narrative.

Before he resigned, Mr. Chester wrote one last order.

-16-

Recommendation and Order by Special Master on January 5, 2010.

In this order Mr. Chester made it clear that he was resigning, but before he did, he detailed what would happen in the near term for the timeshare:

Father continues his Tuesday visits from 5-8pm with a pick up at daycare and a drop off at Mother’s home.

Father continues his Thursday visits from 4:40-7:40pm with a pick up at daycare and a drop off at the Family Visitation Center

Father continues his every other weekend visits with a drop off at 10:00am on Saturdays to 6:00pm on Sundays, with the meeting place for the exchange at Stonestown in San Francisco.

Starting Feb 25-27 and afterwards on alternate-alternate weekends, Father shall visit with Ashley from 5pm on Friday to 5pm on Sunday with a pick up at day care and a drop off at Stonestown mall in San Francisco, approximately halfway between us.

Starting March 12-13 and afterwards on alternate-alternate weekends, Father shall continue to visit with Ashley from 10am on Saturday to 6pm Sunday with pick up and drop off at Stonestown mall.

Father shall not visit with Ashley on the Thursday evenings when he visits with Ashley beginning on Fridays. So on alternate-alternate weekends starting on Friday at 5pm, the Thursday visit will not occur.

Continued use of the Family Visitation center. Mother prefers the Tuesday drop off at her home and the Thursday use of the Family Visitation Center, which seems that Mother’s request are more related to her personal convenience rather than the stress of seeing Father.

 In his final order, Mr. Chester got one detail wrong and it was impactful. He wrote that I didn’t want the Tuesday drop offs to be at the Family Visitation Center because it was more convenient to me to have Ashley dropped off at my house after Scott’s visit. However, the reality was that the Family Visitation Center was closed on both Monday and Tuesday evenings, so using the FVC on Tuesday evenings wasn’t an option for us. It turns out that Monday and Tuesdays are the least common days for exchanges. We had talked about the FVC’s schedule months ago, but Mr. Chester forgot about their closure days. I was often impressed that Mr. Chester kept track of so many details in our case, but there were some that he invariably missed or just got wrong. This was one of those forgotten details. It would most likely hurt me at some point in the future, however, because he went on record doubting my intentions. Unfortunately when a judge or mediator gets a fact wrong and memorializes it in writing, there is no changing it. This final order of Mr. Chester’s was especially memorable because it was his last one as Special Master in our case.

With this final order, we were finished with the Special Master. Financially I was not so worried. I was hopeful that without Scott having access to a Special Master every day, he would calm down.

Scott didn’t calm down. The next day, he filed a motion, asking the court to reinstate Mr. Chester as Special Master, complained again that I cancelled visits when Ashley was sick, and requested more time with Ashley. A mediation appointment to discuss these issues was scheduled for January 24, 2010. As long as I had to go to the courthouse, I also filed my responsive declaration on January 24, 2010. The court date was set for February 7, 2010 with Commissioner Viera. I started to wonder if having Mr. Chester resign was a good idea, but there was no going back.

-17-

Mediation with Chuck Avital, January 24, 2010.

This time we were not able to agree on anything, despite Mr. Avital’s efforts. I could see how hard Mr. Avital was trying as he carefully went over each of the issues and gallantly pursued agreements that never materialized. Underneath his encouragement and his reflection of both of our positions, I could sense his disappointment. Things weren’t better between Scott and me since we had seen Mr. Avital six months ago, or a year before. Instead, they were much worse. Additionally, the trajectory that we were on was not good.

The first issue we talked about was reinstating the Special Master. Scott wanted Mr. Chester reinstated. I didn’t believe I could afford him since there were issues that Scott brought up daily. The compromise I proposed was that I was willing to work with Mr. Chester again if Scott paid for all of it.

Holiday schedule – we talked about Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year’s Day, parents’ birthdays, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, July 4th, Labor Day weekend. Since these were set to alternate between us, I had no opposition.

I was ok with the holiday schedule, it seemed fair, switching off between holidays and ensuring that one parent didn’t have three weekends with Ashley in a row. What was punching me in the gut was Scott’s constant requests, which were more like demands, that Ashley move to a fifty-fifty schedule with each of us as quickly as possible. Ashley was just over two years old. Scott lived 40 miles away from us. I was really hoping that all of the professionals that we worked with thought that a fifty-fifty schedule at this point in time was as bad an idea as I thought it was.

Mr. Avital reached out to Mr. Chester and talked with him. He wrote up a summary of their conversation in his report. Mr. Chester said that Scott’s requests about wanting more time with Ashley were more appropriate for a 9-year old child than a 1-2 year old child, especially since she was still breastfeeding and I was a little overprotective. Mr. Chester also said that I could react angrily when pressured, but when I was relaxed things seemed to go well.

Mr. Avital also felt that the recent increase of alternating-alternating weekends from Friday at 5:00 to Sunday at 5:00 was an appropriate expansion of time for two-year old Ashley and he wasn’t supportive of any more time than this now, for two reasons. The first was that Scott and I didn’t get along well and the second was the 40 miles between our houses was too great a distance to facilitate easy transitions between them. Scott mentioned that he was considering moving to the peninsula to spend more time with Ashley.  That would never happen, I believed confidently, because Scott had let me know, in no uncertain terms, that living in the county I lived in was completely unacceptable to him.

It was a relief to hear that Scott being granted more timeshare was not supported by Mr. Avital, but I was still concerned about the upcoming court appearance with Commissioner Viera. Commissioner Viera could agree with Mr. Avital and leave the timeshare alone for now, or she could throw out his suggestion and do whatever she wanted.

-18-

February 7, 2010 was the date of a courting hearing for a motion Scott filed on January 6, 2010.

Scott and I appeared in pro per.

Commissioner Christine M. Viera heard the case.

The new holiday visitation schedule that we had worked on with Mr. Avital was made into an order. The expansion of time that Scott kept pushing for was not realized. Commissioner Viera used her own judgment and made a ruling that surprised me about the exchanges: Exchanges would take place at the day care parking lot on Thursdays, and there would be no more use of the FVC. No postponement of visits unless there was a doctor’s order. If Ashley had a fever over 102, she didn’t have to exchange from one parent to the next, but the parent whose visitation would be postponed could come over to verify the fever. Petitioner and respondent have first right of refusal any time the custodial parent is out of town. Petitioner must remain in San Mateo County. Petitioner can not move out of San Mateo county without 60 day written notice to Scott.

It was common for our case to be heard at the end of the court session. The cases with attorneys were heard first, because their time was expensive. I was used to our case being called at the middle or close to the end of the court session.

In this afternoon session, almost twenty cases were heard until there were two cases left. Ours, and a very unusual one. The Montgomery case. The Montgomery case was called, and so ours would be the last one heard. Commissioner Viera wanted us to hear this case.

The former Mrs. Montgomery was there with her supportive and stoic second husband. She was blond and stunning, like Mariel Hemingway’s twin sister. Accompanying them was a pregnant pissed-off lawyer.

Mr. Montgomery had two attorneys with him, one from San Mateo and the other from Los Angeles, where he lived.

The issue on the table was that the former Mrs. Montgomery had failed a court-ordered drug test. Then she had forged the results to show a negative result and had demanded that Mr. Montgomery pay for the test. Mrs. Montgomery was also asking for additional money from her ex-husband to visit their children.

As I first watched the case play out in the courtroom, I found myself wishing that I was as beautiful as Mrs. Montgomery. I learned that Mr. Montgomery made over a million dollars each year. To have that much money sounded like paradise, and I was envious.

There was arguing back and forth, for over an hour, and through their arguments I understood more and more of their history. The couple had four children together before they divorced. The last two were twin boys who were born with fetal alcohol syndrome. Now, at 9 years old, they lived in a care facility in Montana because they had behavioral problems and neither parent wanted to live with them. Mrs. Montgomery’s substantial internal demons had won over her gifts of beauty and wealth. Her alcoholism damaged her unborn babies and continued to plague her.

As we watched this couple fight, and Mrs. Montgomery’s angry lawyer made a successful bid to be relieved of her client, I caught Commissioner Viera glance our way a couple of times. Having us sit through this case was her warning. Would we continue fighting like this, ruining our own lives and our children’s lives? By the end of the hour that we spent listening to the Montgomery case, I knew I didn’t want to be anything like them.

By the time our case was heard it was almost 5:00pm and we had been in court for a full three hours. I was extremely relieved when Commissioner Viera didn’t order another expansion of time. Ashley was still so young, and still breastfeeding. Still breastfeeding at almost 2 ½ years old, I know, I know. There never seemed to be a good time to wean her. Either she was having bouts of asthma, where the breastfeeding comforted her, or the timeshare was increasing and she was comforted by being held more and breastfeeding. There never seemed to be a quiet time to relax and focus on weaning.

Being able to postpone visits when Ashley was sick came to an end with this new order. I was grateful that I was able to do it for the first couple of years of her life, when it seemed more necessary. There was hope that Ashley’s asthma would reside as she got older, or move from her developing lungs north, to be more of a nasal issue, which was a common pathway for an asthmatic child. Having a baby who had trouble breathing was scary and I was glad I didn’t have to transition her during those times.

 It sounded like, from Commissioner Viera’s ruling, that not having Ashley visit Scott when she was sick was still an option with a doctor’s order. Nope. I had already checked in with our pediatrician, who I had worked with since Lauren was a baby. We knew each other very well. He let me know that he wasn’t willing to write a note saying that Ashley was too ill to go with her father. It was her father after all. Her father was a parent just like me. How could he take sides and say that one parent was capable of caring for their own sick child while the other was not? I understood his position and knew that would be the answer from any almost pediatrician. I had to accept that I could no longer postpone visits when Ashley was sick. Sick or not, Ashley would visit her dad.

I was most distressed about not being able to use the FVC anymore.  That meant I was ordered to interact with Scott during two more transitions. That didn’t make any sense to me because it was well established that Scott and I didn’t get along and didn’t work well together. It made sense to me that two people who didn’t get along shouldn’t come into contact with each other. The biggest question I had around this set of orders was Why didn’t Commissioner Viera understand that? Didn’t she in fact change our transitions from my front door to curbside last year because of prior issues with the face-to-face transitions? Was it Mr. Chester’s comment that it seemed like I liked the use of FVC for my own convenience?

