Posted on 06/14/2006 4:23:59 AM PDT by ProCivitas
Injured Reno judge popular target for angry parents By ANGIE WAGNER ASSOCIATED PRESS
A lot of people don't like Chuck Weller, and to some it was no surprise when he was shot Monday in the chest as he stood near a third-floor courthouse window.
As a family court judge in Reno, Nev., Weller decides how to split up families and who should pay the most child support. And when he rules against a parent in the volatile world of family court justice, he sometimes is regarded as the enemy.
Local businessman Darren Mack, who had recent court dealings with the judge after a divorce, was identified by police as a "person of interest" in the case. Weller, 53, remained hospitalized in serious condition.
A bully. Hitler. Abusive.
Weller was vilified on several Web sites critical of family court judges. Fathers, in particular, were harsh, with one calling him the worst judge in America.
Garret Idle went before Weller in May 2005 seeking to increase his visitation time with his two children. Instead, he said, Weller slammed him for more child support and didn't listen to any of his concerns about his son and daughter.
"Weller is very abusive. He's a monster," Idle, 48, said. "He's destroyed everything I've worked for."
Weller, a married father of two daughters, graduated from Georgetown Law in 1978 and moved to Reno in 1982. Two years later, he entered private practice and mostly handled divorce and custody cases.
He hosted a legal advice program for a few years on the radio and wrote a legal column for the Reno Gazette-Journal.
To Dan Mason, program director at KOH AM 780, Weller was easygoing and hardly controversial.
"Chuck is a fantastic guy. He was a very friendly guy, very easy to get along with, very warm on the radio," Mason said.
Weller ran for and was elected as one of three family court judges in Reno in 2004, saying he was a good communicator who could help move families through the legal system.
"You can do good work in the court," he told the Reno Gazette-Journal in October 2004. "There are a percentage of cases that are hopeless, but it's a small percentage."
Fellow attorney Ken McKenna, who has known Weller for more than 20 years, described Weller as an efficient, no-nonsense judge, qualities that some mistake for being abrupt or harsh.
"Family law is the most volatile, emotional area of law," he said. "People's lives are being affected to the core of their beings. Mothers are being taken away from the children. Children are being taken away from their fathers. People tend to lose their reasonableness and they act irrational. It is a very scary situation."
Bonnie Russell, founder of http://www.FamilyLawCourts.com , said family courts operate much like Halliburton, unregulated and out of control. Sometimes the consequence can turn deadly.
One emotional posting on the site http://www.courthouseforum.com said this about Weller: "I am not sure monster describes him accurately. Judge Chuck Weller in my belief suffers from 'God complex' and possibly other things as well."
Numerous Internet postings described how Weller makes decisions before he hears cases, is unsympathetic and rules like a tyrant.
The state Commission on Judicial Discipline accepts complaints on judges, but does not publicly acknowledge them unless it acts upon them. The commission has not acted against Weller.
But Idle has had enough of Weller and said he isn't sympathetic.
"I think karma finally came back to bite him," Idle said. "Hopefully Weller will have a change of heart in the way he deals with human beings."
Here we go again. It the woman is a b*tch, its his fault for marrying her. If something goes wrong, its his fault for everything.
Its all the 'males' fault.
Tell me, why do you hate men so much?
You have a bad experience?
It has nothing to do with gender- it is your responsibility to pick a reasonable person to marry and have children with. If you choose not to, don't expect the courts to wave a magic wand to make a jerk not a jerk or a b*tch not a b*tch. A spouse who is willing to spare no expense to be vindictive can often be beyond the power of the courts to control. In addition, that person is your child's other parent for life- they can't divorce him or her.
Didn't you get the memo? All husbands are lying, cheating demons. Women are so innocent and just can't help themselves when any man, other than her husband, comes around.
"There is justice when you have a fair judge."
***
True. I don't know about the accusations against this judge in Reno. But for a lot of years, judges routinely sided with the wife/mother in these matters. This goes back to the time when women often did not work outside the home and had little or no income. But now that a large number of women do have their own income (and sometimes more than the menfolk), I see no viable reason to bleed the husband/father for child support. And absent any danger such as drug abuse, child molestation and the like, or a deliberate attempt to evade child support altogether, there is no dang good reason for any woman to deny the father the right to have a relationship with the children. Judges need to change their attitudes toward the parties in these cases. Some have. I've seen considerable progress in that regard, but more has to be done.
And certainly this judge in Reno or any judge who takes bribes or commits any other deliberate impropriety ought to be bounced off the bench and jailed.
Correct. It's not his fault that she's a terrible person, it's his fault for being stupid enough to marry a terrible person.
Is your argument, on a conservative forum no less, that people bear no responsibility for the stupid decisions they make?
If something goes wrong, its his fault for everything.
The only way you can pretend to have a rational argument is to keep it vague: "something" went wrong.
Guess what - in 50% of divorces, the reason for the marriage's failure is squarely in the husband's column.
Its all the 'males' fault.
Maybe that's your view of things: it certainly isn't mine.
Tell me, why do you hate men so much?
