*Dirty Tricks in Family Law*

No kidding. 90%, huh?

*Dirty Tricks in Family Law*
By: Bettina Arndt

Herald Sun - Monday 12 Februeary 2007

...

Many of the women's groups are very nervous about new Family Relationship Centers (FRCs) set up particularly to deal with children's matters. The government has rightly concluded that caring for children after divorce is a relationship issue, not a legal one and that the previous adversarial system was disastrous for children. But that legal system served the interests of the punitive mother very well since it failed so dismally to enforce contact orders and allowed allegations of violence to be used to deny fathers contact with their children. Remember the 1999 magistrate's survey which found 90% of magistrates believed false AVO's were used as a tactic in family law cases "to deprive partners access to children"?

The article describes a few other tricks barristers have pulled. I could add one: Threatening ridiculous lawsuits as harassment and intimidation, but only when the couple is alone - then denying it in court. The threat is enhanced by saying her lawyer told her she could sue.
The barrister stands and questions the man: "There were no lawsuits threatened, isn't that right? You are lying to this court."
I got a taste of that one myself.

There must be some list of illegal stunts or dirty tricks somewhere.
What is surprising is, after years of this stuff, the magistrates and judges don't catch on... It really is their responsibility to seek the truth before making judgments.

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The most difficult part

Yesterday, someone actually asked me what was the most difficult part of this horrible time.
I thought about the weeks then months of panic attacks that continued for days followed by exhaustion; then said, "It was that there was nothing to defend against. - How do you defend against what didn't happen?"
If there had been incidents or specific accusations, it would have been much easier. But there was nothing. Not one specific incident - because there had never been any incidents.
There had been arguments, yes. I raised my voice, but never raised my hand to anyone.
The police had never been called to protect anyone.
There were no bruises, cuts or marks.

In fact, the only threats came from my ex, and her family. It's not hard to threaten someone who can barely stand.
I lost the right to recuperate from a painful surgery in my own home on nothing more than assumptions. Neither my ex nor anyone else accused me of anything specific. They couldn't. The best they could do was try to incite or invent incidents. There was nothing specific in the statements to begin the Intervention Orders; nor was there anything specific in the testimony in the court that warranted my being removed from my home.

I lost the right to even avoid arguments in my own home.
The police and courts assumed things that never happened, then acted as if they had. In a final act of injustice, a police prosecutor read into the record that I had been "increasingly abusive over two years" completely without evidence. If he had sought evidence, he would have found that I was increasingly abused over two years.

"That would be crazy making." I was told.
- "Yes, it is. But that is the state of justice in Victoria, Australia. You can't expect the police or courts to correct themselves, can you?" I replied, then asked to drop the subject.
It's all past now. It's been almost two years since I simply signed over the house to my ex, and she went off to celebrate her successful extortion.
You do have to wonder if the people who executed this abuse of their authority and the purpose of law ever question what they have done? I doubt it.
After all, I was just disabled, and a yank - two things Australians truly hate.

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The Horrible Time

Two years ago, this was a horrible time.
In a few days, on the 12th, my ex would threaten to sue me for $20,000.
About the 14th of January, she had threatened to sue me for $100,000; but apparently even she and her attorney saw that was ludicrous. Realistically, all of that was what we had spent over 4 years together.
It was just her way of saying she resented my becoming ill. I got the message very clearly. I had for a long time. For more than two years, my ex had been increasingly abusive about the fact that I could hardly walk. Her need to abuse had destroyed the love and trust in our relationship.

She had spent weeks hiding in her room totaling every cent she could find a receipt for to come to that $100,000 figure.

She had long since abandoned the house, me, and her daughter in it. I suppose she thought that if she left her daughter alone with me there would be fights. There were none. The mother had tried for months to prove that I hated her daughter; but of course I didn't.
With the house free of her mother's unending insults and abuse, I saw no reason to blame the daughter for her mother's problems.
Despite the tensions, I made a point of being civil and polite to her daughter as she came and went. I went out of my way to make things as pleasant as possible in the household.

I'd even gone so far as to buy the daughter a birthday present. (Her birthday is in a few days.) Nothing overwhelming. Just something she would use and enjoy. Just something to make the point that there was no sense in perpetuating the atmosphere her mother had sewn in the house.
I placed the gifts quietly just inside the daughter's door, on a shelf, and made a point not to disturb anything else in the room. These were very tense and awkward times.

The mother made the point of making her threats just before Valentines Day, on the 12th.
She had only been an occasional visitor to the house for most of the previous two months. She stopped in to make her threats - really repeat the threats of her attorney - try to start an argument, then left usually unsatisfied because I had had enough of the senseless fighting.
Some of what she said was silly, some of it pure fantasy, but always with one purpose: to be as hurtful and insulting as the words and tone could be.

I spent these months in long panic attacks that lasted for days at a time. When I could find a moment or a place to relax, I collapsed into fitful, noisy sleep. I slept for days.

I sought people who could listen and understand, but there was no one. Neighbors became friends, then could only wonder at what sickness could drive one person to do this sort of thing to another. They came to the house with dinners, and invited me out to parties or their homes.
How do you explain what it is like - how exhausting it can be - to put on a relatively normal face, when your heart is at once ripped from your chest and exploding from it? I never found a good way. All I could do was pour out the abuse I had experienced for those long years.
The silliest part of it all is that I never abandoned hope that my ex would come to her senses, that she would appear with others and apologize. That never happened, of course.
She and her conspirators had set themselves on a course to take the house and all the possessions by lying to the courts.

It didn't matter that even she had admitted there were no grounds. It didn't matter that there was no evidence of any abuse on my part. In fact, there were not even complaints until she realized she could abuse the prejudices of the Australian courts.
In these months, between May and the next March, she and her family followed the advice of a lawyer.
No one was protected. No one needed protection. Nothing just, or fair, or decent was done. That was not their goal. Their goal was just to play a game for greed. Their plan was to abuse the Intervention Order process to dispossess me.

There is no place in the consciousness of Australian justice for a disabled man to be abused. The magistrates simply do not understand the words. The courts and all those who work with them do not understand the words.
A man, even an invalid, must always be the abuser in the warped mindset expressed by the idea of "err on the side of caution."

Every man learns that the world is not fair. He learns to accept its inequities. For everyone, I suppose, there is an inequity they cannot accept. For me, being treated like an animal because I was disabled was something I cannot accept. This sick minded treatment has become Australia to me.

Now, two years later, my mind will not let me forget that time. It sits in my head like an open scar. But the pain is improving. There was a time when just thinking about such things would make my eyes flow with tears and my body tremble. Now, there is just a deep abiding sadness within me - like a bad taste that will not go away.
Time heals all wounds, it's said.
I will be glad when the salve of time takes this one.
There are a few more horrible days to go.

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