I pushed for the use of the FVC because it meant one less stressful transition and one less contact with Scott. I could always count on that transition to be peaceful when the FVC staff facilitated. Now I had to see Scott instead on Thursday evenings, and in the dark day care parking lot at 7:40pm, which was neither a supportive nor a neutral location. It would be dark and I’d be alone with Scott and Ashley. We’d tried this before, transitions directly between us and it was consistently a vulnerable and scary place for me.

The first Thursday exchange took place at the day care parking lot at 7:40pm, just as Commissioner Viera had ordered. The day care center closed at 6:00pm, so the buildings were empty. The parking lot was dark and deserted. I couldn’t find anyone to go with me. My mother had a doctor’s appointment that afternoon and couldn’t be there. I wouldn’t take one of my friends, worried this would scare them off. I wasn’t dating anyone that I could lean on, either. I was on my own for this one, and slighted annoyed that I had to do this at all. Why did Commissioner Viera order this? What was wrong with the Family Visitation Center? When two people don’t get along, what good could possibly come of putting them in situations where they needed to interact with each other?

An angry Scott met me there at exactly 7:40pm and taunted me with Ashley in his arms. I ignored Scott and greeted Ashley with a warm hello. When I instinctively held out my arms to Ashley, she reached forward, arms outstretched, to come to me. Scott backed away, turning Ashley away from me, and began talking over me to Ashley. I always had a soft voice, and Scott’s was louder. That night it was especially loud. It was clear that Scott hadn’t even started his good-bye ritual with Ashley and that he was starting it right then. Ashley wanted so badly to get to me so she was squirming in Scott’s arms, trying physically to push him away so that she could come to me. Scott continued to talk to her while restricting her physically. He was clearly annoyed that Ashley’s attention was focused on me, and he kept trying to get her to engage with him. Ashley just wanted to see her mom and go home and go to sleep but Scott was prolonging this. I addressed her angst by trying to soothe her, “It’s ok, Ashley, it’s ok.”

Scott told Ashley, “You don’t have to listen to your mom.” I could feel the anger rising up in my body. Scott should have said his good-byes before he was in front of me, he was torturing both of us. I could only wait for him to finish.

I was furious that the peaceful transitions at the FVC had been replaced by me being scared, being verbally abused by Scott, and that I couldn’t keep my precious child from viewing this shitshow. There wasn’t much I could do about this, except to file a motion and try to get these exchanges to occur at the FVC again.

Before I could address the Thursday transitions, our family had plans for February. It was time for our family to move. Ashley was 2 ½, Lauren was 11 and in 7th grade, and we had outgrown the small two-bedroom apartment that I had moved in with Lauren five years ago. Once Ashley started walking, it seemed that our apartment had shrunk. We needed more space. The recession was in full swing and people were leaving the bay area in droves. Even the rent for our apartment had been reduced in an effort to keep us there.

I visited our friendly apartment manager and asked him about renting a three-bedroom apartment in the same complex. I had a record of paying on time and we were a respectful group, so he was more than happy to oblige. He showed us several of the nicest vacant three-bedroom units and I chose one that was right across the street from a tiny branch of the public library, on the other side of the complex from where we lived. The apartment floorplan was just about the same, but the square footage was larger so each room was a few feet bigger. Plus there was another bedroom. Three bedrooms, I could actually afford to rent a place with three bedrooms. It wasn’t the Taj Mahal but it felt like a dream. What a luxury to have that much space.

I didn’t dare squander our precious money away on movers. I packed every item from our little apartment myself while the children were in school and day care. On a weekend, my mom and sister came over and watched the kids while I used my ex-husband’s pick-up truck for the big, heavy items. I was strong enough. I moved us over the course of a few days. I was still out of work so I had the time to pack, unpack, and thoroughly clean our old apartment.

Lauren and Ashley could finally have their own rooms, and I would take the room that they didn’t choose as my bedroom. I didn’t expect that they both wanted the largest bedroom, and that they would want to share. It was sweet that they didn’t want to be separated from each other. So we set up their bunk beds in the biggest bedroom, I took the smallest bedroom, and we used the middle bedroom for projects and storage.

We were now in a nicer apartment and I felt good about that. However our money was running low and I needed to start looking for work. I loved spending more time with the kids and not having to race around getting them to school before I drove to work. But socially I knew I needed to get out more. Most of my social interactions came from the people I worked with. Without having a job, I was lonely for adults. I needed to engage with more people, more often. My circle of friends was very small and I didn’t have enough stimulation or conversation to distract me from what was going on with Scott. I thought about the difficulties I had with Scott much too often. They dominated my daily life. Some nights I couldn’t sleep. Most days I couldn’t concentrate. I thought of all of the negative things Scott wrote about me in his motions and I obsessed about them. I talked with my therapist about my stress level and my fears every week. Dr. Vogelsang was sympathetic and he listened to me over and over again express my fears about having Ashley taken away from me and about having ultimately to split Ashley’s time with Scott, fifty-fifty. I could barely stand to talk about it, how could this man listen so patiently to one episode after another with Scott?

I loved Ashley more than I had ever loved anyone in my entire life. Even Lauren, my firstborn, did not invoke the sort of unbridled love and protectiveness I felt for Ashley. I was literally sick at the thought of her not being with me. She was my baby, and I alone had loved her when no one else had.

I had always been relatively fit. I had been running since I was 16. Now I was extremely thin. I could barely eat some days under the stress and pressure. It felt like I was always on the brink of making the wrong move and losing her forever. I could see the irony in this. Having grown up in household where indulging in sweets was a daily ritual and my weight had fluctuated all my life, I always dreamt of being thinner. And now, finally, I was quite thin. And quite miserable.

On Feb 28, 2010, still pissed off about being ordered to see Scott again on Thursdays, I filed a motion asking for the Thursday exchanges to be back at the FVC. I filed a special kind of motion, an ex-parte motion, which means that the motion is considered by a Judge or Commissioner without the response of the other party. This is an exception to the typical legal process of hearing from both parties.  The Judge, or Commissioner Viera in this case, could have made an order based solely on my written filing.  

Commissioner Viera did not. My ex-parte motion was swiftly denied. Commissioner Viera wrote in all caps on my motion “NO EMERGENCY.” Of course not. She wasn’t there in the dark, with no street lights, in the deserted day care parking lot, with an angry and agitated Scott. I’m sure it was no emergency to her at all. To me it was. I got it - it was my burden, and mine alone to deal with it. There was no help for me now. There was a hearing set for April 4, 2010 to discuss the matter.

Scott filed a response to my ex parte motion on March 14, 2010. In his hand-written response, he wrote that he was always very pleasant and polite during the exchanges and acted appropriately at all times. He wrote that the problem was my anger towards him and that anger’s genesis was our break up. Again, he protested using the FVC and wanted to continue the face to face handoffs. This was complete bullshit and I was so angry reading it. Scott acting pleasant and polite during the exchanges was not something I experienced and he knew it.

Near the end of March I received a notice in the mail entitled “Substitution of Attorney.” It meant that Scott would no longer be In Pro Per but would be represented by an attorney named Miriam Hades. Things were about to get much worse for me.

First Ms. Hades filed an ex parte order on behalf of Scott. She asked, on March 29, that the hearing that we had scheduled for April 4, 2010, be rescheduled to the earliest time the court had available. It was only a week away so this struck me as slightly odd, but definitely incredibly aggressive. She stated that I had caused the Special Master to resign because I had willingly refused to pay him. She asked for an EC 730 Evaluation. I didn’t even know what that was, and I had to look it up. She asked that the hearing for the EC 730 Evaluation be shortened, and heard at the same time as the other issues, on April 4, 2010. I didn’t even have time to file a written response. I was accused of a having lot of anger and the underlying causes of that anger were not being addressed. This anger, she stated, might cause Ashley psychological damage.

After I calmed down as much as I could, I went into research mode. An EC 730 Evaluation is a court appointed expert’s assessment. It’s not just for child custody cases but in our case that’s what it was for. The EC part stands for Evidence Code. Family Courts in California typically use a 730 Evaluation when one or more parenting issues (typically from divorce cases) are complex enough to need an expert’s opinion. The three most common issues in a parenting case are child custody, child support, and attorney’s fees. For us, only child custody was currently on the table. Further subdivided, it meant that physical custody, legal custody, and parenting time could be addressed in this evaluation.

Miriam Hades’s request for the order shortening time to talk about the EC 730 Evaluation was denied. Instead of letting this topic be heard on our next court date, April 4, Commissioner Viera rescheduled it for April 28. At least that was to my advantage.

-19-

April 4, 2010 was the date of a court hearing for an ex parte motion I filed on February 28 asking for the face to face exchanges to be changed to the FVC.

Commissioner Viera heard the case.

I appeared in pro per and Scott appeared with his attorney, Miriam Hades.

Changing the exchanges back to the FVC was denied.

The order shortening time that Miriam Hades had asked for was denied.

The visitation schedule was not changed. Commissioner Viera wrote that if “the parties wish to work out an agreement they can submit it.”

When we walked into the courtroom, there was only one item on the agenda, my request to change the Thursday exchanges from the day care parking lot back to the FVC. This was the only item I was prepared to discuss.

That there was only one item on the agenda didn’t stop Miriam Hades. She brought up completely new issues and demanded that they be addressed. I was surprised and overwhelmed by her bold style. She didn’t play by the rules and I always did. She was a strong force in the courtroom, and she didn’t back down.

Miriam Hades was from San Francisco. She wasn’t one of the local San Mateo County attorneys. I disliked her immediately the first time I saw her in person. She was too aggressive. She was also too blond, too skinny, and had too much plastic surgery. She was the kind of attorney who takes all of your money and promises you full custody in return. She wasn’t a good person. Worst of all, I knew she didn’t have care about Ashley one bit. This was about Scott’s agenda, not what was best for Ashley.

