It Never Rains In The Courthouse But It Pours Down On Me

The expression “it never rains but it pours” basically means the large problems we face never come alone. When we’re given one situation which tests our patience and resolve, there’s generally another one coming. The rainfalls we face are more often than not the type which lead to levees failing.

So far July has been a deluge worthy of a Class-4 hurricane. Last Thursday my girlfriend and I were in Ottawa at the General Hospital meeting with the High Risk Pregnancy Team, where it was decided my girlfriend will undergo a procedure called a “Cervical Cerclage”. Tuesday was the first court date for her divorce from her Soon-To-Be-Ex-Husband (STBEH), today (Wednesday) was her son’s first dentist appointment, this weekend she moves apartments, and early next week she has the operation to have the cerclage implanted.

The Tuesday court date was supposed to be simple and quick. My girlfriend wasn’t expected to attend, and her STBEH hadn’t responded to any of the paperwork sent to him, so no one expected him to be there either. The outcome was foregone and expected.

Which is why it made complete sense when I ran into STBEH on the courtroom steps and found out we were a half hour late for the proceedings, thanks to a mistake made in her lawyer’s office.

I had convinced my girlfriend just being in the courtroom during the proceedings would be therapeutic. She’s still living with one foot in her previous life, the life where screaming at each other and threatening each other was how property rights were determined.

The life where she still believes STBEH has some mythical power of persuasion which gets him anything he wants.

Over the weekend my girlfriend was actually getting ready to give up, to concede to this STBEH power. She has never lived in a world where legal authority counted for anything. STBEH and his friends live marginal lives, they live below the poverty level, they’re constantly involved in low-level criminal acts, they deal drugs so they can afford beer.

They live in a world of such limitations, of boundaries that are so closed, that it makes sense a charisma-challenged, illiterate, high school dropout, absentee father can be a leader, an authority figure.

When she left him they made a verbal agreement regarding child support and custody. Neither of which he has lived up to, in fact he has never paid a dime in support. Since then she has spent at least one day a week yelling and imploring him to either take their son when he promised, and for as long as he promised. She totally gave up on receiving monetary support all together.

It never occurred to her the legal system could help her on both accounts. So over the weekend we sat on my balcony, and after telling me about her doubts I did my best to explain to her how having a legal decision would fix most of the things wrong in her life regarding STBEH.

So she made the decision to attend, because I convinced her the best way to burn the myths she lives under was to be in the room when a judge handed her all of the power she’d ever need:

Sole custody, and child support and supervised visits for STBEH.

But when we got to the courthouse the system let her down just enough to get her fears back into play. The first person we saw was STBEH. He was filling out some forms, and told us the proceedings had been adjourned until August. We were, he said, a half hour late.

It took another half hour to figure out what went wrong. During which time I had to drag my girlfriend around the courthouse because she was ready to concede defeat and just get the fuck out. I forced her to to call her lawyer’s office, he wasn’t there so she hung up. I gave her another fifty cents and told her to leave a message this time.

We asked several people at the administration desks if they knew where her lawyer was, but they had no idea… so, of course, they hesitated about two seconds before saying “he left”.

Then I went to find the actual courtroom, to see what was on the docket. She found it first, saw her name listed at 9.30am, which was a half hour earlier than on the form from her lawyer’s office, and just sagged and started to head for the car. Which, to me, would have meant another long month of her believing STBEH had some power over her.

So again I went back, and this time I found the dude whose job it is to make sure the right people were in the courtroom, and I asked if her lawyer was still in the building.

And, miracle of miracles, that’s how we found her lawyer.

According to him everything is going her way. Her STBEH is an idiot who is representing himself. Everything would have been decided that morning but the judge is giving STBEH ten days to present the court with financial documents which will decide the amount of child support.

Otherwise my girlfriend will be getting sole custody, and the right to demand supervised visitation, and a bunch of other stuff. There’s also a house which will have to be sold and she’ll get most of that money as well.

Later that night my girlfriend’s friends started texting her about stuff STBEH was posting about the case on his Facebook account. Again she panicked. But according to what he’s been writing he honestly has no idea what’s about to happen to him. Which makes sense, he’s still living in that tiny bubble.

I do not understand how or why, when soon-to-be-ex-husbands enter into a contract with the mother of their children, they can just somehow lose track of their responsibilities as a father. I do not fucking understand that one little bit.

My father was ordered by a court back in 1978 to pay either $25 or $50 per week in child support — not alimony — until my brother and I were eighteen. So basically ten years. He never sent a fucking dime. There are laws now which make it almost impossible for a parent to not support their child, but there has to be a court order. That’s what I was trying to get across to my girlfriend.

This post and the last one were mostly about the deluge I’ve been facing with my girlfriend. But there are problems I’ve also been facing on my own as well.

That will be the next post.

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