Originally posted on Civil Rights in Family Law Florida: The psychological effects of divorce may touch divorcees, children, family and friends. Related articles It’s a trillion dollar industry… — American Fathers
Fatherless Day Rallies In Every State and Across The Globe!!
Originally posted on Civil Rights in Family Law Florida: – ALABAMA Alabama 2nd annual Fatherless Day Rally June 17th at 9AM 600 Dexter Ave Montgomery Al, 36130 Come out as we rally together… — American Fathers
Science of Dads.
Psychological sciences at Kent State University, is one of a growing number of researchers to examine the manner in which fathers interact with their children. Her work is giving new insight…
Where Fathers, Mothers, GRANDparents and Children from all 50 states will be uniting at their State Capitols to demand a change in Family law. This is an EQUAL RIGHTS issue and OUR Children …
Families will be destroyed under the guise and by immunity bestowed upon Family Court Judges
PRESS RELEASE: Bill Scheidler, candidate for representative, district 26, position 1, states his platform | Corrupt Washington This is the vicious cycle of corruption, which can be illustrat…
Your Raising a Human Being NOT an Inconvenience
Originally posted on Civil Rights in Family Law Florida: Dearest Daughter, I love you so much. Yesterday I gazed out the window watching fireworks and was really missing my angel but I cann…
The family courts in the United States are biased against fathers.
– ALABAMA – ALASKA – ARIZONA – CALIFORNIA – COLORADO – CONNECTICUT – FLORIDA – ILLINOIS – INDIANA – KANSAS – MARYLAND – MASSACHUSETTS – MICHIGAN – MONTANA – NEVADA – NEW JERSEY – NEW YORK …
Remember the Chris Mackney story we wrote about in April? This unbelievable true story of murder, corruption, and the suicide of a broken man driven crazy by our family court system now has a Facebook page.
Judges merely redirect the dysfunction of one parent as a means to achieve an equitable settlement without regard for children. Prospective lawyers to become judges practice under a code of ethics where they are only allowed to have regard their clients and not the children. A prospect practices under these rules of engagement for 20-30m years before a simple letter of appointment to the bench. They can in no way be expected to have regard for children after this indoctrination.
The code of ethics for those lawyers practicing family law needs to change before anything gets better for children.
Just know the enemy of your children are the lawyers and judges themselves.
The Children’s Rights Facebook Group now has over 18,000 Members. We’re here for Parents who need morale support, information, and more. Come check us out!
Antone (D-Orlando), Avila (R-Hialeah), Berman (D-Boynton Beach), Bileca (R-Miami), Bracy (D-Ocoee), Campbell (D–Miami-Shores), Clarke-Reed (D-Pompano Beach), Cortes, J. (D-Kissimmee), Cruz (D-Tampa), Cummings (R-Orange Park), Dudley (D-St. Petersburg), Edwards (D-Sunrise), Fitzenhagen (R-Fort Meyers), Geller (D-Dania Beach), Ingoglia (R-Spring Hill), Jacobs (D-Coconut Creek), Jenne (D-Hollywood), Jones, M. (D-Jacksonville), Jones, S. (D-West Park), Kerner (D-Palm Springs), Lee, L (D-Ft. Pierce), Mayfield (R-Vero Beach, moved to Brevard), McGhee (D-Cutler Bay), Moskowitz (D-Coral Springs), Murphy (D-New Port Richey), Narain (D-Tampa), Pafford (D-West Palm), Powell (D-West Palm), Pritchett (D-Miramar), Rader (D-Boca Raton), Rehwinkel Vasilinda (D-Tallahassee), Richardson (D-Miami Beach), Rodriguez, J (D-Miami), Rouson (D-St. Petersburg), Slosberg (D-Delray Beach), Stafford (D-Opa Locka), Stark (D-Weston), Steube (R-Sarasota), Torres (D-Orlando), Trujillo (R-Doral), Van Zant (R-Palatka), Watson, B. (D-Miami Gardens), Watson, C. (D-Gainesville), Williams (D-Tallahassee)
Remember to vote in the August primary and November general election!
First Husbands Advocacy Group – Florida Alimony and Custody Laws Reform
BRAVO and CONGRATULATIONS to this man. He is FREE of his alimony tether. We applaud your good fortune and wish you all the best in life and love. You are an inspiration to all other reformers.
As we had predicted … What a bunch of crap. No…we NEVER will respect nor “honor” any of you who are stealing from us via lifetime alimony.
Honor and respect has to be earned. Ya’ll are and will be pieces of shit to us…and the kids will know that forever and ever and ever.
Our current system of resolving child custody disputes rarely considers either children’s needs from children’s own perspective, or current research on child custody outcomes.
“THE ROLES OF EXPERTS IN PARENTAL ALIENATION CASES”
Saturday, June 4th is the last day for new callers to register for our international support call seminar with Dr. Bob Evans. Regular callers have until Sunday, June 5th at 6 PM EDT to register. These are firm deadlines! To register, please email familyaccessinnc@aol.com.