Scott was gloating in court. Ms. Hades asked for full custody of Ashley with Scott and that was quickly denied. I was worried sick full custody might happen. We lived 40 miles apart, with me in San Mateo and Scott in Fairfax. It often took an hour to travel each way, an hour and a half wasn’t uncommon, and even a drive of two hours was unfortunate and rare, but sometimes occurred. If Ashley lived with Scott full time and I had to travel to see Ashley with Lauren living with me full time, how would I work that out? Would I subject Lauren to at least two hours in the car to visit her little sister? On a weekday after I finished working it would almost be impossible to get there to spend even an hour with her, because evening traffic was the heaviest. And I had several areas of high traffic to travel through – the peninsula, San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge traffic, and Marin. It was rare when all four of these areas were clear. That would mean that I could only visit Ashley on weekends. I couldn’t bear the thought of only seeing her once a week or once every two weeks. This child that spent nine months growing inside of me and that I spent hours with every day, that she could be just a peripheral part of my life was excruciating to think about. I carried on the best I could, and hoped that losing custody was only a remote possibility, even with a lawyer like Miriam Hades, who was ready to crush me like a bug with those four inch heels she wore to court.

Without missing a beat, she asked for the child custody evaluation. I got the idea that it was expensive, because they were already insisting that I pay half. I knew that I couldn’t afford it, and that scared me. I also got the feeling that if I didn’t do well during the evaluation, I could lose custody of Ashley.

The day after the hearing, I received another document that was filed with the court on April 1, 2010. Another filing! Miriam Hades was going to keep up the pressure. This was a two-page typed declaration from Scott. I didn’t even know you could file a document that wasn’t a motion. It detailed the last seven Thursday night exchanges. He stated that the exchanges were going well. That sometimes I had an associate with me and sometimes family. That they were also pleasant. There was a lot of effort and energy to write this declaration and to send it to me and to the court. He was definitely making his case that there was no reason to involve the Family Visitation Center.

How could Ms. Hades bring up new issues in court without filing a motion first? It didn’t seem fair. I didn’t know too much about the judicial system but I did know that each party had the right to hear from the other party before a court hearing. Each party had the right to take the time to refute charges against them and to come up with evidence against the complaint. It didn’t seem right for Ms. Hades to bring up a new issue in court because it wasn’t right. I knew it wasn’t right. So I went online. I researched the California Superior Court website. I looked at every piece of information I could find. And then I found it. The Local Rules of the Court. A 214 page document. And I found what I was looking for, under the section entitled Conduct of Hearings:

Meet and Confer Requirements: Once responsive papers have been filed, the moving party shall contact the opposing party prior to the scheduled hearing and arrange to meet and confer (personally or by telephone) prior to the hearing. All parties and counsel are to make good faith efforts to resolve the issues pending before the court, and to inspect documents and exchange information so that issues may be resolved, facts agreed to by stipulation, and those issues remaining for determination be clearly delineated and expeditiously presented to the court at the time of the hearing. Failure to comply with the meet and confer requirements in good faith may result in the award of attorney’s fees and/or sanctions against the non-cooperating counsel or party. The inability of counsel to get along or communicate effectively is not an excuse for failure to meet and confer. The professional obligation of counsel to meet and confer in an effort to resolve disputes is an obligation owed to clients, the court, witnesses, children, and other litigants.

I was right. (I was right!) Ms. Hades wasn’t allowed to bring up new issues in the middle of short cause court hearings. She was denying me the opportunity for a meet and confer, and sanctions could be brought upon her. All I needed to do in court when she pulled this was to tell Commissioner in no uncertain terms, that this was a new issue, that I had not heard of it before this date, that I had not had an opportunity to meet and confer on it, and that the issue needed to be moved to another short cause hearing date.

Just three days later, I had a scheduled exchange with Scott to drop off Ashley and right away, it was off. Scott had a friend with him and they both were looking defiant. I got out of my car, got Ashley out of her carseat, and with trepidation and concern, I began to carry her over to her dad. She was crying and hugging me tight. She didn’t want to leave me and I tried to console her, but I was distracted by the tenseness in the air. I walked right up to Scott, ready to transition Ashley to her, and he said, loudly, “So you won’t give me the child?”

 “Just a minute, Scott, let me get her settled,” I began. What the hell was going on?

“I see that you won’t give me the child so we are leaving.” And with that, Scott and his friend got into his car and drove away.

Ashley began sobbing. “My dad left me! My dad left me!” she wailed. I tried to comfort her and yet at the same time I was so upset myself, that I stood there shaking. Did that just really happen? What was Scott doing? What was I supposed to do next? I stood there for a few minutes in a daze, rocking Ashley. Finally, I realized that this scene was over and Scott was not coming back. I sat my sobbing child in her car seat, gently buckled her in, got in the car myself, and drove us home. I emailed Scott and asked what was going on. There was no answer.

At the next scheduled exchange, two days after the first one, on April 9, and the next one on April 14, the same scenario played out. Scott had a different friend with him each time. One I recognized, and the other two did not. Each time I would walk towards Scott with Ashley and he would announce that I wasn’t handing Ashley over. Then he got into his car with his friend and they drove off. Each time Ashley was devastated. She sobbed each time she saw Scott and expected to go with him, but he did not take her. Didn’t he hear how she called to him and her nearly hysterical tears when he didn’t answer or acknowledge her? I emailed Scott detailing how this was affecting Ashley. She was feeling abandoned and rejected each time this happened. The trust she had in her dad was waning. She clung to me even closer. At home she was constantly in my arms. How could he do this to her?

Soon after these three episodes, on April 18, I received a thick envelope in the mail. Miriam Hades. I knew she was behind it. It was entitled “Supplemental Declaration of Respondent Regarding Denial of Visitation and Petitioner’s Continuing Demand to Have Exchange of Child Take Place at Family Visitation Center.” Catchy title.

I knew it was coming. I knew these episodes were part of a strategy, designed to take me down. Still, as I read the words in black ink, heavy on the pages, I felt so unsteady and woozy I could barely focus. How was anyone supposed to prepare for this? I woke up each morning, dropped off the kids at day care and school, worked all day, picked them up again, and tried to be a good person in between. At the end of the day, when I wanted to come home to try to relax and unwind from the tensions of being a single working mother of two, I faced the mail. So much of it the same kind of bad news lately, like this heavy motion from the Law Offices of Miriam Hades. Sixty fucking pages.

My stomach sank. My head throbbed. A glass of wine wouldn’t take this away. A good cry wouldn’t either. It was such an unwelcome interruption when I just wanted to enjoy the kids in the evening. I never told them. I always kept it to myself. After skimming the pages quickly, I started dinner and played with the kids. I wondered what they noticed. Did they realize that mom was preoccupied, that I could hardly focus on the evening with them? Or did I keep the stress away from their lives like I tried to do?

After I put the children to sleep I could focus on reading the sixty-page Declaration. Each of the three friends Scott was with during the botched exchanges submitted their own notarized statement. Each said that I refused to let the exchange happen, that I would not allow Ashley to go with Scott. I was incredibly upset to read these statements, especially from the friend of Scott’s that I knew personally. I knew that it was their word against mine. Ashley was too young to give her side of the story to vindicate me. With three independent voices all providing notarized statements that I was the problem, and saying that I was getting in the way of Scott’s relationship with Ashley, this was incredibly bad news for me. I needed to go to court and defend myself, but I felt very weak and very exposed. I knew it didn’t look good. In the short term, my life would be consumed with fighting this. Worst of all, I could lose custody of Ashley. Many sleepless nights were coming my way.

Scott had included statements that he had written about the exchanges and emails asking me to make up the missed visits. He included emails that he sent to Miriam Hades providing explanations of the botched exchanges in excruciating details, including what time I arrived, what I was wearing, how I got out of the car and unbuckled Ashley from her car seat, and everything that he said transpired during those three exchanges. He transcribed every voice mail message I sent him around this time and included those as evidence, too. The best one went like this: “I just want to tell you that whenever you take something by force that has to do with Ashley, she is the one who loses. You want to raise your child in the court system? This is insane Scott. It’s been like three years now, you’ve got to start calming down.” And somehow that was supposed to be evidence that I was doing something wrong. A slight bit of amusement for me in the thick hurt of being accused with so much force and intensity.

Scott also included copies of pages from the notebook that went back and forth so each of us could write information about how Ashley was doing. It was supposed to make the transitions easier for Ashley, so that the receiving parent would know when the last nap was and when she last eaten, those kind of details so Ashley’s world could have some semblance of continuity. Instead the contents of the notebook kept getting used against me. The page Scott copied for this motion included my handwritten text: “Ashley’s reaction to last Thursday and Saturday was her own reaction. She had many feelings about it, and repeated ‘My daddy walked away from me’, ‘My daddy left me’, and ‘My daddy was mad’.”

The notebook also included that she slept from 9pm to 7am and that she nursed at 7:15am. I was still nursing her when she was 2 ½ years old. I never saw myself nursing a child that long, but how could I possibly wean her when I didn’t know what chaos was coming our way next?

I needed to file a Responsive Declaration quickly. Our hearing was coming up on April 28. I filed my response on April 21. Since I was back to being an in pro per again, I was supposed to take the step of getting my paperwork signed off by the family law facilitator on the bottom floor of the courthouse. It was such a hassle to do that, and took so much time, and I always had all of my paperwork correctly filled out, anyway. The family law facilitator never had me redo my paperwork, or have me use different forms because I didn’t use the right ones, or have to instruct me on how to have the other party served. I had all that down cold.

So I bypassed the step. I walked into the line at the Family Law filing desk and handed them my papers with no Family Law Facilitator initials and with as much moxie as I could muster. “Joe Benning reviewed my paperwork and it’s all correct,” was the truth I stretched. The clerk barely looked up at me. She accepted the forms, stamped them, found a court date on the computer and wrote it in, and kept two sets of the paperwork. It was easier than I thought to hand them in, and I never went down to the family law facilitator’s office again.

My Responsive Declaration asked for joint legal custody, sole physical custody, and no 730 Evaluation. I wrote that “I continue to want to have minimal contact with Mr. Hoffman, so that my fear of Mr. Hoffman does not rub off on Ashley.” I continued to say that “The court may not support me in staying completely away from Mr. Hoffman, but common sense tells me to stay away from a person who blames you completely and who keeps a consistent level of anger coming at you.”

