I don't beleive lawyers, judges and the court allow you to speak freely. It ends up being yes and no answers and your not allowed to alberate on anything unless asked to. This in my opinion causes false knowledge to the court because the lawyers get to play these games with their clients and the other lawyers clients. It ends up being a game of who played the game best between lawyers and no one really listens to the parents or the children. They say its all about what is best for the child but it really is not. I went to court eight months ago and the judge told us he would probably get back to us by Friday. Many Fridays have passed and I am still getting charged each time for calling my lawyer to find out what is going on. My lawyer tells me its not uncommon for Judges to take their time and not to press the issue because we don't want to piss the judge off. Well guess what I'm pissed off. Court is a joke and so are the lawyers in it. I play nice because my family is important to me but wow I have put up with a lot of crap from the justice system and so has my daughter.

We were allowed to eloborate on all aspects of our concerns- because our attorney brought up our concerns in court- we won- but as you will see from my posts our situation is different- Now the cost of an attorney is high- we spent about 3,500$ on ours- but that was a small price to pay for getting full custody of the children. also I can call the paraleagal as much as I want and do not get charged for speaking to her. she still hears from me about twice a month.

we did it, but we had a whole lot going in our favor:

• our lawyer was very very good about packaging all information in a way that made presenting it to just in a way that made the judge much more willing to review the whole situation
• the judge was great. he took everything very seriously and requested a lot of proof, but that made me feel like he truly cared about making the right decision
• BM kept calling the court and had her boyfriend pretend to be her lawyer trying to submit counter-requests, and never bothered to show up to a single hearing

so the whole process crawled on for over 9 months with court dates continually getting rescheduled because she didn't show (my opinion - they should have just ruled when she didn't show the 2nd time!). Total cost was over $7,000, but VERY worth it. Now we have full custody and BM can't even leave the county with the kids (not that she has even bothered to see them in over 3 years!)

renee - *blend

It took us two years just to get a court date and then only seven days of court and now my ex and I are still waiting to hear from the judge eight months later. They say they just have too many cases to deal with. They have a different excuse every time. I spent so much money and have had so much stress over the court matter just to have my lawyer leave out over half my evidence. I feel so helpless for my daughter. She has to spend nights at her dad's house and she doesn't want to be there because he doesn't pay attention to her, they smoke in the house (she doesn't like to be around cigarette smoke), they fight in front of the kids and half the time he's dropping her off with someone else for the week-end just to say he has her. He admits this to me and the court and all I get from the court is he can do what he wants with his time with his daughter as long as she is taken care off. How sad is that. My daughter is five and asks me to write her dad a note like I would for her school to tell him she can't go there today. Of coarse I have to tell her I can't do that and try and reasure her she will have a good time at her dads and her dad loves her and wants to spend time with her too. She's five and very smart she will figure it out one day. I just hope she doesn't recent me for making her go there knowing what I know.