I was writing to share our story and
hope that someone maybe able to help. It is rather lengthy so I will apologize.
My boyfriend with whom I have been with
for a little over a year, he has been separated from his wife for over 2
years, she will not give him a divorce. They have one son together age 10. She
had left him for another man and had moved in with him in October of 2001.
They had agreed when she had moved out that he would pay for her car, car
insurance and health insurance which equaled $650.00 a month in lieu of child
support, which worked well until December 2002 when she was fired from her
job, for committing credit card fraud against a co-worker and her best friend
in the amount of $5200.00 she was charged with 2 felony counts. He files for
full custody as per what his attorney told him to do, she agrees to joint physical
and joint legal custody, even though from time of separation to September
2002, he had had his son 230 days to her 110 but there was no order through
the court and his attorney had not told him to get one, his attorney had
stated the best that he would get would be joint because from October of 2002
until January he had let her have him 50% of the time. She found another job
working part time a month later. Her boyfriend moves out in February and she
goes on welfare and files with domestic relations for spousal and child
support (of course the boyfriend is still in picture). Domestic Relations
grants her $1000.00 a month plus health insurance and 75% of what health
insurance does not cover. We appeal the spousal support due to her living with
her boyfriend. You have to love our system in 10 days from when they made
the order they will start taking that amount out of his check. He had to sell
his truck and take back her car and sell that for what he owed on both because
in 10 days they would be taking the money out of his check. He is
also paying all marital debt. We were lucky in the fact that he had just moved
in with me the month before they had made there ruling. We had
figured it out with him not selling both vehicles and not moving in with me,
that he would be $500.00 short every month for bills, that did not include
food, gas, or anything for his son. She has all the marital property except
for 4 items which total $4000.00(part of which he had bought for his son..
Starting in November of 2002, the calls
start. We were getting close to 40 phone calls a week, and not nice ones
either. We talk to a state trooper in January who tells us tell her to stop
calling three times and if she does not stop press charges. We are concerned
about what this would do to there son. We tell her to stop calling unless it
pertains to Anthony, of course the calls do not stop. She had been threatening
to put a PFA out on him several times, so of course every exchange I am there
to witness. We are now in March and she has her son calling and wanting a gun,
we tell her no and she comes to the house wanting a gun, refusing to allow us
to leave threatening to smash my car. We leave she follows us and leaves a
message she has pressed charges against both of us and the police will be
there to pick us up. We take there son to a friends and go to the police
station and speak to the trooper who had pressed charges on her in July 2002
for terroristic threats (she had had a gun and threatened to kill him of
course the trooper had stated at that time it was his word against hers, but
while the trooper was there, she had text messaged him "till death do us
part" then he filed the charges. They had pled the charge down to harassment
and she got $186.00 fine.) The trooper tells him he won't do anything, or
listen to the messages that he married her just deal with it. So we call the
district attorney and he tells us we need to contact the police we tell him we
already did and what they had said. The district attorney told us she was not
allowed to have a gun that she was already on probation for DUI. He then told
us if he is to get involved with this we had better not back down or we would
not ever get charges on her again. The state trooper calls us back and now is
nice as pie and says by the end of March charges will be filed we e-mail him
that we have more messages and we get no response from him, finally I have to
go and speak with his boss and he says the trooper will be in contact and
charges will be filed. We here from the trooper and he again states charges
will be filed that week and then we here nothing from him. I go back in to
speak to the boss again and bring in another 42 messages she had left in
three weeks, plus the log of calls we had answered and all the e-mails I had
sent to the trooper with no response. Finally charges are filed for 6 months
of harassment and stalking. We go to the hearing and the assistant district
attorney talks to us and we ask him why this is not a felony. He states it is
not a felony and of course I quote the law that the second offense against the
same victim is a felony he says it is not and gets out the law book and reads
and it tells us then that we are correct but it is to late they had filed a
misdemeanor charge. She pleads guilty and waits for her sentencing. She
finally gets sentenced for her felony charges and breaking her probation. She
lost her license for 1 year and 2 days in jail for breaking her probation and
she gets 4 year probation and no fine but must make restitution for stealing
$5200.00. This is the same district attorney who new about harassment and
stalking charges who agrees to this. She was sentenced for the harrassment and
stalking a $100.00 fine and 1 year probation she actually paid less on the
second offense. The calls still continue and we continue to keep our logs that
at this time is over 1000 pages.