On April 18 I received a letter from Miriam Hades. She threatened that if I didn’t hand Ashley over to Scott at the next exchange on April 23, that she would file a motion for contempt on his behalf. She also wrote that her assistant contacted me about arranging for service for Scott’s supplemental declaration and that said that I would refuse to accept service. What a nice touch. Of course I never said that, I knew all too well that trying to avoid service was just a waste of time. They could serve you by email, by fax, by regular mail, and in person. Why would anyone try to avoid it? But that it said in her letter that I was trying to avoid service once again put me on the defensive. It was a negative that was almost impossible to disprove. How could I convince someone that I never actually said that?

A few days later, on April 25, I received a Reply and Supplemental Declaration of Scott Hoffman in Response to Petitioner’s Responsive Declaration in the mail. Another seven-page waste of time, if you asked me. One section was entitled Who Lives With Mom. In that section Scott stated that there was an individual who came up frequently in his discussions with Ashley and his name was Alexander. Scott’s conclusion was that I had a man named Alexander living with us.

I almost had to laugh. There was no man living with us. Alexander was the favorite teacher at Ashley’s day care. Ashley was in the 2-year old room and he was the Pre-K teacher, but everyone knew him no matter how old they were. Alexander was magic with all the kids. He was everyone’s favorite teacher, and that’s why Ashley was talking about him.

-20-

April 28, 2010 was the date of a court hearing for a motion Scott filed on March 30 asking for a modification of child custody/visitation and a 730 Child Custody Evaluation.

Commissioner Christine M. Viera heard the case.

Scott appeared with his new counsel Miriam Hades. I appeared in pro per.

The Court made the following orders:

There will be a 730 Evaluation and the parties are to select an evaluator by 5/16/05. If they do not select an evaluator jointly, the evaluator will be either Michael Sawyer or Keith Pearlman, whoever is available first.

The exchange will be at the receiving parties home (father’s local home).

The parties are to communicate by email only.

Petitioner will unlock access to her email address for Respondent.

The Court did not order any make up visits for Respondent.

The matter is set for a trial on 8/2/05 at 9am for a 1 day estimate.

Miriam Hades shall prepare a formal order consistent with the orders herein.

As I was in court with Scott, Miriam Hades, and Christine Viera, I felt so alone. Here I was trying to defend myself against three people who wanted to take me down. My voice was small. I was inadequate. I realized I could lose Ashley, and I was crying inside the whole time. I hated being there. I hated going to court. I hated responding to motions and representing myself.

Miriam Hades asked for Scott to have full custody of Ashley in one of her opening requests. This time, it felt real and I believed it might happen. I felt a blow when I heard the words, like all of the air in the world became unavailable to me. I was silently gasping for breath but I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think, I was drowning in the blackness and heaviness of what that meant. A world without my daughter. A world where I could barely see her. That Commissioner Viera could say in just a few words, “Full custody to the Respondent” which would be the end of life as I knew it. I was in as much of a panic and distress as one could be and still be on my feet in the courtroom.

Commissioner Viera did not say those words. She did not. Did she notice the tears I was fighting back? Did she see the panic on my face? Did she watch my body stiffen and my knees buckle? Did she understand that I had been set up by those botched exchanges and didn’t have the money to have an attorney represent me? Did she know any of this?

She must have. She had to have seen or felt something, because I was not issued a penalty or even chastised verbally in court for the three exchanges. This was one time where I felt that she understood my predicament, that she understood that I was set up. It was rare that I felt anything close to grateful for Commissioner Viera, but I did. I wanted to run up to the bench and thank her profusely.

In court, after Miriam announced that Scott would like to have full custody of Ashley, there was a pause. An expectant pause. There was more to be said. A big announcement was coming, I could feel it, and I was dreading it. Miriam went on to boast that Scott had purchased another residence in San Mateo County. “In fact,” she went on, “his new residence is very close to this courtroom.” I almost vomited on the spot. He bought another house? I could barely even afford to pay my rent every month. This was not looking good. He was going to get more time with Ashley because  - poof - the distance between us was no longer a factor. After telling me for years that he hated the peninsula and would never, ever live there, he bought a house on the peninsula. I was caught completely off guard, and I was jealous, not being able to afford to buy a house myself. As I pushed my envy to the side, I felt that my safety in living far from Scott was also evaporating. Just what I needed, Scott living even closer to me. There would be no getting away from him now, he would invade my physical space as well as my psyche. I could go to the grocery store and run into him. The entire landscape had just shifted dramatically.

I knew Scott would provide me with the address of his new place right after the hearing. There was an order that each party had to keep the other informed of their address and phone number. As much as I didn’t like it, I couldn’t wait to find out more of the details.

Commissioner Viera was going to let the dust settle on that new housing purchase. She ordered that the exchanges would take place at the receiving parents’ home, with Scott using his local address. So I would need to drive Ashley to Scott’s new house every weekday that he had visitation with Ashley, and whenever he had Ashley for the weekend. Now on weekdays, I would have to drive Ashley to this new address instead of having Scott pick her up at day care. That was a negative for me. However, no more driving to San Francisco, to the halfway point, to drop her off or pick her up again after Ashley’s visits with Scott in Marin was a positive. That was some consolation, but not much. Having Scott live close by where he could walk right by me was unsettling to me. Worse than that, being so close meant that Scott getting fifty-fifty custody in the near future was very likely.

I wasn’t happy that I had to unlock my email address for Scott. He was sending me emails every day. A couple of days a week I would get between five and ten emails from him, and I felt pressure to answer. Even when I didn’t respond, I felt stress and tension from what he wrote. I lived in a state of almost panic, waiting for another bad surprise to come over email. I had blocked Scott from my email to get some relief. I understood the Court’s reasoning on this, Scott and I had to communicate on some level about Ashley on a very regular basis. And for a very long time. But I didn’t have to like it.

Being in court so many times was a learning experience. I saw and heard other short cause cases in the courtroom as I sat, anxiously awaiting my turn. I listened carefully and paid attention to how Commissioner Viera ruled in each case. Commissioner Viera could be a wildcard and made rulings that surprised me. She could also be very predictable when the same issues came up over and over again, with different parties and slightly nuanced circumstances. I quickly noticed that almost all parents were encouraged to spend time with their children. Parents who just got out of jail got visitation. Parents who were living in a motel and had just stopped prostituting themselves got visitation. Parents who were absent from their child’s lives for years, when they finally showed up, were given visitation. It seemed that as long as parents weren’t making batches of methamphetamine in the kitchen and giving it to their children, that they were going to be able to have a relationship with them that the court supported and encouraged. Most of the cases drifted towards fifty-fifty custody over time. The court believed that every child should have a relationship with both parents. Getting to spend time and make memories with both parents was an important tenant of family law. Our case was no exception.

I needed advice. So I went to see Mary Thompson. Mary was about my mother’s age, and she became a wise motherly figure for me. For many years she had been a family counselor and now, in her 60s, she did high conflict family work as a mediator. You could tell, she was tough. Tough enough to call bullshit on anyone. But instead of being another mediator for us, she was a counselor for me. We started a relationship where she provided me with guidance and advice, and we met when I needed advice, until our case ended.

 I told her about Scott, that I needed some help. What could I be doing differently? What would work? We talked about the constant negative and demanding emails, how could I get some relief? And she had a solution. There was a service you could pay for. It was like having a secretary read all of the emails from your ex. You didn’t have to look at any of them. If there was something for you to address, like a real issue, they would tell you, but in their words, not in his words. If your ex had a question, they would tell you that too. And they would filter out all of the “You’re a piece of shit” and “Yeah, you screwed up, just like you always do” crap. So you would never see the unkind and hurtful stuff. I thought that this was one of the most brilliant things I had ever heard. Except that I was sure I couldn’t afford it.

Mary, who was covered through my insurance, didn’t bat an eyelash. Instead, she went right to solution number two, a lower cost option. I could set up a completely new and separate email account that was just for emails from Scott. So I could still block him from my primary account, and give him the new, secondary account to communicate with me. I could keep the secondary account closed most of the time, open it once a day, deal with his stuff, and close it up again. Containment. I loved it.

I opened an earthlink account and that became The Scott Account. He wasn’t at all happy when I told him that he could contact me there, but not via my regular yahoo email account. He didn’t like being contained. Not one bit. I moved one step away from him and although it was a small step, I felt more in control. I got one small piece of my life back.

I had only been settled into our new three-bedroom apartment for a few months when the doorbell rang one evening. I opened the door to find a young social worker on our front step, from the County of San Mateo. She showed me the id badge hanging from her neck and insisted on coming in. Scott had called Child Protective Services. I somehow knew that he would do this at some point. Here she was, a sweet young woman following up on a complaint that I had spanked my children when they had wanted to go swimming. She asked me questions about this in front of the children, and then she talked to the children separately. She looked in the kitchen, asking to see what food I had to feed my kids. She noted that the toys and books in the living room were age appropriate, and that the children had their own bedroom and slept in beds. I knew that if she found evidence of any child being neglected or abused, she had the authority to remove them from their home. I felt ashamed that she was putting my parenting under a microscope, and I knew there was nothing negative for her to find. But I had to defend myself. I let her know that I knew that it was Scott that had called. I let her know that I was under a lot of pressure from him and that he took me to court constantly.

Having Child Protective Services visit me was an experience I didn’t want to repeat. At the same time, I knew that with Scott as my adversary, I was powerless to stop it. Just as I knew that he would call them at some point, I also knew that he would be calling them again.

A couple of weeks later, I drove to the County records office to read the social worker’s report. It mentioned that the children were happy, well-fed, had access to clean clothing and had a safe place to live. The report went on with several strongly worded sentences: that Scott should take his issues with me to the Family Law courtroom, and not try to resolve them through Child Protective Services. I felt relief reading this. There would be no follow up from Family Court Services because there was no concern about the welfare of my children.

I knew Scott had read the CPS report too. He was hoping it would be unfavorable towards me, so that he could use it in court. Instead, he never brought it up inside or outside the courtroom. He hadn’t gotten what he had wanted. The report didn’t make me look bad, it made him look bad.