The call is on Sunday, June 5th at 8 PM EDT. There are many different roles experts can play in parental alienation cases. Trying to understand all of this can be difficult at best. There are also many significant issues surrounding custody evaluations in parental alienation cases as well. And let us not forget the grandparents dealing with these issues too. Our June call will focus much on these issues as well as your questions that you submitted and Dr. Evans is now looking over.
We are extremely fortunate to have the leading experts in the world on alienation to do these seminar calls for us at no charge to us. This is a wonderful opportunity for all of us to glean from them and help us and our families. Please take advantage of these calls. They are a tremendous help.
The calls are now set up for all countries to participate. We have a local number for all countries except Canada. Canada uses the US number and info. We also Skype our calls as well. Looking forward to you joining us.
I need 10 Beta Testers. We are Justice for Fathers – and we have a new community that we plan on launching for Fathers Day 2016. Our goal is to reward all Members so that they can pay their child support and or other expenses. Justice For Fathers dies not bash Mothers. We are here to find a cure for Parental Alienation Syndrome – a form of child abuse. Join our Community as a Personal Mentor and start earning Big. As a gift, use the coupon code: DO THE MATH at checkout to get started for only $35. You must agree to refer 10 other paid members at any level. Join us at: http://www.justiceforfathers.com/join
When Margaret Besen, a 51-year-old nurse from East Northport, Long Island, filed for divorce from her husband in March of 2010, she believed justice was on her side.
Judge William Kent’s preliminary ruling seemed like a first step toward compromise. Margaret and Stuart Besen, who agreed their marriage was beyond repair, would remain in their suburban Suffolk County house, living in separate rooms – and keeping away from each other – while sharing custody until a resolution could be reached.
But within weeks, the situation deteriorated. Stuart Besen, a politically connected attorney for the town of Huntington, had an anger problem, Margaret told authorities. The couple’s screaming matches left Margaret feeling intimidated and their children – a daughter, 11, and son, 7 – terrified, she said. So in August of that year she obtained an order of protection prohibiting Stuart from harassing her. Three weeks later, Stuart entered Margaret’s bedroom and hovered over her as she slept, she told police. They arrested him for violating the order, reporting that Stuart had stared down at Margaret with his arms folded on three consecutive nights. She got temporary possession of the family home.
In the years that followed, Besen’s hopes for an equitable settlement dwindled as she battled a series of harsh and hard-to-explain decisions against her. Though she could never prove anything, she suspected that the scales had tipped for reasons unrelated to the evidence in her case. If true, Besen faced what experts say is one of the most troubling threats to our nation’s system of justice: judges, who, through incompetence, bias or outright corruption, prevent the wronged from getting a fair hearing in our courts.
“The decorum and bias and the perfectly unethical behavior of the judges is really rampant,” said Amanda Lundergan, a defense attorney in Royal Palm Beach, Florida, who confronted a nest of judicial conflicts in her state’s rapid-fire foreclosure rulings – dubbed the “rocket-docket” – following the housing market collapse. “It’s judicial bullying.”
Judges in local, state and federal courts across the country routinely hide their connections to litigants and their lawyers. These links can be social – they may have been law school classmates or share common friends – political, financial or ideological. In some instances the two may have mutual investment interests. They might be in-laws. Occasionally they are literally in bed together. While it’s unavoidable that such relationships will occur, when they do create a perception of bias, a judge is duty-bound to at the very least disclose that information, and if it is creates an actual bias, allow a different judge to take over.
All too often, however, the conflicted jurist says nothing and proceeds to rule in favor of the connected party, while the loser goes off without realizing an undisclosed bias doomed her case.
“Everybody should have the right to ensure the judge sitting on their case doesn’t have a conflict,” said Mary McQueen, executive director of the National Council on State Courts.
“It’s absolutely imperative that people have full faith and confidence in the judicial process.”
‘Explain, defend or apologize’
Hundreds of judicial transgressions have been uncovered during the last decade, with results that cost the defeated litigants their home, business, custody, health or freedom.
Some of the best-known cases involve judges who ultimately did suffer consequences for their behavior, including Texas judge Christopher Dupuy, who bullied four lawyers who filed conflict-of-interest recusal motions between 2011 and 2013. Attorney Lori Laird asked that Dupuy bow out in 2013 because she’d represented Dupuy’s ex-wife in the couple’s custody battle in Galveston. The judge responded by slapping her with 37 counts of contempt, demanding that she “explain, defend or apologize” for her motion. He later sentenced her to 220 days in jail, although she didn’t serve any time.
“It was the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever seen,” Laird told Contently.org. “It also caused great damage to both of my clients.” Dupuy was admonished in November – after he’d already retired and was sentenced to two years’ probation for pleading guilty to misdemeanor counts of perjury and misuse of government property.
But court critics say that one reason judicial violations are common is because they frequently go unpunished. When litigants ask a judge to back away because of a conflict, they risk being told no, then face possible retaliation, so many don’t bother. If a litigant or an attorney files a complaint with an oversight body, there’s only about a 10% chance that state court authorities will properly investigate the allegation, according to a Contently.org analysis of data from 12 states.
