Dragged out another 3 months!! OMG. The poor kids. And the kids get caught in between. The court system could definitely be improved. I know the judges mean well, but there is so much red tape and the attorney garbage. They do have to make decisions based on limited info which is sad sometimes.
I was in court only twice and I defended myself both times and won. Once in a small claims court for a landlord-tenant case (my tenant trashed my house and wanted me to give him his security deposit back) and then my divorce. At least in WA, it was fairly easy to learn the court system. Divorce affects about half of all marriages. I am surprised more people don't learn the basics so the attorneys don't take them to the cleaners. Except in rare cases, all those jokes about lawyers are true. Bottom-feeders, etc... I am sure there are many exceptions, all you lawyers out there!
I was on jury duty about 3-4 times, was a juror on about 4 cases, and I do respect the system though...It is the best in the world.
Hang in there, Libby. Those kids need people like you.;)
We have two regular ad litums for our kids in this county. One of them is very committed to what she does and spends a lot of time getting to know the kids and spending time with them in their environment. She is right on top of things that are going on in her cases. She is a full time attorney ad litum. The other, which happens to be the ad litum in this case, is in private practice and acts as ad litum for kids on the side. She has almost no contact with the kids except for a few minutes prior to the hearings. She is not familiar with a lot of the history in most of these cases and she has no day in and day out interaction with the kids, the parents, the foster parents, the schools, the therapists, etc. Then she goes in and makes recommendations that totally throws the case off track...in the WRONG direction. Just really p*sses me off. Our attorney spent the better part of 2 hours diffusing me yesterday...and that was after I took a Xanax.
When I am making my recommendations to the court, I give a lot of weight to others' opinions in a case when I feel they either have more knowledge of the history, or the kids, or that they are more qualified in a specific area, for whatever reason. I have no problem with deferring to the judgement of someone else if they are able to make a reasonable case for their position. But in this case, the two people (not counting the parents' attorney) who know the least about the case are the ones that had the greatest influence on yesterday's outcome, and that was just not a good decision.