In May Scott moved into his new condo in San Bruno. I didn’t like it. He was now about 12 miles away from us instead of 40. I knew the condo was small, a 1 bedroom, but it meant that he could have overnights with Ashley during the week, eventually. It meant that he could make a decent bid for fifty-fifty custody. But still, Scott, on the peninsula? In a condo complex? I wondered how long it would last.

There was the child custody evaluator decision to make. There were two choices that Commissioner Viera mentioned, Michael Sawyer and Keith Pearlman. Since I was acting as my own attorney, I contacted both of them directly to talk about their availability and to try to get to know each one as much as I could. Michael Sawyer was extremely personable and let me know that he had just stopped conducting child custody evaluations. So that left only Keith Pearlman unless I could come up with someone else. I hadn’t heard good things about Dr. Pearlman. I heard he was difficult and pompous. I was not worried about dealing with him, even when I spoke with him briefly on the phone and it was a more formal and directed conversation than I was used to. He definitely wasn’t friendly. On the other hand, I was an easy personality to get along with. Working with Dr. Pearlman would be ok.

Now I had to work with Miriam Hades. She was responsible for writing the Stipulation and Order to appoint one of the child custody evaluators. The document she wrote was a sloppy first draft, filled with inaccuracies and spelling errors. Each parties’ counsel is supposed to approve it, and since I acted as my own counsel I reviewed it myself. Miriam didn’t make the changes I suggested so I sent my version directly to Commissioner Viera with a copy to Miriam Hades. I was no fool. I was not letting any of her mistakes or inaccuracies get made into orders that I would have to follow.

The changes that Ms. Hades made were beyond typos and spelling errors. Ms. Hades repeated several times in the document that the exchanges of Ashley would occur at the parent’s residences, but didn’t include that it was San Mateo County only. If a sentence like “Exchanges will occur at the parent’s residences” got made into an order by Commissioner Viera signing it, I knew that Scott would use it to force me to drive to Marin, 40 miles away, to pick up Ashley. I couldn’t let that happen. Another box Miriam Hades kept checking had to do with physical custody. I still had sole physical custody because I had the majority of the timeshare. On the forms, Miriam Hades had Joint Physical Custody checked. Like she could make it happen just by checking a different box – but she absolutely could if I let it happen. Finally, I noticed she had modified Ashley’s name. She wrote it as “Ashley McDonald Hoffman.” I wanted to shut that down as quickly as I could, too.  So I kept editing the proposed Stipulation, and I sent my corrections promptly to Ms. Hades and Commissioner Viera. I admit, I was terrible at thinking on my feet and defending myself in court, but I have an eye for details and I wasn’t at all afraid to stick up for myself in writing.

Ms. Hades was also supposed to call and talk to Michael Sawyer and Keith Pearlman. She didn’t. That worked for me because I wanted to delay the custody evaluation as much as possible. I wrote her a letter in mid-June explaining that I talked to both Sawyer and Pearlman and of the two only Dr. Pearlman was available. Dr. Pearlman was just about to go on vacation so there was no way anything would be decided by the next court date, which was set for August 2nd. I asked Ms. Hades to move that court date out by a couple of months. I knew that lawyers could call the Superior Court and have court dates changed, which was a privilege, as an in pro per, I didn’t have.

Ms. Hades finally got back to working on the custody evaluator and sent a letter to Dr. Pearlman on June 15, just one day before the deadline to decide on who the evaluator would be. After I did all the work in contacting him and letting Miriam Hades know his availability, she wrote to him that “Ms. McDonald has refused to approve my draft orders or the stipulation appointing you.” That woman had no shame. She knew that I refused to sign them only because of all of her errors and intentional misrepresentations in the draft documents she prepared, and that I worked to correct those errors, but she threw me under the bus anyway.

Finally, in early July, 45 days after the hearing, I submitted another draft order to the court. It was denied by Commissioner Viera because Miriam Hades was supposed to prepare the order, but it put pressure on Ms. Hades to complete the task.

Finally, almost two months and six revisions later, the written order was complete with only enough minor errors that it was acceptable to me.

When the order to change the exchanges to each parties local residence was put into place, it also changed one thing for Scott. Now he longer had to go to daycare to pick up Ashley. He had to come to my apartment to pick up Ashley. He didn’t like that because he missed seeing the other parents at daycare that he had made friends with. So he asked me to let him pick up Ashley from day care each week. I was more than happy to agree to this change whenever it worked for me, because it meant one less pick up for me during the week and one less interaction with Ashley. But I left my agreement vague because I was still not working. I enjoyed spending extra time with Ashley by picking her up from day care in the early afternoon.

In early July I received a job offer from a company I interviewed with a couple of times. Their headquarters were in Maryland and I had flown out there to interview. Their local office was in Santa Clara, almost thirty miles away. It would be my longest commute yet, and I wasn’t looking forward to spending almost an hour commuting each way. I hadn’t received any other offers so I had to take it. Our money was running low.

In mid-July it happened again. I drove Ashley to Scott’s condo, which was a 15-minute drive from my apartment. He approached us but never tried to have Ashley come to him. And then he got into his car and drove away. He filed a declaration saying that I refused to hand Ashley over to hand over to him for the exchange.

We also had a significant amount of email communication over the schedule. In May the weekend of Mother’s Day needed to be swapped so that I could have her. It was his year to have the Memorial Day Weekend. Then there were four weekends in a row where he was supposed to have Ashley. Two-weekends in a row, per court order, were the maximum one parent could have. That meant swapping weekends for literally months to even things out. Just when they evened out, there were more changes. It was constant calendar work and took an inordinate amount of emails to work through. Often I would propose a swap due to the master custody schedule and the ‘two-weekends in a row’ rule and Scott would tell me that he didn’t understand why I was proposing the change. I would need to go back to the court orders and recite them for him, sometimes multiple times to get him to understand what I was trying to do.

Before the declaration about Scott saying that I wouldn’t hand Ashley over during the exchange had a chance to build steam, Miriam Hades finally came through with the order to approve Keith Pearlman. The approval document required a wet signature from Scott, from me, and from Miriam Hades and would take some time to circulate.

Meanwhile I started my new job in late July. I was the first site trainer for a local affiliate of a company based in Maryland. The commute was more daunting than I had expected. It took 50 minutes in the morning and over an hour in the evening. I could only drop off Ashley and Lauren at 7:00am, no earlier, so it was at least 7:15 before I could start the morning commute. And every day, I was hit with traffic. It wasn’t as much traffic as if I left an hour later but it was still more than I was used to with my previous 2-mile, 10-minute commute. And since I had to be back to San Mateo before 6:00pm to pick up Ashley and Lauren, my days were always stressful and compacted. Most days lunch was a bag of peanuts and a diet coke from the vending machine.

August 2nd was still the date of the status hearing, originally set up to discuss the custody evaluation, which had barely started much less been completed. I still hadn’t figured out how, in my second week of work, I was going to ask for the morning off. I talked to Miriam Hades about the status hearing a couple of days before. She encouraged me not to attend the hearing and told me that that the only thing that would be happening would be to obtain another, later court date to discuss the findings of the still upcoming child custody evaluation. It was a relief for me not to have to go to court on August 2nd, because I hated going to court, and asking for time off as a new hire was awkward, so I gladly stayed at work.

What a shock it was to receive an email from Miriam Hades and from Scott in the afternoon of August 2nd, reporting that Commissioner Viera had modified the timeshare during court in the morning. Fuck. I shook like a leaf, staring uncomprehending at the computer screen. Miriam Hades had lied to me. What a snake. Both Miriam and Scott were in court that morning, asking for more parenting time for Scott. And they got it. I had to leave work within a few minutes because the tears were unstoppable. I cried all the way home. Another evening of trying to pretend everything was ok and make it fun for the kids, even though I was dying inside.

-21-

August 2, 2010 was the date of a court hearing called a status conference to discuss the child custody evaluation findings.

Commissioner Christine M. Viera conducted the status conference.

Scott was present with his attorney, Miriam Hades. I was not present.

Two days later I received an official court order from the status hearing that I didn’t attend. It said that a temporary visitation schedule was made, pending the next hearing date:

Respondent shall pick up child on Friday at 5pm at the daycare on his alternate weekends.

Petitioner is ordered not to be at the daycare center. Respondent shall return the child on Sunday at 6pm. On Respondent’s weekend visits he will have a Tuesday visit from 5pm to 8pm. On the alternate weekend Respondent shall have visitation on Tuesday and Thursday from 5pm to 8pm.

Petitioner is ordered to accept communication from Miriam Hades.

Petitioner failed to appear at the trial today.

This schedule was different from the existing schedule in only one way. Instead of having Ashley leave with her dad on Saturday morning at 10am, she would instead leave with him on Friday night right after day care. I looked at this as losing Friday evenings and Saturday mornings with her. I would see her for just an hour on Friday morning, and then I would be without her for almost three whole days. I tried to be positive. I tried so hard to think about how I could sleep in on Saturday mornings, and how I didn’t have to rush home on Friday afternoons to pick her up. But mostly when I thought about not seeing Ashley for so long every other week, I just started crying.

What I could have done, since I was set up and Ms. Hades was dishonest with me, was to go to the courthouse the next day and confront Commissioner Viera about the unfairness of a matter being held without notice and without my presence. I had a good chance of reversing the order, because there was nothing in writing asking for a change in the custodial time. The legal process hadn’t been followed. But I did not fight. I didn’t have the energy or the confidence to do it. Today, I might have. Back then, sadness and depression sapped my strength. My fear of confronting Commissioner Viera and my dread of one more visit to the courthouse weighted me down like walking in quicksand.

I sent Scott and Miriam Hades an email, asking them to consider not putting this new schedule in place. I had just gone back to work after being at home for ten months. And Ashley had just moved into the Three-Year-Old room at day care, even though she wasn’t quite three yet. There were too many changes for my sensitive child to deal with, and she was crying a lot and had trouble separating from me. Scott and Miriam Hades didn’t respond. I knew Scott had turned cold towards me. He didn’t care about what I felt or have any respects for my beliefs. I hoped he cared about Ashley, that her health and well-being was his first concern. Wasn’t that what a parent was supposed to do? I didn’t feel like that was the case this time, I felt he was turning cold towards Ashley, too. I felt that Scott had a desire to win this battle and that was his primary objective. Where that left Ashley made me sick to think about.