Photograph: Contently.org
The analysis shows that a dozen of these commissions collectively dismissed out of hand 90% of the complaints filed during the last five years, tossing 33,613 of 37,216 grievances without conducting any substantive inquiry. When they did take a look – 3,693 times between 2010 and 2014 – investigators found wrongdoing almost half the time, issuing disciplinary actions in 1,751 cases, about 47%.
The actions taken ranged from a letter of warning to censure, a formal sanction that indicates a judge is guilty of misconduct but does not merit suspension or removal.
Actually removing a judge was a rarity. Just 19 jurists in 12 states were ordered off the bench for malfeasance, which is about three per decade for each state. And even that result is becoming less common, with only one removal in 2014 and three in 2013 among all 12 states.
The states examined – California, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Wisconsin, Indiana, Minnesota, Colorado, Washington, Georgia and South Carolina – were chosen because they comprise a representative sample from different populations and areas of the country and because they had matching data for the years 2010 through 2014.
California, which created the first judicial disciplinary body in the country in 1960, had a dismissal rate of 98%. It did not suspend or remove a single judge in 2013 or 2014 and acted just once over the last five years, removing a sitting judge in 2012. Colorado’s lone judicial action since 2010 was a suspension in 2013. Texas has not removed a judge in five years, though it has suspended 23 for varying lengths of time.
One discouraging factor is the secrecy under which these commissions operate. Allegations against a judge are commonly kept confidential unless a sanction of some kind is imposed. New York’s CJC, for example, is prevented by law from disclosing whether anyone has complained about a judge, discussing specific allegations, revealing what evidence might have been presented or what steps, if any, it took to investigative.
When conduct boards do act, the sanctions usually amount to an admonishment that may be embarrassing but costs the judge little.
Among those still on the bench after ethical violations are Louisiana judge Robin Free. Free oversaw a personal injury claim in 2010 by a man and his wife, Israel and Leslie Robles, who were hurt in an oil field run by Houston-based fracking contractor Integration Production Services, Inc. The trial had begun when the two sides agreed to a $1.2m settlement. As he mulled signing off on the deal, Free arranged for some post-trial R&R at Casa Bonita, a hunting and fishing ranch in George West, Texas, owned by the victims’ lawyer, David Rumley. He flew there aboard the Rumley firm’s private jet.
It wasn’t Free’s first ethical blunder. In 2001 he presided over a fouled-water case against Dow Chemical, trying to resolve the matter even as his mother was a member of the plaintiff’s class. Free is still serving on the bench after being docked 30 days pay in December and forking over a $6,723.64 fine.
Raoul Felder, the well-known New York divorce attorney, served as a CJC board member between 2004 and 2008, helping the commission sift through thousands of complaints. He came away from the experience perplexed by its decision-making.
“I wouldn’t say [the CJC] is toothless, but it’s arbitrary,” Felder said. “It can be unreasonably tough on judges who commit trivial offenses while going easy on judges who are really bizarrely out of the mainstream, doing things they shouldn’t be doing.”
Judicial discipline at the federal level is almost non-existent. A Contently.org examination of the most recent five years of complaint data shows that 5,228 grievances were lodged against federal jurists between 2010 and 2014, including 2,561 that specifically alleged bias or conflict of interest. But only three judges were disciplined during those years and each got the mildest rebuke on the books: censure or reprimand. None was suspended or removed.
The numbers suggest that at least some of these judges’ rulings did not pass the smell test: 4,168 of the dismissed complaints were tossed due to a lack of sufficient evidence, bringing up the possibility that some litigants raised valid concerns but failed to find definitive proof.
‘I’m on food stamps’ and he makes more than $500,000 a year
In the Besen divorce, judge Kent’s initial decisions were fairly typical for a couple in their situation. He imposed financial obligations on Stuart, the moneyed spouse, including $200 in weekly child support and $500 in monthly car payments. But when Stuart didn’t make the payments and the vehicle was repossessed, the judge did nothing. Nor did he act when Stuart honored only part of the support he owed, leaving Margaret, who was then unemployed, struggling to provide for her kids.
“Occasionally he paid $200 a week, sometimes $175, sometimes $120,” she recalled. “The church had given me vouchers for gas, and I was getting food from the food pantry. I couldn’t cash checks. One year I found on his tax returns he had made $528,000, and I am getting food stamps and trying to get groceries home on a bicycle. It was extremely humiliating.”
Margaret and Stuart accused one another of mistreating their children. Police and child protection service workers became involved. Kent ordered her to undergo a psychological evaluation, which slammed Margaret as a danger to her children as she was allegedly alienating them from their father. No abuse by either parent was substantiated.
