillingly forced upon people during one of the most traumatic times of their lives, is a bloated, over-docketed, over-worked, judicial branch of our local and state governments. And how is our county and state courts responding to this situation? Not by promoting incentives to seek alternative solutions to protracted “family” court litigation, or better yet, compelling DIS-incentives to the same. Georgia counties are responding by allocating more and more resources to handle the ever-increasing caseloads.
For example, my county, Cobb, just broke ground on a new County Court “Campus”, because the three, multi-storied, with dozens of courtrooms and sitting judges, hundreds of county employees, existing court buildings are simply not enough to handle the stifling amount of civil and criminal litigation that falls within its jurisdiction. I’ve heard stories of other county level judges holding court as late as midnight during the week in order to plow through their assigned cases.
All of this requires funding. For base salaries, bonuses, overtime, supplies, building maintenance, support services, construction, et al. Based on the amount of civil litigation involving families, I can only begin to guess how much this is costing the state of Georgia each fiscal year. According to US Census Bureau estimates, the state of Georgia currently has well over 9.5 million residents. Out of those, if only 35% of the total population are married (low-balling probably), there are around 1,663,000 marriages out there right now in our state. Statistically about 45% or so of those will fail (1st marriages) or end in some form of separation within eight years time.2 Of those, let’s estimate half will involve kids. That’s about 375,000 cases of family dissolution per year in the state. Let’s low-ball again and estimate only half of those end up in some form of litigation requiring court resources, resulting in a count of around 187,000.
I’ve recently read that the average cost of a “contested” divorce (read those involving children here), is about $70,000! That’s monies that come out of the pockets of parents who would’ve put that back into their local communities through common family expenditures or investment savings, like for college. Take that a step further and imagine the accompanying court costs that have to be expended to administer that “average” $70,000 divorce, then multiplied by 187,000. We’re not talking millions here folks, but literally billions of dollars each fiscal year here in Georgia . All at taxpayer expense. Not only should divorcing parents be irritated at this, but the state’s tax-paying population should be really pissed at the untold amount of money the state’s courts are sucking into their collective vortices. Monies they could be using, through graduating tax breaks, to help better their family’s lots in life.
Where is the outcry to this fiscal callousness and obstinacy forced upon our citizens? Well, there has been some constituent rumblings in the recent past. And some even resulting in a modicum of changes to Georgia family law and divorce statutes. However, I suspect most is swept under the proverbial governmental carpet due to the personally sensitive and unpleasant nature of the topic(s) surrounding marital failures and it’s impact upon our state’s most innocent victims, its children. But that’s where the illusion fails. The impact of the flagrant and unbridled endemic behaviors regularly being exhibited within our local court systems doesn’t exclusively fall upon the direct participants, it falls upon each and every one of us every year in mid April.
Our judiciary, and by association, the administrative and legislative branches of our governments, has been charged with the responsibility, through oaths of office and other ethical guidelines, to earn the trust and confidence of the electorate through the upholding and equal application of the laws of the land, nor make or enforce laws that conflict with existing or pre-existing laws. Mistakes have been, and most likely will be, made in spite of the best intentions of those we have empowered through positions of authority.
However, immunity from accountability, especially judicial immunity, to ones’ mistook behaviors as an elected representative, intentional or not, is an obstinate self-aggrandizing abortion of governmental oversight.
The recent national tea parties organized this past April seemed to successfully bring attention to the grievances of our nations citizens on a national scale. We here in Georgia need to consider similar type gatherings on a more local level in order to show our elected officials that collectively we are not in agreement with, no, better yet, that we are fed up and outright mad, at the blatant lack of accountability of the behaviors of our elected or appointed government officials. Particularly those officials that currently have little, if any, viable scrutiny of actions that routinely have immediate and direct impact over the private lives of our children, our parents, grandparents, co-workers and neighbors.
- Dean "The Banner Guy" Gottschalk,
A currently state-sanctioned disenfranchised father of two Georgia children.