I received another email from Miriam Hades on August 11, letting me know that she was filing an ex parte motion to have all of Scott’s exchanges at the day care center with me not being present. The hearing date was set for August 25, 2010. It was just a few months ago that I wanted all of the transitions to be with the Family Visitation Center so that I didn’t have to deal with Scott. He had pushed for face-to-face transitions with me during that whole time, wanting the opposite of what I requested. Now the tide had changed and he didn’t want face-to-face transitions anymore. What would be next?

Scott continued to put pressure on me when I went to drop off or pick-up Ashley at his new condo in San Bruno. Sometimes he had a friend with him who would videotape the exchange using a large video camera, shoving it into my car and as obnoxiously close to me as he could physically get it. There was nothing I could do to make it stop. I remained calm and pretended like I didn’t even notice. The area around Scott’s condo complex was filled with parked cars during the time I needed to be there. There was no parking for about a half a mile, and I tried several times, driving around looking for parking. So Scott directed me to the fire lane, and I was supposed to wait there for him. Sometimes, though, Security told me that I couldn’t wait there and told me to move on. So where was I supposed to go? I asked Scott if I could use his parking spot but he said no. I worried that I’d be driving around the block after Security had chased me off, that I’d technically not be there when he came down with Ashley and then he wouldn’t let me pick her up.

I was starting to feel very beaten down. Having an aggressive lawyer was working for Scott, and I was fighting being in a very low place. I was lied to by Miriam Hades. I had constant motions to answer. I had to fight the inaccuracies that Ms. Hades made up so that they didn’t become orders. Even communicating with Miriam Hades was distressing, how could she be such a villain? I didn’t have as much time with Ashley as I wanted, and the time I had I desperately tried to forget all of these stressors so that I could enjoy a few moments of her childhood. I had an upcoming child custody evaluation to deal with. I was stuck sitting in the fire lane, humiliated by being aggressively videotaped when I tried to pick up Ashley. With all of this swirling around in my head and dealing with it constantly, I was more depressed than ever before.

I also had to deal with some of the orders that were impossible to follow. Scott’s pickups were now ordered to be only at day care. What was I supposed to do when Ashley was sick and couldn’t be in day care or when day care was closed – how would the exchanges happen?  There was no mention of this in the orders, so what was I supposed to do?

I should have been there at the hearing, I thought. Instead, I suffered the consequences. I should have been at the hearing and I should have raised this issue then. But I wasn’t there. I felt shame. I failed myself and I failed my children.

Looking back at the order from the hearing that I missed, I saw the beginnings of a pattern that would haunt me for years. Miriam told Commissioner Viera that I refused to accept her communication, and so Commissioner Viera ordered me to accept Ms. Hades’s communication. Except I never refused to accept Ms. Hades’s communication. It sure made me look irresponsible or difficult – or both – that it was announced in court that I wouldn’t communicate with Ms. Hades. Disproving this was tricky. If I demanded to know the date and time of the communication I was accused of refusing to accept, I was spending time and focus on their issue, getting ensnared in their web. If I refuted it outright it looked like I was being argumentative. I had blocked Scott’s emails in the past. They were working this issue to make me seem as unstable and difficult as possible. It was working.

Their tactic of accusing me of any wrongdoing in court was powerful. It was believed until it could be proven otherwise. Because I represented myself so terribly, I was never good at refuting these statements. I learned the hard way that something negative, something completely false can be said about you, and it could stick. I wasn’t good at slinging back any mud, either. I just wanted this all to go away.

Scott’s anger seemed out of control with Miriam Hades. I was getting pummeled, figuratively, in the court system and I wondered how much longer I could last, emotionally, under this barrage. I also wondered how long it would be until Scott was awarded full custody of Ashley. He had the big lawyer, he had a lot of money, and I knew that’s often what it took.

I called an attorney. He used to be a cop. He was loud, forceful, and he liked to blow things up. I talked to him about taking my case. Yes, he’d be interested, he said. There was a big retainer required, so I hesitated. I needed time to think. If I did hire him, and he blew things up, where would they end up landing? It was a big decision point for me. Was I being too meek, too accepting of all of Scott’s antics? Would it ever end? Could it end if I hired a forceful, difficult personality of a lawyer who would go head-to-head with Miriam Hades?

In the middle of the night one night when I couldn’t sleep, I had a revelation. A light bulb went off in my head. I’m not a boisterous personality who fills up every room. I’m easy to get along with, I’m sensible, I’m accepting of others. I listen carefully to other people. I’m not going to change who I am just because Scott has a difficult attorney and he’s being difficult himself. I’m going to keep being true to who I am. I’m going to be true to who I am because it’s not just the outcome that is important to me. How things get done is important to me. That is fundamental and core to who I am. I could never be happy about an outcome that I desired but in order to get there I cheated or hurt another person. I couldn’t. So I have to keep on, doing it the way I feel is right, even when I feel wronged. This revelation helped a little. I had control over how I played this, how I called my shots. I may not have called the big and powerful shots, but I called the shots that control my life. I was actually comfortable with how I navigated this situation. Except that I was losing pathetically, and I tried not to think about that.

I sent Scott an email letting him know that I was really tired of all of this battling it out and that I would agree to 90% of what he wanted, including working with a Special Master again. He didn’t answer but used this email as one of the attachments in his filing. I wasn’t sure why, didn’t it show me to be working hard to find a solution? Didn’t it show me as being willing to compromise?

I started to make poor decisions. I told Scott that he needed to figure out where to meet me for the exchange when day care was closed. He didn’t answer. So I suggested the police station. He didn’t answer. I didn’t exactly know what to do next. With my anxieties skyrocketing, I told him that I couldn’t do the exchange. That wasn’t my best answer, because I knew that would lead me down a very bad path. And it did. I knew that I would be seen by the court as being a barrier to Scott’s relationship with Ashley by even refusing this one visit. Scott and Miriam Hades were just waiting to pounce on me when I made a mistake. I didn’t actually feel that I didn’t want Scott to visit with Ashley, I just felt that I couldn’t work with him to find a solution to the exchanges when day care wasn’t available. I was in trouble and I didn’t know how to get out.

In desperation, I called Joe Benning to ask for help. Could he represent me? The issues were all complex Family Law issues, which were getting more complex each week. Joe was a generalist. So he recommended a colleague of his, Russ Parker, who specialized in Family Law.  

Russ was in his early 50s, divorced with two children, and had been a family law attorney for over two decades when I met him in his book-filled office in sleepy San Mateo. He was from the south and came across as considerate, respectful, and kind. He was a negotiator, someone who always tried to find middle ground. He wasn’t there to blow things up or to start fires. He was there to work towards resolution. Russ was handsome and was a fatherly figure towards me. After a twenty-minute talk, we agreed that he would represent me and I wrote a hefty check for his retainer fee.

I thought that working with a lawyer would mean that I would be judged for not working more amicably with Scott. I thought my lawyer might chastise me for making bad decisions. Russ did none of these things. He smiled at me in a calm and genuine way and told me it was going to be all right. Just as I had felt having Joe Benning on my side, I felt tremendous relief at hiring Russ and knowing that someone else was responsible for dealing with some of these complexities and for appearing with me at the August 25th hearing. His hourly rate of $325 was more than I could afford. I would only have him as my attorney until Scott calmed down. That couldn’t be far off, could it? Ashley was almost three years old. This war had been going on long enough.

Scott filed a Supplemental Declaration on August 18, 2010.

-22-

August 25, 2010 was the date of a court hearing for a case review. It was expected that the custody evaluation would be complete by this date. Although it wasn’t, we were still ordered to appear.

Commissioner Christine M. Viera heard the case.

 Scott was present with his attorney, Miriam Hades. Elizabeth was present with her attorney, Russ Parker.

Scott’s visitation was changed to first week, Thursday from 5-8pm; second week Tuesday from 5-8 pm and Friday from pick up at day care through Monday with drop off at day care. All pick ups would be at day care and I was ordered to call father as I approached his San Bruno condo for the Tuesday and Thursday pick-ups and Scott would drop off Ashley curbside.

Russ and I met outside the courtroom and walked in together. First, we stopped at the Family Law clerk’s office on the first floor. Russ dropped off the paperwork that we had both signed, appointing Russ as my attorney. Miriam, Scott, and Commissioner Viera didn’t know ahead of the court date, that Russ would be representing me.

Russ was a calming presence in the courtroom. He advocated for me and brought up how young Ashley was, not quite three years old. Surely she needed the family she had always known, Lauren and me, and three years old was too young to be doing anything close to fifty-fifty custody. Russ was reasonable and spoke confidently. He knew just what to say and he kept bringing up his points again and again. With Russ defending me in court, Miriam was less aggressive, and Commissioner Viera listened attentively to Russ. Way more attentively than she would have listened to me. When Commissioner Viera made her ruling, I knew that I had dodged a few bullets. One was losing custody of Ashley. Another was having fifty-fifty custody of Ashley with Scott. As much as I didn’t like the long weekend, it could have been much, much worse.

One thing was true, as Russ and I debriefed outside the court building after the hearing. “Commissioner Viera sure doesn’t like you,” Russ whispered to me in his slow southern drawl. I never knew what I did to piss that woman off, but I could feel her fury in the courtroom. Today her anger was contained and merely simmering, with Russ acting as a buffer between the two of us.

Many years after our case was over, I met with Commissioner Viera. That she agreed to meet with me was the first surprise in reconnecting with her. She remembered our case and didn’t harbor a grudge towards me, but she did express her fear that we would be battling it out in the courtroom for a very long time. She expressed her dislike in a general sense at everyone who used the court system to continue their disagreements. She seemed to dislike our case and its effect on Ashley, but not me personally. Sitting with her one-on-one, and reframing my past experiences with Commissioner Viera was one positive step forward in healing from the emotional trauma of going to court so many times.

A couple things were in my favor for keeping this new timeshare order in place for a few months. My attorney Russ Parker would hold his own against Miriam’s antics. The upcoming child custody evaluation would take a few months to complete, and no changes would be made during that time. I was going to miss Ashley for the long weekends that she was with Scott, but I was relieved that weekday overnights weren’t ordered. And relieved that fifty-fifty custody wasn’t ordered. Last but not least, I was relieved that I didn’t lose custody of her. The outcome could have been worse for me, and I knew that. I wanted the weekends that Ashley was with Scott to be shorter, but I could live with this.