Margaret won a court order of protection barring Stuart from contact with her children for a year. But when Kent issued his final decree less than six weeks later, he awarded Stuart full custody, while Margaret was allowed only supervised visits. And he ordered Margaret to pay back half the cost of her nursing degree and to sell her diamond engagement ring and split the proceeds with Stuart. The judge also reversed the support arrangements. While Stuart would pay $1,500 a month in maintenance to Margaret, she now owed Stuart $153.90 a week for the children, even though she was earning about $13,000 a year as a part-time aide in an assisted-living facility.
Margaret began to look into her husband’s dealings and discovered, through searching public records, that he and judge Kent had possible connections. In 2010, Stuart was appointed as the Suffolk County representative on a statewide commission for vetting local judicial candidates. That same year, an organization based at Stuart Besen’s Garden City law office, the Long Island Coalition for Responsible Government, donated $7,500 to candidate Richard Ambro, who got elected and became one of Kent’s fellow Supreme Court judges in Suffolk’s 10th district. In his role as Huntington’s town lawyer, Besen argued cases before these very judges. He’d entered a circle of judicial insiders.
“I’m in the middle of a large group of people who’ve got money and influence and who are all connected,” said Margaret Besen. “I’m not being afforded an opportunity to get a fair shake.”
Margaret had no way of knowing whether the connections she uncovered played any role in how Kent ruled in her case. But her concern deepened when she made an additional discovery about her house. Kent had ordered the Besen home, the most valuable marital asset, to be sold and the proceeds divided, putting Margaret in line to receive possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then she found an online listing offering the property for sale – with the judge’s wife, Patricia Kent, as broker. The home, which was listed for $749,999 with Patricia Kent’s photo and contact information on Realty Connect USA, is currently more than $15,000 in arrears on its property taxes and no longer appears to be actively offered. Margaret was evicted from the house in 2013 and lives in a modest apartment a few miles away. She has yet to receive a penny for her interest in the property.
Patricia Kent claimed she had never represented any of the properties her husband had ordered sold in divorce or other cases. “I have never been a broker for any of his houses; we’re very clear about that,” Patricia Kent said in a phone interview.
A reporter informed her of the agency listing with her information attached to the Besen property. She said her photo could have appeared because she was a broker with the same firm as the agent who did have the listing. “The only person who gets the commission is the listing agent that listed the property,” she said.
Patricia said William Kent was unlikely to comment. “I’m not so sure that he’d want to speak with you,” she said, adding: “When I see him, I’ll let him know, and if he’s interested he’ll give you a call.”
Kent didn’t call. And Stuart Besen did not respond to messages left at his office.
Scott L Cummings, a professor of legal ethics at UCLA law school, said the case raised “significant ethical red flags”, because of the judge’s wife’s alleged involvement in offering the Besen family home for sale. “Not knowing the details of how his spouse might have been assigned as broker, the idea that a judge might benefit financially from the sale of a property in dispute in a pending matter seems to raise a serious question of impartiality.”
Ronald Rotunda, a professor at Chapman University law school in Orange, California, said: “What judge Kent did here seems odd. The husband makes over a half million a year, she makes $13,000 a year, and the judge orders her to pay child support (which is tax free to him and not deductible for her).”
But when Margaret Besen protested, she found no relief. When she asked Kent to recuse himself, he refused. When she complained to the state watchdog responsible for investigating judicial wrongdoing, writing two letters, they blew her off. In a terse response this June, the New York Commission for Judicial Conduct reiterated its initial decision, stating that “there was insufficient indication of judicial misconduct to justify discipline”. When a panel such as the CJC declines to get involved, the plaintiff has little recourse.
This was not the first time a litigant raised questions about Kent’s integrity.
Donna Schuler, also a divorcing mother in Suffolk County, asked that judge Kent recuse himself from her case in 2011 after claiming his unwarranted delays and stalling had drained her financially. Schuler was also rebuffed when she asked the commission to step in and remove Judge Kent from her case.
A culture of judicial impunity
Critics of the Suffolk supreme court claim a culture of rule-breaking exists, pointing to a red-faced moment in 2007 when Marion McNulty, then the county’s top matrimonial judge, was admonished by the state’s disciplinary panel for aggressively fund-raising for her favorite charity, a women’s nonprofit, while on the job. McNulty went so far as to hit up attorneys for checks in the courthouse, a blatant violation of ethical rules.
But a culture of judicial impunity extends far beyond Long Island’s county courts. Indeed, even the US supreme court has been tarnished on this issue.
Justice Steven Breyer owned $215,000 in health-care stocks when deciding on the legality of the Affordable Care Act in 2012. Justice Samuel Alito’s portfolio included $2,000 in stock in The Walt Disney Co. in 2008, the year the court heard Disney, FCC v. Fox Television Stations. And perhaps most famously, justice Antonin Scalia has participated in the Bush v. Gore case, even though his son Eugene’s law firm represented one of the parties. In another case, Scalia remained in the panel despite having gone on a duck hunting trip with former Vice-President Dick Cheney while he was being sued to reveal the details of secret meetings he held with oil company executives in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
After his vacation with Cheney was revealed, Scalia scoffed at the suggestion he was compromised and defended his decision to remain on the case. “I do not believe my impartiality can reasonably be questioned,” he said in a 21-page memo. “If it is reasonable to think that a supreme court justice can be bought so cheap, the nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined.” But Sen Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat, implored Scalia to withdraw. “Instead of strengthening public confidence in our court system, Justice Scalia’s decision risks undermining it,” he stated.
