I have finally managed to divorce my ex husband, and now we are going through the custody battle from hell. In a nutshell, we were married 5 years, have a 6 year old son, who I have financially and emotionally supported all 6 years of his life. In the marriage the ex was verbally, emotionally and physically abusive to me, which was witnessed by our son. I left him with our son and since then he has threatened me constantly and is currently trying to break up my new relationship. We were divorced Dec 2008. In October 2008 I needed to have him changed with assault, mischief, uttering death threats and numerous breaches of his undertakings and release conditions. I will be a witness in trial for those charges in August 2009. We are also in the family court, because I got a restraining order against him and after 6 months, a judge gave him supervised access for 4 hours by his family. Needless to say, his family never supervised the access visits, and the ex has been emotionally abusing my son and threatening me through him. It got to a point where the ex's entire family would spend virtually all of the time with my son talking negatively about me and our court case. Obviously this is not acceptable for a 6 year old. I got an immediate motion to take away the ex's access as our son is now talking suicide if he has to be around his father and is depressed. Counsellors have confirmed this. The judge ordered the OCL come in and investigate. The OCL recommended sole custody to me, no access unless he has a complete mental health evaluation, attends anger management and parenting classes. They also recommended an on-going restraining order between myself and him.
The ex is now disputing the OCL report and is refusing to adhere to the recommendations. he has been paying for his lawyer through legal aid, and I of course do not qualify. My question is will legal aid cut him off eventually, and at what point will they cut him off? We have a case conference on April 30th and it looks as though it will be very nasty. If a judge feels that he will not win if he wants to take it to trial, will leagl aid still cover him?
...and lastly what do you think my chances are of having sole custody with no access allowed to my ex?
The ex is now disputing the OCL report and is refusing to adhere to the recommendations. he has been paying for his lawyer through legal aid, and I of course do not qualify. My question is will legal aid cut him off eventually, and at what point will they cut him off? We have a case conference on April 30th and it looks as though it will be very nasty. If a judge feels that he will not win if he wants to take it to trial, will leagl aid still cover him?
...and lastly what do you think my chances are of having sole custody with no access allowed to my ex?
Comment