Mother frustrated with family court

[logicalvelocity]

Originally Posted by Grover

We are going through the respective societies, but my opinion is, if they broke the law rather than just acting unethically, I want them charged. I'm prepared to spend some time on this and to make a noise about it. I know that this has happened to others, but I want someone with the authority to charge them to explain why they don't do this, and then I'll see if the media are interested. I might be wasting my time, but considering the slow pace of the system, time is available. It isn't just about making organizational changes or combining divorce & family courts, it's about oversight, follow-up, and clear rules with consequences for breaking them. That would streamline the process and help everyone, except perhaps the lawyers. I'm not under the illusion that I'm going to change the system, but I want to at least make some noise and affect those who did wrong so that at least they might not do the same thing again.

I think all you could do at this point in time is write a formal complaint with the regulating body of each professional. The heavy onus is on the person making the complaint to prove such conduct. To me its effort that could be focused on the centre of the adjudication that being the child.

[Grover]

When the mother has the child (I live with her) we spend the entire time with her. We take her to do things in and around the area, cycling, parks, amusement parks, water parks, educational places, swimming, fishing, cottage. We make sure she does her homework. Her friends are welcome in the home and on some outings. We enrolled her in music lessons. We play games with her and watch movies with her but we don't use the TV as a babysitter. The child enjoys her time with us.

The time spent on trying to change the system or have the lawyer & doctor reprimanded is when the child is not with us (she is not with us 71% of the time). I don't know what we can do to 'focus on the child' with respect to the custody and court. The child is well fed and clothed, and is exposed to educational and entertaining things, and is loved.

[Grover]

We filed a complaint against the ex's lawyer with the Law Society and against the psychiatrist with the College of Physicians and Surgeons. A representative from the CPS called and said that the lawyer should not have suppressed the report but the psychiatrist did not have to release the information to Betty. We don't think it should be this way, though the person from the CPS seemed concerned that we wanted to get money from the psychiatrist. He suggested that perhaps they could get the psychiatrist to apologise. In the mean time, the psychiatrist responded to another written request and sent us a copy of his draft report, which had been provided to Betty's ex's lawyer in May 2006. This proves that this lawyer knew that no mental illness was found when she cancelled the final report. We updated our complaint with the Law Society.

We also sent a letter to the Ombudsman. The OCL investigation is almost done. I'm wondering if we agree to an amount of time in the disclosure meeting, does that preclude or prevent the Ombudman from changing things later?

[catchison]

The Toronto Star has had several articles about the foolishness in family law. The Reporter was Susan Pigg. She might be willing to do an article about this case. You could google her articles.
If you have any luck in civil court let me know, as I know another person who also had a lawyer and Doctor suppress evidence of a wife claiming to be disabled, unable to work, while she was in fact running a business. As soon as she won her case and a huge support payment, she launched her completed web site for her already established business. Since she is getting 50% of his income, now she makes more than him. He also got all her legal bills and retroactive arrears charged, went bankrupt, and is financially destroyed, she has the house, and life is grand. It would be great if he could sue them all but he is broke, and the FRO is threatening to put him in jail for nonpayment of arrears (which he can't afford)
Good luck.

[Grover]

The father was taken to task for his tactics and agreed to joint-shared custody in the winter of 2009. The psychiatrist was cautioned by the College of physicians & surgeons and the complaint against the father's first lawyer is ongoing. The child is happier now. Still working to change the system. We want the law changed so that there is no litigation privilege attached to third party reports, and so that reports cannot be cancelled once a court order is obtained.