In fact, US supreme court justices enjoy a special privilege: they are the only judges exempt from the federal Code of Conduct, which demands judicial impartiality and prohibits a jurist from presiding when he or she has “a personal bias concerning a party to the case”.
Recusal issues often spur judicial complaints. But the watchdog panels that evaluate them, both on the state and federal level, are not courts and therefore lack the authority to review the merits of a litigant’s case. Even a substantiated charge of misconduct won’t change the outcome of a ruling or verdict; it merely opens the door for a new appeal to be filed, which for beleaguered litigants can be costly, time-consuming and often not worth it. Many do continue to fight. Others simply vent.
The online vitriol directed at unscrupulous judges, which began in the mid- 2000s, has built to a howling digital crescendo. Websites including The Robe Probe, The Judiciary Report and The Robing Room, which rate judges the way Yelp rates restaurants, are rife with railing as embittered, mostly anonymous plaintiffs rip into judicial decisions they feel were biased or corrupt.
Mounting criticism led to a remarkable development last year. The chief justices of each state gathered and declared that something had to be done. They implored lawmakers to enact legislation that might restore their courts’ battered integrity by forcing more transparency on their systems and holding judges accountable when they engaged in unethical behavior.
“Fair and impartial justice requires that judges act without regard to the identity of parties or their attorneys, the judge’s own interests or likely criticism,” said the resolution of the Conference of Chief Justices in January 2014. A judge should step away when there is “actual conflict or bias or other impropriety…or when a reasonable disinterested person would conclude that an appearance of impropriety exists.”
The decree was set in motion by a precedent-setting 2009 Supreme Court decision involving a dispute between two West Virginia coal companies that had done business with each other for years – until one went bankrupt – leading to a judicial scandal that inspired a John Grisham novel.
In an appeal of a case in West Virginia court, A.T. Massey Coal Co. CEO Don Blankenship spent $3m to elect Brent Benjamin, who ultimately provided the swing vote that overturned a $50m judgment against his company. Benjamin rebuffed repeated demands that the newly elected justice recuse himself because of his obvious conflict.
The US Supreme Court ruled that Benjamin’s bias was so extreme that his failure to step aside violated Caperton’s right to due process under the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment. The case, which spawned Grisham’s 2008 best-seller, “The Appeal,” underscored the kind of underhanded dealing that has stained the judiciary.
A further nudge for reform came last year when the Center for Public Integrity published a report on financial conflicts of interest. Among its findings: on 26 occasions in the preceding three years, federal appellate judges ruled on cases involving companies in which they owned stock or where they had a financial tie to an attorney appearing before them.
It also created a grading system to gauge how diligent each state was in collecting personal financial information from its judges, including stock ownership and outside sources of income, and how accessible that data was to the public. The center said that 42 states, plus the District of Columbia, failed its test. Six others earned a D grade, while two – California and Maryland – got Cs. California’s score, 77, the highest of any state, was seven points below the federal government’s grade of 84.
The report highlighted the type of conflict that can be most readily identified and that doing so requires full disclosure from the judges. Stock ownership, even if minimal, should automatically disqualify a judge from hearing a case, many experts believe. “If a judge owns a single share in a company involved in a case, he should recuse himself instantly,” says Rotunda, a leading law scholar.
It’s been more than two years since Margaret Besen has seen her children, who are now 12 and 16. There’s no money to pay the court supervisor, so they can’t visit. Nor does Besen have the funds to continue fighting. Kent retired shortly after making his decision.
“The hardest thing in my life is that I can’t be with my children and I can’t have an impact on my children’s upbringing,” Besen said over coffee at a Long Island diner. “A lot of people do not have any idea how the judicial system works or doesn’t work until you’re in it. We think we’re in a democratic society. We think we’re run by rules. But they are not being upheld by the court at all.”
Our states’ family laws are antiquated and need reform.
SB 668 PASSES THE HOUSE FLOOR AND HEADS TO GOVERNOR for SIGNATURE
EMAIL: rick.scott@eog.myflorida.com
TEL: 850-717-9337
SB 668 HAS CLEARED THE SENATE AND HOUSE FLOORS!
SB was passed by The House Floor today 03/08/2016.
What happens now?
SB 668 now goes to the Governor for signature. After the Bill lands on the Governor’s desk, he will have 15 days to sign it, veto it, or do nothing. If he signs or does nothing, the Bill passes.
NOW IS CRUNCH TIME!!
Once again the Family Section of the Florida Bar has opposed our bill, even though the time sharing language does not contain a rebuttable presumption.They have already written Governor Scott asking him to, once again, VETO our bill.