I see: because I'm a real man who knows how to keep a wife and have a successful marriage, I must hate the sissy losers who can't. I don't hate them. I'm just sick of their whining.
There's nothing more tiring than having to listen to some sad sack I know who is enraged about his divorce proceedings and crying about his custody, his alimony, etc.
Hey, remember when I told you that a woman who dresses you down in public and throws a bottle at you in a restaurant is crazy and that you should dump her? Don't come whining to me when you ignore my advice, marry her and then lose your shirt.
Hey, remember when I told you that I don't care how hot that girl in your office is, you'd better just leave it alone? Don't come crying to me when the PI your wife hires tracks her down.
You and so many alleged "adults" in America need to grow up - your failures are your fault and nobody else's.
This is absurd.
If we had crystal balls, or we could read minds, or have some kind of magic happy dust that we could use to know the future, or see how people ARE GOING TO change and what they will change into, then I'd agree with you.
But since none of that exists, and we have to go with what we've got, this whole line of reasoning is just as dumb as dirt.
Tell me - do you have any control over how your spouse changes over the years in mental outlook ? The answer is no.
Don't make the mistake of assuming that a decision like who to marry, made with the best of intentions in your early 20s (or thereabouts), can possibly be 100% guaranteed to hold up over 20,40,60 years of marriage. If it does, that's great, but despite the best intentions of many, marriages do fail.
The courts should not facilitate one spouse's ability to ruin another's life, not to mention the kids'.
Challenge.
Do you consider that child abuse as well? (I thought not)
It's interesting that you can't even answer your own questions correctly.
Cheating on your spouse is child abuse, pure and simple. If you cheat on your spouse, you are a horrible parent and you hate your own children.
I remember you now.
You are the REAL MAN who never has problems with the little lady. And all us other LESSER WIMPS are just whiners.
Hope you never end up in divorce court. You will get your ass handed to you. You are a complete ignoramous until then.
My home was a broken home. The other parent can near divorce the child, by neglect, and by lavishing time, energy, love, on the non-biologically related other family he or she gloms on to. Actions have consequences. My absent parent is finding that out. "His" boys don't want her. Fed up, I don't either. She's on her own. Good luck! :-D
It should be an 11th commandment to take care of your own biological children EXCLUSIVELY. Sad that such common sense should have to be enumerated.
My recommendation would be to enact a law saying that the married without children can divorce anytime, but, and except in cases of physical and or psychological abuse, married with children cannot divorce UNTIL the youngest child is 21. What a shitty world we live in.
BTW I enjoy a great deal the new show that is out: shalom in the home, on TLC the learning channel, on Monday nights. This guy is on to something.
Right. And if that behavior starts long after you married and had children ????
According to you, there is no way of knowing the heart and mind of a spouse, which is ridiculous. Lots of people, yes particularly women, see the warning signs but choose to act solely on their feelings. Then they come to the divorce court expecting a judge, who has maybe a few days a best to learn about your case, to make everything right again.
If you were misled by your spouse's character despite knowing him or her for ten years, why do you expect a judge to be able to see through them in three hours?
By "little lady" I presume you mean "wife." Of course my wife and I disagree about stuff all the time. But we sit down, we each make our case, and we come to a decision. Like adults do.
You see, I married a mentally stable, responsible, educated person with strong religious values and clear goals about what she wants in life.
So, since we have the same values and want the same things out of life, any disagreements we have can generally be negotiated quickly without any bad blood.
And all us other LESSER WIMPS are just whiners.
That's basically been my experience, yes. The guys I know who are divorced are generally short-term thinkers, weak-minded individuals who have made really stupid decisions in either the person they decided to marry or their behavior after they got married.
Hope you never end up in divorce court.
Don't worry. I never will.
You will get your ass handed to you.
While it's all purely hypothetical and will never be a reality for me, I really wouldn't care. My family is the most important thing in the world to me: if my family broke up, I wouldn't care if I lost every cent I ever made. Money wouldn't even be an afterthought.
You are a complete ignoramous until then.
So the argument is that because I'm not stupid enough to get into a bad marriage, I'm ignorant. I'm also ignorant of what it's like to do time for burglary, but since I'm not stupid enough to break into other people's houses, I will remain - in your analysis - a "complete ignoramous (sic)" of that reality as well.
I agree completely.
What behavior are we talking about exactly?
In the real life example I cited above (the crazy woman flipping out in public and throwing a bottle - basically committing assault on the guy) the woman clearly had mental problems.
Are we talking about someone's wife being a stable, normal individual for a decade or more of the husband's personal knowledge of her and her suddenly developing such instability spontaneously without any warning?
If that's the case, then the woman in question clearly has a mental problem like a psychotic break of some kind and needs medical attention.
Excellent and pithy point.
I do hope, for your sake, your little never-never land bubble isn't punctured. Your type of fantasy world belief is what ends up on page one when reality barges in and punches you in the nose.
Please, no need to respond, I have found that when I try to reason with a post, the post usually wins.
"You and so many alleged "adults" in America need to grow up - your failures are your fault and nobody else's."
So nice of you to paint such a broad picture of how evil men are.
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