Recapping the judge's actions

I am still trying to figure out why acting judge Irwin Joseph would sign an order taking my kids from me. Let me review his role in the case.

Julie filed for divorce from me four years ago, and we signed a marital settlement agreement splitting custody of our two kids 50-50. Within months, Julie was sleeping with her boyfriend (that she later married) and finishing up her license to be a California lawyer. Then Julie hired a new lawyer and filed a motion for sole legal custody of the kids. She managed to get primary custody temporarily based on an assortment of bogus domestic violence and child neglect allegations.

We had a full custody trial, her allegations were all refuted, and the judge ordered us back to equally shared custody. But before the order went into effect, the judge had an accident and Commissioner Irwin Joseph took over the local family court. He delayed the order for six months while he sent us out for computer-generated Rorschach Inkblot tests and other nonsense. He never gave any explanation for it.

Comm. Joseph never showed any interest in the kids at all. His biggest concern seemed to be making sure that Julie's ex-lawyer got paid. Miss Gray had run up bills of $54,000, mostly for legal work supporting the phony accusations that were refuted at trial. Comm. Joseph even ordered me to pay one $6,500 bill twice, and to pay a $10k bill when I could prove that Miss Gray falsified the supporting declaration.

I am trying to make sure that I always use the judge's name with his proper title, which I think is "Commissioner". The one time that Comm. Joseph scolded me in court was when I submitted a brief referring to the lawyer Miss Gray as just "Gray". He seemed to think that I was trying to show disrespect, and told me that I should always include her title, such as Miss Gray or Ms. Gray.

We still have some pending financial matters in Comm. Joseph's court. An appellate court has ruled that his child support orders violate the law, and he has to revise those. Julie also has some other monetary demands that she has yet to detail.

So Comm. Joseph has had us in his court for over two years, and has a file with about seven reports from court shrinks and other supposed experts. None of them said that I had any psychological disorders or anything like that. I would have thought that Comm. Joseph would at least let me give my side of the story, or wait for the CPS report. I can only assume that Comm. Joseph just rubber-stamps any such emergency ex-parte request from a mom for custody.

Just before going over to the court to tell Comm. Joseph that notice could not be given to me, Julie sent me this email:

I cancelled [our child’s] parent teacher conference for obvious reasons. I’m going to reschedule it for next week. I’ll let you know the date and time. I told the school that I would email you about canceling the conference.

I was puzzled by her mention of "obvious reasons" (and by the school calling to ask why we didn't show up for the conference). The reasons are obvious now, and she sure didn't tell Comm. Joseph that I could have just come to court instead of to the school meeting.