I talked to someone with a lot of expertise in CPS investigations. He also claimed to have a lot of experience with the local family court also. He said that I have no chance. For one thing, CPS social worker Sally Mitchell and Comm. Irwin Joseph will never admit to being wrong. Second, any attempt to prove them wrong will only be taken as a failure to accept responsibility for my behavior! That is, the facts could be entirely in my favor, but Comm. Joseph would rule against me anyway.
He also said that it was no use trying to convince Comm. Joseph that giving the kids chores to do was reasonable. As long as the kids perceived the chores as being more than they wanted to do, then I would be blamed for causing them stress by asking them to do the chores. The only hope was to somehow get into counseling with the kids. If I could somehow get the kids to concede, in counseling, that they would be willing to do some chores, then perhaps after six months the counselor might write a report to the judge that doing the chores was not so annoying to the kids anymore. Maybe with a series of good reports like that, Comm. Joseph might be willing to let me have another couple of hours per week of supervised visitation.
He was adamant that it was completely hopeless to try to convince Comm. Joseph that it is acceptable to occasionally ask the kids to help with the dishes. Comm. Joseph, he said, does not have the foggiest idea how to evaluate a common parenting issue like that. All he would do would be to rely on CPS, and CPS has already committed itself to me being a bad parent.
The more I find out about family court, the worse it is.
1 comment:
Do you think that if you broke down the time it takes to do the "chores" you are making the children responsible vs. the leisure time they have, maybe they'll see it isn't such a horrible thing? I'm a noncustodial mother and one time my son took issue with chores. When I broke it down how much time he had to spend on chores vs. how much leisure time he had, my son realized I wasn't being unreasonable. I think it's about convincing the children. I think you're being a responsible parent as well. Children need structure in their life.
I'd be curious to find out what chores they are responsible for at their mother's home. I think family court is completely unfair to noncustodial parents and a produces a huge financial burden on the noncustodial parent to prove their worthy of being a parent to their child(ren).
I wish you the best of luck in getting through this. Your children need you just as much as you need them in your life. I hope the court system realizes this one day.
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