Two weeks prior to going to
our appeal for the spousal support, we go into domestic relations office and
speak with one of the workers, whom had went and asked there manager some
questions she was not sure about. The women working at the domestic office
thought we were from the press or from the news or from there main office,
because we had already new all the answers to the questions we were asking.
The manager had stated we had to prove she was having the affair prior to
leaving the marriage and had moved in with him. We had left there feeling
pretty good because we had the proof but after all that we had seen with
police, assistant district attorney, district attorney, and the judge we
figured we had about 30% chance of winning, because we were going through with
the same judge who just sentenced her 1 month before. Now to our appeal
hearing we had her roommate/best friend testify, another man she had an affair
with for 1 1/2 years (which happened to be one of his friends who told him
about it after they had separated) Her boyfriend the one that conveniently
moved out until the appeal, was there to testify. The judge had asked him if
he had any problem with the child support and he had said he did not, just
with spousal. He had also told the judge that if he gets bad credit that he
will lose his job and that he barely has enough to live on and is having
trouble with paying all the bills. The testimony went extremely well. She
admitted to the affair for a 1 1/2. She admitted to the affair that she had
started with the man she had left her husband for. She admitted that for a
year prior to her leaving that she was out partying and drinking at the bars
and that she did not come home. His attorney asked what time she would
get home, she said 7:30 a.m. the attorney asked "what time did her son go
to school" she said 8:00 a.m. "what time did her son arrive home
from school" she said 4:00 p.m. "What time did you go to work"
she said 4:30. His attorney had caught her in several lies. Her boyfriend and
her best friend did not have anything bad or damaging to say about her
husband, that she was just unhappy in there marriage. Her getting fired and
the felony conviction was not admissable, but his conduct with me after there
separation was relevant. They had brought up about the marital debt and her
response to that was that she was paying the Abercrombie and Finch credit
card. Now to the ruling and what the judge had said. It's a real beauty. The
judge comes out and states she is going grant the spousal support due to the
fact that this marriage was apparently over since 1999 (when she had started
the first affair) and that he did nothing to try to save the marriage, and
that she would grant a 10% reduction due to the marital debt (which she had no
figures in front of her to base this on) We weren't real shocked but we were
angry . His attorney was shocked over the ruling and I explained to the
attorney that without this support she would not be able to pay the $5200.00
restitution and that if she could not pay the county would have to pay to send
her some place else since they do not have a place for women in jail here.
We had planned on going for full
custody of there child, we feel we have plenty to show, last year she kept him
out of school 26 days the majority of those days were to spite us because
they were our day to have him, we have 4 or 5 messages in which she left the
day before she would not be sending him to school. All the times that we had
picked him up she would be calling us a F-bitch, F-asshole, that she will make
sure he has know money on which to live, this is all right in front of
there child. At this time in the last week she has stated 4 different
times she is going to go after full custody. We are afraid and we do not know
what is the right thing to do is. We are afraid that if she goes first, that
they will grant her custody even though we have all these records, tapes,
convictions, on our side. We believe we should for the child's sake, to give
him some stability but we are afraid of the system, it has not worked yet and
you know if she goes for full custody the judge is going to ask you why did
you not go for custody when you have all of this. It isn't like you can
tell the judge we have watched you rule all in the favor of women no matter
what they have done.
I would like to thank you for
listening and if there is any help or guidance we would appreciate any that
you could give.
Vick & Ron