This court date marked eight months of me being unrepresented by an attorney since we left Mr. Chester. It marked the end of Scott pushing hard for fifty-fifty custody or full custody. The timeshare that was put in place now would be there for at least six months or more. From all of this battling, Scott got just an extra Sunday night with Ashley.

Our next hearing date was a status conference set for November 29, 2010, to discuss the results of the upcoming child custody evaluation. In early September Russ received a letter from Miriam Hades which he relayed to me. Ms. Hades broke her arm and would have surgery for it on November 25. Therefore, the status hearing date was moved to February 1, 2016. This was one letter from Ms. Hades that I was happy to receive. Anything that stabilized the timeshare and pushed the court date farther away was good news in my book. Just as I had suspected, Ms. Hades was not going to bother me with Russ as my attorney. Russ acted as a shield for me from Miriam Hades. I let this layer of protection envelope me as I tried to move forward with my life.

Child custody evaluations have a particular cadence. First, the attorneys and the child custody evaluator sign the contract, working out any points of contention. Second, the evaluator talks to the attorneys to understand the presenting issues. Then the actual work can begin. After that, the evaluator meets with the parents separately. Because Ashley was still so young, just turning three, Pearlman would meet with Scott separately, and then me separately, then Ashley and me together, and then Scott and Ashley together, to get a sense of how Ashley was with each parent. He would not meet with Ashley alone because Ashley was too young. After that, Pearlman could interview our therapists, other family members, teachers, and anyone else he believed would be useful in writing his report and making recommendations that would be “in the best interest of the child.”

Pearlman had the authority to recommend a drastic change in custody, and I knew that. He could recommend fifty-fifty, or he could recommend that Scott have full custody and I had nothing. I was anxious and scared.

I had an initial interview with the formidable Dr. Keith Pearlman, in early September at his depressing and uninviting office space. His office was on a popular Palo Alto shopping district street, but the space itself was dim and the walls were undecorated. Pearlman was more daunting than I had imagined. The phrase “a wonky tower of arrogance” from one Yelp review describing Dr. Pearlman stuck in my head as we started talking.  

He stood six feet six inches tall, if not slightly taller. He was thin and jowly and spoke in a loud and commanding monotone voice. He immediately laid down the law that he was in charge, he was the expert, that I was nothing. It was a quick blow to the solar plexus at the beginning of our time together, and set the stage for what would come. I struggled and tried to say the right things. That I took good care of Ashley. That my life revolved around my children. That I didn’t do anything to keep Scott away from Ashley, I just didn’t want to destabilize her when she was so young. That there had been difficulties with Scott, and hard as I tried, I could not overcome them. I tried to communicate all of this. But I failed, miserably, because smack in the middle of a few sentences where I was trying to explain myself and my intentions, he interrupted in a loud voice with “I experience you as rambling right now.” I almost started to cry. I was trying so hard. Trying to be a good mother while being so lonely and living in a small apartment and just trying to pay the bills each month. Most days I felt that all I had to offer my kids was a hug. I felt so inadequate. And now this.

Pearlman met with Scott, too, twice for over an hour each time. My next step was to meet him in his office with Ashley. I set up an appointment to take Ashley later in the month. I didn’t want to take her to his office after being there once myself. His office wasn’t kid-friendly, which struck me as odd for a man whose work centered around children. He had a couple of games, but very few. He was so tall and always dressed in a formal suit and tie, I couldn’t imagine him sitting on the floor with a child and cheerfully playing a game.

Some appointments you can miss. Others are circled in red and the entire world stops when they come up. That’s what an appointment with Dr. Pearlman was like. Unmissable. September 24th was the day that I needed to take Ashley to see Dr. Pearlman. My ex-husband Pete called early that morning to let me know that his mother had died. Lauren’s grandmother had died. My heart sunk. I should have called Dr. Pearlman right then and told him that we couldn’t make our appointment. I should have dealt with the death in our family properly. But I didn’t. Pete told me that he wouldn’t take Lauren with him to the funeral in Pennsylvania, that he was too devastated by his mother’s death to take her. If I had my wits about me, I would have insisted that he take Lauren with him. He needed closure and so did Lauren. They needed each other. Distracted by the appointment with Dr. Pearlman and wanting desperately for it to go well, I blew it. I didn’t insist that Lauren travel to Pennsylvania to attend her grandmother’s funeral. So she missed it. I regretted my decision about these priorities and blamed myself for Lauren missing her grandmother’s funeral for many years.

Ashley and I were late for first our appointment with Dr. Pearlman. That would be the first mark against me. The second mark was more audible. Ashley was terrified of this appointment. Her dad had talked to her about it and so had I. It was a red flag to her that both of us had spoken to her about it, and she was outside of her routine of going to day care in the morning, so she was upset and afraid. She started wailing outside of Dr. Pearlman’s office, and she clung to me tightly as I carried her up the flight of stairs to his space. It took me ten minutes to get her to stop crying once we were in his office. And then Ashley wouldn’t answer any of his questions. She didn’t like him. I couldn’t blame her, I didn’t like him either. When she asked if she could nurse and I said, “Not right now, but you can later” I saw Dr. Pearlman furiously writing that juicy tidbit down. She sat in my lap the whole time. I was able to do one puzzle with her, which distracted her some, but she didn’t warm up to Dr. Pearlman in any way. Every time he even moved forward in his chair to say something to her, she reacted by physically recoiling away from him, and trying to pull my sweater over her body in a desperate attempt to shield herself from him. It was pretty much a disastrous visit.

I admired Dr. Pearlman for doing this work, because who in their right mind would want to? Dealing with warring, angry parents must have been awful, so I understood why Dr. Pearlman laid down the law, and hard. Custody battles brought out the worst in everyone. Suicide threats, domestic violence, sexual abuse – Dr. Pearlman dealt with all of it. He had the temperament for it as he was decisive and unyielding. Demanding even. And absolutely not swayed by anything emotional. I tried that once. Despite trying to stay calm, I panicked in a session with him. I expressed fears about Ashley’s emotional state. I expressed how fragile my own emotional state was and the loss of my life as I had known it, happily raising my children. I was tormented now, by Scott, by his lawyer, by the court system, and a wreck most of the time. The tears started flowing until I sat there, sobbing. Dr. Pearlman let this go on for about a minute while he stared at me, almost reptilian-like, with an absence of emotion. There was no “Here’s a tissue, dear” or “Do you need a break before we continue?” He finally looked down at his notes, peered at me over his reading glasses, and loudly, and without mention of my outburst, asked the next question on his list.

I read the reviews of Dr. Pearlman and knew that many parents blamed him for their custody outcomes. Easier to blame your ex, the court system, the judge, the child custody evaluator, than yourself. I didn’t want to blame Dr. Pearlman or anyone else. I wanted to keep Ashley out of this mad game. I wanted her to thrive, not live dictated to a schedule and waiting for the next court date to suddenly change the rules on her. I didn’t want some stranger making decisions for her and for us. But Scott had given the power and the decision-making ability to Dr. Pearlman, and right then I was unable to get it back. That’s the sad truth of custody battles. Never in a million years would I let someone like Dr. Pearlman have any control over my life or my child’s life. Not willingly. But there I was, despite my strong views, powerless at keeping him away.

I had other players that were more daunting to me than Dr. Pearlman. Without having my own lawyer most of the time, I was up against Miriam Hades, solo. I didn’t count Commissioner Viera as my friend, either. Dr. Pearlman was just one more player in the system that I was forced to interact with. Nothing personal, there. I didn’t blame him for any of this specifically. So far, Ashley was still happy. The transitions from me to Scott were damaging to Ashley, definitely, but besides that she was emotionally stable. What I didn’t realize then was that our situation would destabilize and worsen over the next few years.

In early October, still in the midst of our ongoing child custody evaluation, I went into an empty office at work to call our insurance company. I had a claim for Ashley that was denied and I wanted to find out why. I called our Medical Insurance carrier and first went through the options over voicemail and finally was connected to a representative. The representative asked for my name, date of birth, and address to confirm the account. Standard stuff. I was surprised when after a few seconds of pause, he let me know that sorry, the address I provided wasn’t the address on the account, and I couldn’t access my account. Surprise turned into anger as I asked him if the address he had on record was Scott’s address. He responded that yes, that was the address on the account. Scott’s address. Scott had called my insurance company and changed the address on the account. I was livid.

Scott knew that I provided the medical insurance for Ashley. This had financial benefits for both of us, because I already covered Lauren’s medical insurance. Tacking a second child on the insurance was no additional cost.

I demanded to talk to a manager at the insurance company and demanded that our medical insurance, that I alone paid for and worked for, got changed back to my address. Immediately. The insurance company opened an investigation on how another person could successfully do this. I let them know it was an invasion of privacy, that Scott didn’t just have access to Ashley’s medical records now, but also mine and my daughter Lauren’s. They didn’t say much, but let me know that Scott provided satisfactory answers to the security questions and so they gave him license to do whatever he wanted on our insurance.

After my insurance opened this investigation and I told Scott in very direct terms to never do this again, I knew it wouldn’t happen again. That Scott, without telling me or asking me in any way, called my medical insurance company and had the address on record changed to his address was infuriating. The change of address meant that every piece of correspondence from our medical insurance – whether it was about me, about Lauren, or about Ashley, would be physically mailed to his home address. If he wanted to see a claim or had a question for the insurance company, he could ask me. But this aggressive move of changing the address to his? Not ok. No way.

But man did he have balls.

Dr. Pearlman spent 18 hours in total interviewing combinations of Scott, Ashley, and me in the fall of 2015. Not stopping there, he interviewed the director of Ashley’s preschool, Ashley’s past and current teachers at her preschool, our previous Family Court Services mediator Ben Avital, Scott’s individual psychotherapist, my psychiatrist, and our previous Special Master, Chip Chester. And finally, being unsure of Scott’s living situation, Dr. Pearlman spent what I would eventually read was a very uncomfortable hour around dinnertime with Scott and Ashley at their San Bruno condo. Dr. Pearlman even called Ashley’s pediatrician and asked for information on interactions with both of us and wanted detailed information on how that went. I resented the lack of privacy in the custody evaluation. I hated that part. The part that tells the people you count on in your life to take care of your child on a regular basis that you are out of control of your own personal life. That this evaluator, this stranger that you barely know, will soon be deciding when you see your child, how the transitions are managed, and possibly more.

