My report was court-ordered

To support my motion for custody and visitation, I attached a couple of evaluation reports. My ex-wife's brief mainly complains that I was wrong to imply that they were court-ordered. She also complains that I paid to have these reports done.

Yes, of course I paid them. They would not work for free!

When Judge Thomas Kelly ordered one of these evaluations at a child custody trial in Mar. 25, 2005, I asked him for a clarification. Here is what he said, referring to that list of five professionals:

THE COURT: Right, with one of these these people will help me get a sense of you more than I can get from just an hour on the stand or something. These are really skilled people. They're there to help their clients. They're not there to snitch to the Court for returning fees. These people are really good. That's why they're on the list and they will have a sense of you that they can communicate back to me that might give Mother, give me the assurance that we can go right to D and get you guys back on a fifty fifty time line here. So that's what I need to see is something from those therapists, something from a co parent counselor and the counseling classes. And that's the recipe here to - for you to - get what you would want and for Mother to have what she wants, which is the peace of mind and assurance that things are going well with the kids.

It turned that only one of those five professionals was willing to do it, and I hired her. So there would be no misunderstanding, I showed her the written court order as well as a transcript of Judge Kelly's explanation. She followed the instructions precisely.

My ex-wife has been complaining about this evaluation ever since. In her brief, she says:

She was not permitted to testify, as she had obtained and read the CPS report in violation of the Court orders and the law. Furthermore, the Court pointed out that her prior 2005 report was not Court ordered. (Reporter's Transcript for the January 4, 2008 hearing, pages 1584-1595)

It is true that Cmr. Irwin Joseph refused to let her testify in 2008. The reason he gave was that her report was a couple of years old, and that she had seen the CPS testimony that was given in open court.

Cmr. Joseph's explanation did not make any sense, because a week later, he gave a decision in which he cited an even older report from a gay shrink who said that I was "unorthodox". And it is not true that my witness was accused of violating a court order. Cmr. Joseph only issued the order to seal the CPS testimony after he dismissed my witness. It was perfectly obvious that Cmr. Joseph was just inventing a phony excuse to prevent me from having a rebuttal witness.

At any rate, Cmr. Joseph did not know whether the report was court-ordered or not. He was not on the court at the time. It was Judge Kelly who issued the order. I showed Cmr. Joseph the order, but he ignored it. All he knows is that my ex-wife says that the report was not court-ordered, and he mindlessly repeats what she says.

Now we have a new judge. He probably won't even care whether the previous reports were court-ordered or not. It only mattered before because my ex-wife and Cmr. Joseph were desperate to cook up phony excuses for ignoring the report. The new judge may not be so prejudiced.