One more time, I must ask you——If you want alimony reform—-to:
Rick Scott, 45th Governor of Florida (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
CONTACT GOVERNOR SCOTT NOW RESPECTFULLY ASKING THAT HE SUPPORT THIS ALIMONY REFORM AND TIME SHARING REFORM and SIGN SB 668 INTO LAW.
We have to be louder and more persistent than ever!!
Don’t wait! Do this now and continue to do this on a daily basis until our bill is signed into law. We need to show Governor Scott just what a force we can be.
Family Law Reform’s officers are Floridians who have been personally affected by the state’s outdated family laws, and believe that the laws need to … READ MORE
Greetings Family Law Reform Members: We need you to Contact Governor Rick Scott NOW: EMAIL: rick.scott@eog.myflorida.com TEL: 850-717-9337 SB 668 HAS CLEAR
While ten contested races sounds like a high number, it’s not. In 2006, there were 16 contested races; in 2012 there were 12 contests; and in 2008 there were also 10. Anyone remember the likes of Shirlyon McWhorter, Stephen Millan, Michael Samuels, Migna Sanchez Llorens, Bonnie Rippingile, Josie Velis, Gina Mendez, and Jose Sanchez-Gronlier. Those were just some of the losers in 2006.
Circuit Group 9 – Incumbent Jason Bloch v. Marcia Del Rey
Circuit Group 30 – Incumbent Rosa Rodriguez v. Daniel Espinosa
Circuit Group 34 – Mark Blumstein v. Renee Gordon v. Denise Martinez-Scanziani v. Luis Perez-Medina. (Judge Gill Freeman retiring).
Circuit Group 52 – Rosy Aponte v. Carol “Jodie” Breece v. Oscar Rodriguez-Fonts. (Judge Michael Genden retiring).
Circuit Group 66 – Incumbent Robert Luck v. Yolly Roberson
Circuit Group 74 – Incumbent George “Jorge” Sarduy v. Elena Ortega-Tauler
COUNTY COURT
County Group 5 – Incumbent Fred Seraphin v. Milena Abreu
County Group 7 – Incumbent Ed Newman v. Lizzett Martinez
County Group 15 – Ruben Yury Alcoba v. Linda Luce (Judge Judith Rubenstein retiring).
County Group 35 – Incumbent Wendell Graham v. Antonio “Tony” Jimenez
ELECTED WITHOUT OPPOSITION …..
Congratulations to the following 17 Judges/former Judge who have been elected to a six year term with an annual salary of $146,080 (Circuit Court) and $138,020 (County Court):
CIRCUIT
John Schlesinger Rodolfo “Rudy” Ruiz Scott Bernstein Bertila Soto John Thornton Jennifer Bailey Barbara Areces David Young* (former Judge) William Thomas Milt Hirsch Samantha Ruiz Cohen Nushin Sayfie Monica Gordo
COUNTY
Michaelle Gonzalez-Paulson Carroll Kelly Diana Vizcaino Laura Anne Stuzin
FERNANDEZ RUNDLE & MARTINEZ BOTH REELECTED
Also elected without opposition were State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle and Public Defender Carlos Martinez. For Carlos, who was first elected in 2008, this is his third term. For Kathy, who is 66 years young, this is her seventh term. She took over for Janet Reno in 1993 when President Clinton names Reno as Attorney General. She was then elected in 1994 and reelected six more times. Is this her final term? What do you think?
NORTH OF THE BORDER
One note about the happenings in Broweird. Our longtime colleague, ASA Abbe Rifkin, has qualified to run in Group 15 against three other candidates, including Incumbent Judge Matthew Destry.
A lot of movement has taken place over the past few days in both the County Court and Circuit Court judicial races.
Sen. Jeremy Ring points out what is MISSING from alimony legislation including attorney fee caps, citing this as the single biggest issue in Family Law, and, without addressing this issue, he and many others cannot support similar proposed Family Law legislation. Curious then, that the Florida Bar FLS leadership now SUPPORTS destructive anti-woman, anti-child, anti-stay-at-home mother, anti-family bills like Sen. Kelli Stargel‘s and Rep. Colleen Burton’s Family Law/Alimony Reform Legislation. Clearly, Florida needs an independent Task Force created to properly study Family Law/Alimony Reform legislation to ensure that it is properly vetted, based on economic FACTS, and not harmful to Florida’s vulnerable mothers, women and children for whom attorneys fees are typically out of reach. In 2016, the bills again support wealthy breadwinners, disregard the issue of attorney fees, all while creating a wealth of work for Florida attorneys.
TALLAHASSEE — Judges soon may have little choice but to give divorcing parents equal time with their children.
The Senate on Tuesday passed a change to divorce law that would require judges to presume that it is best for children to split time equally with both parents and to issue a detailed order if they deviate from that standard.
Under current law, judges are supposed to consider 20 criteria, the child’s best interests and “frequent and continuing contact with both parents” when they write an order. But Sen. Tom Lee, R-Brandon, who sponsored the legislation (SB 250), says the child’s well-being is an end goal and that to accomplish that, it’s in the best interests of kids to split time evenly with both parents whenever possible.
