Monday, May 06, 2013

Untimely FOAH submitted

My ex-wife just send me proposed "Findings and Order After Hearing" for a couple court hearings over a year ago. The first said:
Proceeding on August 10, 2011 at 10:30 Dept. C
IT IS ORDERED:

CUSTODY:
The court shall grant temporary sole legal and physical custody of minors [Mary AngryDad] and [Jenny AngryDad] to Juiie Travers, Petitioner. There shall be no modification to the custody order for two (2) years.

VISITATION:
The parties are provided with the Court Supervised Visitation Provider list. Mother has selected four (4) supervisors from the list, Father shall call one of them and begin supervised visits with the minor children. Mother shall provide the girls schedule to Father; Supervised visitation shall be at Mother's discretion and at the minor's request. Father shall contact the professionally supervisor and set up the supervised visits. Father shall provide Mother all his available dates for supervised visits.

CONTEMPT:
Father withdraws his time waiver at this time and his last date for trial is September 26, 2011. All briefs and responses are due by September 2, 2011. Father is advised he can obtain counsel for the contempt proceedings.
The contempt charge was for posting info about the case on this blog. I had to remove several (accurate) quotes as a result of the contempt hearing. I think that it was a denial of my free speech rights, as I was only reporting on court evidence used against me.

The second said:
Proceeding on January 4,2012 at 1:30 Dept. C

FINDINGS AND ORDERS:

The Court finds that there is no change of circumstance and that the prior order of 8/10/11 states that there shall be no modification to the custody and visitation orders of 8/10/11 for a period of 2 years.

Petitioner, Julie Jae Travers, shall continue to have sole legal and physical custody of the minors, [Mary AngryDad] and [Jenny AngryDad]. Respondent, George AngryDad, is to have supervised visitation at the discretion of the Petitioner.

The Respondent shall continue with supervised visitation and contact the other 2 remaining professional supervisors on the list or 2 more approved by Petitioner about resuming supervised visitation with the minors.

The Court notes that Dr. Perlmutter has declined to do a brief update on the status due to negative statements made by Respondent on his blog and C.J. Neustadter has declined to continue with the supervised visitation due to Respondent's failure to comply with the rules and regulations pertaining to the supervision.

Respondent's request for modification of custody and visitation is denied.
Not exactly. Perlmutter was unhappy that I reported his ethics violations. Neustadter did not accuse me of refusing to comply with any rules.

The problem with Neustadter is that she kept putting false and derogatory allegations in her reports. For example, we went to a climbing gym for one supervised visit, and my kids had a lesson scheduled. While they were waiting for the lesson to start, I told them to climb on the "boulder" that was provided for the purpose. Neustadter wrote in her report that I was violating the gym rules to tell them to climb on the boulder. There was no such rule. She could have just asked anyone at the gym, and they would have told her that the boulder was for such climbing. A sign on the boulder even said so. However I asked Neustadter to correct her report, and she refused.

Neustadter was also horrible with kids. I did not like her around my kids because of her negative attitude. And I did not like her over-opinionated reports. She told me that she like to put at least one negative thing in each report, because that makes her sound more credible. I tolerated her for a while, but when she refused to correct objectively false statements, she became intolerable.

I mention this at yet another false Neustadter allegation is going on the court record, and she will not do anything about it. I have tried to avoid criticizing her, but she leaves me no choice.

I don't know why my ex-wife is submitting this paperwork at this time.

The cover letter said:
April 30, 2013
RE: AngryMom v. AngryDad
FOAH for January 4,2012 hearing ...

Enclosed, please find the Findings and Order After Hearing in the above-entitled matter. Please sign where indicated and return in the envelope enclosed for your convenience.

If we do not receive a response from you within five days of the date of this letter per California Rules of Court Rule 391(a), the proposed order will be submitted to the court for the Judge's signature.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Julie Travers
My 5 days were already up when I got the letter. There was no enclosed envelope.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Court website says the FOAH were returned to Julie Travers on 4/26 due to no signature of Respondent. If her letter was dated 4/30, then five days would've been yesterday, a Sunday. Do you mean you got this in the mail today? I'd save the envelope you got this in with the postmark. Do you have any disagreement that those were the findings? It isn't about whether you liked the order, just whether that was what was ordered. If you don't agree, respond to your ex-wife today and call the clerk to intercept any filing.

She may be taking this step now in anticipation of filing a motion for a permanent change in custody at the two-year mark on the basis of no visitation during that time. On the other hand, you could probably file your own OSC and set a court date for August. You've previously expressed outrage at getting only supervised visitation, but isn't it in your and your children's best interest for you to avail yourself of that? Unlike many dads, you have the money. I'd go with Ruth Brittany, but get the rules of the supervised visits in writing and stay within them.

If your ex-wife doesn't allow any visits, she'll look bad. But if you don't try for any visits, you'll look bad.

Anonymous said...

Another thing -- at the bottom of this web page

http://www.courts.ca.gov/cms/rules/index.cfm?title=three&linkid=rule3_1312

it says, "Rule 3.1312 amended effective January 1, 2011; adopted as rule 391 effective July 1, 1992; previously amended effective July 1, 2000; previously amended and renumbered effective January 1, 2007."

So your ex-wife is using a law book from before 2007 with Rule 391. But current Rule 3.1312(d) says if the prevailing party fails to prepare and submit a proposed order within five days of the ruling, any other party may do so.

You can prepare the FOAH yourself, but you'd better study the minute orders from those court dates or get copies like she did.

George said...

Thanks for this. I did not know about that rule. The mail was delivered Saturday, but I did not get it out of the mailbox until Sunday.

Her FOAH is just a copy of the minute order. The minute orders are always sloppy. I am not sure it makes a difference to have a minute order copied to a regular order.

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure either. It might matter if she moves the children to a different county or state.

George said...

My ex-wife just informed me by email that she is just tying up loose ends, and not planning a court motion. So false alarm, I guess.

My usual policy is to just report on public court filings, and not private communications. I am making an exception in this case because she appears to be correcting a false impression left by the blog.

Anonymous said...

Well, she filed her FOAH yesterday. I suppose we'll hear about it if anything else ever happens in this case.

Anonymous said...

I am still in the process of my divorce and on 2 occassions (the first I was actually being represented, albeit by a corrupt attorney), opposing counsel filed the FOAH without a signature from my side. In the first filing, where I or my attorney were designated to sign, a stamp was placed which reads " In accordance with CRC 5.125" and underneath is my former attorney's name marked as 'attorney for the Petitioner.' I am the Respondent so why would he be stated as my husband's attorney? After relieving this attorney I was financially forced to appear in Pro Per at our last hearing on 8/22. That FOAH was filed by opposing counsel without my prior review or signature. Again in place of my signature is the stamped "In accordance with CRC 5.125" and this time only the box is marked 'Respondent' without my name stated. Both filings were served to me After the clerk's filing stamp was rendered. The Commissioner's stamped name had been placed pre-filing with the court. How is that possible? After her judicial review, the Commissioner's signature appears on the line and the original stamp of her name has somehow moved below the signature line. No cover letter or declaration of attempts to serve me for my approval was included with the FOAH court filing. How is corruption and forgery continuously allowed like this?