After 8 months of waiting, and 14 months of being put through hell by Stella, the custody trial finally took place the other day. What an experience that was. A good experience, but I had never actually seen a non-TV trial before. It was very interesting to actually be in the courtroom.
Guy's father and I were there to testify as witnesses if we had time. We ended up just sitting in the gallery the whole time, but that was enough. I really wanted to be there for him and be in the room to support him. I almost didn't get to do that, though.
Apparently there is a rule that can be invoked if either of the attorneys choose to invoke it - the Rule of Exclusion of Witnesses. The rule requires that, if invoked, witnesses be excluded from the courtroom so as not to have their testimony biased by anything else they might hear. Our attorney almost decided to use it, but a suggestion from me to Guy, and then a request from him to our lawyer, and we decided to see if Stella's lawyer would invoke it or not. After all, she had no witnesses, so we thought we would see what happened. Her lawyer didn't mention it, so ours didn't either and things went fine.
Since Guy beat Stella by filing for the modification of custody by about 90 minutes, our side got to go first. The Court Appointed Advisor testified first and actually said that after hearing what was going on at Stella's house, had she been there as a CPS worker (and she was a prior CPS worker) she would have removed the kids from the home! That was news to us. We knew that something over there wasn't right, but actually hearing a professional say that it was bad enough to warrant her wanting to have removed the kids immediately on a couple of counts was astonishing. Guy actually started tearing up when the CAA was testifying, just because she had mentioned that things had been especially hard on Johnny. For the first time, an officer of the court was saying that Johnny had actually been abused and that she believed it had happened. Granted, it wasn't "major" abuse, but the kid had gotten hot sauce purposefully put in his eyes, he remembered it, and he had also been spanked with something...the kid would never tell the CAA what...by Stella's loser boyfriend, and then both of the kids had seen said loser boyfriend attack Stella in a drunken rage. (Well, he and Stella were both drunk, but that certainly didn't help things.) At the very least, on the stand, our lawyer was able to get the CAA to define "substantiated" child abuse or "unsubstantiated" abuse. The difference is that "unsubstantiated" just means that there wasn't enough evidence to make the child abuse claims stick, not that child abuse never happened. All in all, the CAA's testimony reinforced that even if Stella were to finally break up with Skeezer, the CAA still believed that Stella would try and keep the guy around and that her decision-making ability was probably the biggest harm to the kids even though she herself was not a harm to them.
Then Guy got on the stand. He did so well! He was calm, and collected, the entire time. He and our lawyer hit on all of the major points (except the fact that Marsha was registered at the new school under her legal last name - Stella's maiden name - for the first time EVER). The judge actually stopped Guy a couple of times for clarification, but he didn't seem concerned about anything, just wanting to make sure things were as clear as they appeared. Or at least that was my impression.
When Stella finally got up on the stand, she literally started wringing her hands and attempting to sob while she sat up there and accused Guy of having tried to rape her 3 1/2 years ago just before she filed for divorce. Of course, when our lawyer asked her where her police reports were, Stella just replied, literally sounding like a ditz, "I didn't file any..." When Stella's lawyer cross-examined her as to why she never brought any of this up before, she started wiping her fingers over her forehead and saying that she didn't want to have to go through telling the story again in court and that she was looking after the best interests of the kids. What? I can't believe that line of reasoning even made sense inside her head.
The end result of the day was that Stella was found in contempt for having violated Guy's parenting time with the kids over fall break, and for not having taken Johnny to an eye doctor in a more reasonable time frame. She was ordered to pay partial attorney's fees, relating to those contempt charges, but our lawyer was advised to hold off on filing for those fees until a final custody decision was made in case he wanted to award more or less... Then he took the matter under advisement and now we're still waiting. Stella has actually been really nice to us since court. She'd better be after what happened, but still, it's a little uncharacteristic.
So now we're just still waiting. It's been 3 weeks and I'm going crazy. I also just found out that Stella ran back into court 4 days after trial and tried to get an order of protection against Skeezer. Whether she succeeded or not, I won't know until tomorrow. All I can do, though, is hope that what we presented was enough. I'm praying that the judge has eyes so that he can see that leaving the kids in Stella's care is absolutely the worst thing for them long-term.
Then Guy got on the stand. He did so well! He was calm, and collected, the entire time. He and our lawyer hit on all of the major points (except the fact that Marsha was registered at the new school under her legal last name - Stella's maiden name - for the first time EVER). The judge actually stopped Guy a couple of times for clarification, but he didn't seem concerned about anything, just wanting to make sure things were as clear as they appeared. Or at least that was my impression.
When Stella finally got up on the stand, she literally started wringing her hands and attempting to sob while she sat up there and accused Guy of having tried to rape her 3 1/2 years ago just before she filed for divorce. Of course, when our lawyer asked her where her police reports were, Stella just replied, literally sounding like a ditz, "I didn't file any..." When Stella's lawyer cross-examined her as to why she never brought any of this up before, she started wiping her fingers over her forehead and saying that she didn't want to have to go through telling the story again in court and that she was looking after the best interests of the kids. What? I can't believe that line of reasoning even made sense inside her head.
The end result of the day was that Stella was found in contempt for having violated Guy's parenting time with the kids over fall break, and for not having taken Johnny to an eye doctor in a more reasonable time frame. She was ordered to pay partial attorney's fees, relating to those contempt charges, but our lawyer was advised to hold off on filing for those fees until a final custody decision was made in case he wanted to award more or less... Then he took the matter under advisement and now we're still waiting. Stella has actually been really nice to us since court. She'd better be after what happened, but still, it's a little uncharacteristic.
So now we're just still waiting. It's been 3 weeks and I'm going crazy. I also just found out that Stella ran back into court 4 days after trial and tried to get an order of protection against Skeezer. Whether she succeeded or not, I won't know until tomorrow. All I can do, though, is hope that what we presented was enough. I'm praying that the judge has eyes so that he can see that leaving the kids in Stella's care is absolutely the worst thing for them long-term.
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