The majority of senators agreed, passing Lee’s bill on a 23-15 vote. The legislation hasn’t been supported by the House yet, but other changes to divorce law remain under consideration.
“As we look at other child welfare polices that we enact, we always start with the assumption that if it’s in the best interest of the child, we want both parents involved and that we want both parents to take responsibility,” Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, said.
Some research indicates children are likely to be better adjusted when parents have joint custody.
“ALL RESEARCH”
INDICATES CHILDREN ARE BETTER ADJUSTED WHEN PARENTS HAVE EQUAL JOINT CUSTODY (LEGAL AND PHYSICAL) !!!!
In 2002, Robert Bauserman, then a psychologist at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, compiled studies that compared children growing up in joint custody arrangements to those living with one parent.
In general, Bauserman found, children who spent some time with each parent had fewer behavioral problems, higher self-esteem and did better in school.
Parents, on the other hand, tend to be more satisfied if they don’t have to split time with their children with an ex-spouse, according to Bauserman.
BULLSHIT!!! NOT TRUE!!!!!!
But opponents to the timesharing bill, including Sen. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth, say there isn’t sufficient data to indicate that splitting time evenly between both parents is the ideal place to draw the line. They argue doing so could simply lead to backlogs in the courts as parents unhappy with their custody agreements ask judges to reconsider their timesharing.
Critics further raise concerns that creating a 50/50 starting point for court orders could prejudice judges and that it meddles too much with judicial discretion.
MORE BULLSHIT!!!! CREATING 50/50 PRESUMPTION WILL ELIMINATE JUDICIAL PREJUDICE AND STOP ABSOLUTE JUDICIAL DISCRETION WHICH IS WHAT IS HARMING FAMILIES NOW!!!!
(I have some thoughts that you need to hear, I am expressing this by and through my United States Constitutional Right to FREE SPEECH. If anyone reading this has an opinion and would like to comment, that is also YOUR RIGHT, so exercise it!)
Now, I wish I could say that you are simply ignorant. I wish I could say that you are being manipulated and coerced into doing what you do. Sadly, I cannot say either. The truth is, you are fully aware of the horse-and-pony show which performs daily in your “courtroom”. I have estimated that your 3 ring circus has almost 10,000 shows a year at each Courthouse in Riverside County.
That would be a total 30,000 “hearings” annually in which families’ rights are being violated, perpetrated against, falsely accused, manipulated, coerced, improperly represented, denied their right to confront witnesses (the anonymous caller especially) and denied due process that is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
They may call you “Judge” but excuse me “Your Honor” there is no honor as a Ringmaster of this federally funded menagerie.
Your circus elephants and clowns are disillusioning patrons while your courtroom cohorts collaborate to steal their children.
The big top show that is disguised as a legally binding and enforceable proceedings are actually killing families in a slow and painful process. Do you have any idea how devastating it feels when people, acting under the color of law, hold your children hostage while the huge railroad train called the judicial system runs you over? Then wondering every second of the day if your child is safe? It is torture for those parents who CARE about their kids and I know MOST of your spectators are caring, loving parents. I know because I have met them in the programs you shoved down my throat.
When the children come to your show, you give them candy, teddy bears and Christmas presents, promising them safety yet you put them in homes of strangers and sexual perpetrators. Let’s be honest here, pedophiles lurk where children are, like those sick men waiting for children to walk by on their way home from school. It is a fact that children are far less likely to get injured, raped, molested or neglected at home with their parents than they are in foster care. If you would take the time to research, investigate and deliberate on the actual statistics of the child welfare system, you would know exactly what I am talking about. But you don’t, humm…why? Because your circus clowns feed on the peanuts that thrown to them for “buying in” to the cash generator.
The Child Welfare System and all the “stakeholders” literally swindle children from their parents claiming that the children are not safe and that ripping them away from their homes is “in the child’s best interests”. What a charade! On paper and in the media, the Child Protection and Welfare collaborators boast that they are “Saving abused, neglected children by helping parents overcome their horrible faults but at least giving children a permanent and safe place to live.” However, the children must now also suffer from the trauma of being taken and isolated from their family and they end up with more scars than they would have being left in a home that they feel secure in.
You really need to get down off your IV funded wooden horse and stop this terrorism. Stop CPS from falsifying evidence, fabricating documents, committing perjury, and make them provide solid evidence of “reasonable efforts to allow the children to remain in the home”. If you had any moral or ethical bone in your body you would ensure parent’s rights to fair and unbiased proceedings, diligent and fair legal representation, ensure children’s rights to the same, allow parents to speak for themselves if they wish, ensure all counsel provide their clients with copies of minute orders and that everything you actually said on the record is actually in the record.
There are many things you can do to stop this child stealing whirlwind. Let’s begin with the information packet given to parents regarding the Juvenile Dependency process. This single piece of paper, folded in thirds to look like a leaflet, is the least informative slip I have ever seen. Surely, its real purpose is to limit the information parents receive. Other counties, like San Diego, who were investigated by the Grand Jury, at least provide a detailed timeline of the court process. The lame paper that Riverside County distributes would be more beneficial and informative if it simply said, “YOU’RE SCREWED!” or even, “Just bend over, let us stick it in your ass and, if you pretend to like it, we might return your kids sometime whenever we feel like it.” As a matter of fact, I think I will print that up and pass copies around the hallways and drop some off at the AA meetings.
The Pantomime Petitions and the Derailed Reports that you allow admitted into evidence are rarely properly served upon the parents and in my case, never served to the child who was over the age of 10. You could ask the children to verify whether or not they actually were involved in the case plan and maybe the Social Workers will do it for real. And why don’t you allow the parents to submit responses and declarations on their own behalf? Oh, and this is the waving flag-how come hair follicle test results HAVE to be paid for by CPS to be valid? What a crock of shit that is! Its even more outrageous that those clowns you call the Defense Panel Attorneys NEVER OBJECT to anything nor do they ever prepare a response or answer to the petition. Oh, and how the hell can any of your “Orders” be valid since you NEVER sign them? WTF?
And I don’t know if your clerk has a hearing problem or if she is directed and told to falsify the minute orders when you fail to make important and statutory rulings like “reasonable efforts” and other statements which ensure reimbursement from the various government funding accounts. Your boisterous speeches and assurances of protecting the children may pacify some parents but they are once again kicked while they are already down when CPS shoves a Minute Order in their face that says that your “Orders” are merely “recommendations” and that CPS has ultimate authority and discretion over all decisions.
And how about the gross neglect of the social workers to provide legitimate evidence? Do you actually read the Petitions and Reports? Do you look at the attachments? Most likely not. I highly doubt that someone in your position who has taken an OATH to uphold the law, seek justice for all and ensure people’s rights would be so completely ignorant of a piece of paper, which is as important as a hair follicle test, that has NO DONOR NAME, NO DONOR ID, NO SPECIMEN NUMBER, NO COLLECTION SITE, NO COLLECTION TIME, NO LAB NAME, NO ID, NO RECEIPT DATE, NO REPORT DATE, NO CERTIFYING SCIENTIST OR ANY INFORMATION WHATSOEVER LINKING IT TO ANYONE AT ALL.
He said he knows from first-hand experience that “an indefinite financial relationship between two divorced parents is bad for the children.”
Lawmakers heard from Tarie MacMillan of Wimauma, a 65-year-old woman paying permanent alimony for 16 years. Her husband, a former insurance executive, decided to stop working and lives on 65 percent of her income, she said.
Alimony “needs to be a formula,” said MacMillan, a jewelry dealer. “It’s so wrong for one adult to live off another for so long.”
Others continued to insist that the changes will be at the cost of mothers who opted to leave the workforce and raise children. After a breakup, they have trouble finding jobs and depend on alimony, some as their sole support.
“There’s no consideration for a stay-at-home mom who has no work experience,” activist Cynthia Wheeler of Palm Beach County said.
Wheeler’s recent appearance in Tallahassee resulted in her being ejected from a Senate committee when she refused to leave the lectern. On Thursday, she again spoke over her allotted one minute and until two sergeants-at-arms turned off her microphone.
It’s the third time in recent years the Legislature has attempted to change Florida’s alimony law. A companion bill, sponsored by Republican Kelli Stargel of Lakeland, has not yet been heard in the Senate.
Another family-law bill moving this session is SB 250, sponsored by Brandon Republican Tom Lee, that would change state law on child-sharing. It would create an assumption that equal time-sharing for both parents after a divorce is in the best interest of a child.
We’re just inviting you to take a timeout into the rhythmic ambiance of our breakfast, brunch and/or coffee selections. We are happy whenever you stop by.
First Husbands Advocacy Group – Florida Alimony and Custody Laws Reform
Trujillo (R-Doral), Van Zant (R-Palatka), Watson, B. (D-Miami Gardens), Watson, C. (D-Gainesville), Williams (D-Tallahassee)
First Husbands Advocacy Group – Florida Alimony and Custody Laws Reform
Our current system of resolving child custody disputes rarely considers either children’s needs from children’s own perspective, or current research on child custody outcomes.
SB 668 PASSES THE HOUSE FLOOR AND HEADS TO GOVERNOR for 
Message from Alan Frisher – We Haven’t Won Yet – Contact Your Representatives
Florida Alimony Reform – Video Update on September 5, 2012
Circuit Judge
The writer cites extreme examples that very rarely happen in 
Perhaps the writer is a lawyer??
The big top show that is disguised as a legally binding and enforceable proceedings are actually killing families in a slow and painful process. Do you have any idea how devastating it feels when people, acting under the color of law, hold your children hostage while the huge railroad train called the judicial system runs you over? Then wondering every second of the day if your child is safe? It is torture for those 
When the children come to your show, you give them candy, teddy bears and 
It’s the third time in recent years the Legislature has attempted to change 
Family Court Reform 