Eventually it was done. Every question Dr. Pearlman had, was answered. Many were answered somewhat unsatisfactorily, in his opinion, like the fact that I was still breastfeeding Ashley. Much of it didn’t go well, like Ashley’s tantrum at his office. But it was almost over. Dr. Pearlman was writing the final report and that would be mailed to us within a couple of weeks. Finally I would be able to put this behind me.

A week before we expected the final report from Dr. Pearlman, Russ called me. “The report from Pearlman, it’s going to be delayed a bit.”

“How long?” I asked. “Why?”

Russ tried to brace me from the news by starting out slow. “There’s been a tragedy in Dr. Pearlman’s family,” he began. “His young son, just four years old, went into the hospital with a high fever. The doctors couldn’t get the fever down. They tried to save him, but they couldn’t.”

“His son… died?” I almost started crying. He lost his child. How could anyone survive losing a child. I couldn’t bear to live if Ashley were taken from me.

“Yes,” Russ answered. “His son died two days ago.”

The next day I received a letter from Dr. Pearlman in the mail. The final report, which he had expected to complete and mail last week, had been delayed “due to a death in the family,” he wrote. That was the only mention of his young son’s death in any way.

Dr. Pearlman completed his Comprehensive Child Custody Evaluation on November 3, 2010 and mailed it to us. There was a lot of shock value to receiving one of Dr. Pearlman’s child custody evaluation reports. As a parent paying for and providing information for these reports, there was so much I didn’t know. I didn’t know exactly who Dr. Pearlman would interview, and for how long. I didn’t have any knowledge as to what he might change, besides the timeshare. What did a completed custody evaluation even look like? Wouldn’t it be better if you could see a list of potential issues? Wouldn’t it be useful to see some of the child custody evaluation templates upfront?

One piece of advice helped prepare me for the detailed 21-page report, a densely written exposé about my life as a mother and a co-parent. This piece of advice was from a man I met at a coparenting class that Mr. Avital sent both of us to, some months ago. This man had experienced a custody evaluation for his own high-conflict battle and he told me that the evaluator doesn’t get everything right, only about 90% of the final report is correct. Thanks to him, I had the expectation set for me that there would be some inaccuracies or even surprises contained in the report. I was ok with little pieces of it being wrong. What I was the most anxious to read about was the custodial time that Dr. Pearlman would inevitably recommend.

Dr. Pearlman recommended a timeshare where Scott would have, on Week 1, Tuesday overnight and Friday to Monday overnights, and then Week 2, Thursday overnight. So out of fourteen nights, she would be with Scott for five nights. This would be a change for me. I was used to being with Ashley on Tuesday and Thursday evening after Scott’s visits, and only away from her every other weekend for the same three nights. Even the three nights in a row that was the current schedule was hard on me. Scott had the condo near in nearby San Bruno now, since May, so I was expecting that he would get more overnights with Ashley. To that point, the recommendation specified that his weekday overnights needed to be at his San Mateo county home. I was very relieved that a fifty-fifty timeshare wasn’t ordered. I was also relieved that the custody wasn’t switched from primary to him from me.

The fears I had were not founded. Ashley was not going to be ripped away from me. She was not going to live with Scott. She was going to have two more overnights with Scott, on evenings that she was visiting him now, anyway. The overnight change wouldn’t happen until our court date on Feb 1, 2006. So I had time to prepare and to adjust. There would be no order made in court when I wasn’t present. We had time to wrap our heads around this. Ashley would be 3 ½ when this was implemented. Every day she was growing and had a better understanding of the world. I could make this work. I had to. I didn’t have much choice.

Then I reread the report. Again and again I read it. Once the ever-present fear that Ashley would live with Scott as the primary parent was not realized, I tried to learn from it. What did Dr. Pearlman believe were my weaknesses, my faults? I was lucky, in this regard, that Dr. Pearlman did not hold back. “Concerns are focused on her views of propriety regarding Ashley and her apparent lack of flexibility and cooperation in co-parenting with Scott…she does not do well sharing this child or supporting Scott when the child is in his care… she has not fully allowed Scott to take an appropriate role… It is in Ashley’s best interests to have a free and unfettered relationship with Scott.”

I was the one to blame.

Accepting the new schedule and the twenty-one pages of analysis about my life wasn’t easy. Anticipating the evaluation was stressful, going through it was even more stressful, and receiving the final package, the report, was most difficult. What Pearlman had to say about me was not flattering. I didn’t want it to be true. I could feel myself recoiling from it, and wanting to scream at Pearlman, ‘But you didn’t get me. You didn’t get that none of this was my fault. You didn’t get what a difficult guy Scott is. You didn’t get that this is all his fault.’

That’s what I wanted to scream. So badly.

But every time I thought of the report, or reread the report, I forced myself to look hard at what was written there. I forced myself to consider, and then to believe, that Dr. Pearlman was right. That I had many weaknesses, and they were in black and white in front of me. It hurt incredibly to walk through this, like walking barefoot on hot coals. I just spent at least a few thousands of dollars on this, months of my life, and I was faced with losing two nights a week with Ashley. I was determined not to shy away from this, but to learn from it.

Up at night, over and over, I heard Dr. Pearlman’s voice in my head, reciting my flaws. The most egregious was not believing Scott was a good parent. That was true, absolutely true. I believed that Scott was not a good parent. He couldn’t spot a fever. He wanted to take her away from me when she was an infant, just getting to know the world. He wasn’t kind during drop offs, to put it mildly. And I had to let all of that go. I had to see what Dr. Pearlman saw, if I was going to survive this. Dr. Pearlman saw that Scott showed up. That he tried. That he visited Ashley regularly. That he was motivated to be a good father. Not a good father, but a great father, the best he could be. That he loved her and would do things he would have never considered before, like moving to San Mateo. Whether or not it always felt right to me, I had to let this window of Dr. Pearlman’s perspective, into my world. If I couldn’t understand this point of view, I would risk losing Ashley. I would also be at risk to harm Ashley. So over and over, I reread the report, and worked to integrate this perspective into my consciousness.

There was more to Dr. Pearlman’s report than just the change in timeshare. Dr. Pearlman believed that we should have a comprehensive set of orders so that there would be very little, if anything, for us to attempt to work out ourselves. We had already tried to negotiate a few things ourselves and failed miserably. The rest of Dr. Pearlman’s recommendations were designed to have us in as little contact with each other as possible. Parenting in parallel was the official term for this style of co-parenting, where there is little to no cooperation between the parents. The subject of the rest of these recommendations were managing transitions, the next timeshare change, the summer schedule, illnesses, holidays, and daily phone contact.

All transitions were to occur at day care. If day care wasn’t in session, then the exchange would occur at 9:00am and the receiving parent would pick up from the custodial parent’s house.

The recommendation included that there would be no change to the basic time share plan until Ashley was set to enter Kindergarten in Fall of 2007. And specifically, “The child’s entry into Kindergarten shall be seen as an appropriate change of circumstances in order to revisit the time share plan.” I didn’t like thinking about changing the timeshare again, but Ashley starting Kindergarten felt very far away.

The summer schedule was new and slightly surprising as I hadn’t talked about that with Dr. Pearlman. Each parent was to have one full week with Ashley, beginning at 9:00am on Friday and ending the following week on Friday at 9:00am. Each parent was to inform the other of “their” week in the summer by May 1, and that week needed to include the parent’s regularly scheduled weekend.

If Ashley was too ill to go to day care, the custodial parent would care for her and transition the child at 5:00pm that day. If her fever was over 102, she wouldn’t transition. There would be no need to provide proof of a fever. If mom lost a day, there would be no make-up time. But if dad lost a day, he would get the next day as make-up time. This was a clear order and there was no room for interpretation. As much as I didn’t like potentially losing a day with Ashley, it was the best order I had seen on this issue.

Holidays were clearly laid out. On even years, I had certain holidays and Scott had the others. In odd years, the holiday schedule was reversed. I always had Mother’s Day and Scott always had Father’s Day. Neither parent had would have Ashley on their own birthday, but each parent would have a specific time period to spend with Ashley on her birthday.

Daily phone contact was covered, too. It was expected that Ashley would not require daily phone contact with the noncustodial parent. Each parent would, in their own discretion, appropriately offer the child to have phone contact with the noncustodial parent.

Unless we agreed to adopt these orders ourselves, they would not become orders until the next court hearing, set for Feb 1, 2006. I knew Scott would not agree to these orders without the court’s intervention. So I had almost three months to wrap my head and my heart around the new schedule.

As a mother, they always tell you not to have a favorite child. Or they tell you that you won’t, that you will love all of your children equally. Or that you love them all the same amount, but differently. I think this is bullshit. Ashley was my clear favorite. She was so different from me, which meant that I needed to study her carefully to understand her. She needed me more than Lauren did. And maybe, being a mom for the second time, I knew too well how precious time with a small child was. I wanted to savor every second. One blink, it seemed, and they were grown up.

At three years old, Ashley threw a fit when I asked her if she wanted to wear purple socks when she wanted the pink ones. She screamed and cried and threw herself on the ground. I had to manage tantrums for the first time in my life. I got really good at it, bending down to her level and talking her out of her fear and her angst. Ashley taught me to be a real mother. She changed me. She took my heart out of my body and stomped on it. The process of having her leave me and go to Scott destroyed me over and over again. Raising this child was pure madness.

                In early December, Russ called me to discuss my case. It had taken the most unexpected twist and Russ was trying to be professional about it. I could hear the bewilderment in his voice. Unhappy with the results of the custody evaluation, because Dr. Pearlman had not granted Scott full custody of Ashley, Scott and his lawyer had apparently gone ballistic. In legal terms that meant they wanted to take Dr. Pearlman’s deposition. In this deposition, Ms. Hades would challenge Dr. Pearlman’s authority and attempt to discredit him.

                “What do they want to accomplish by deposing Dr. Pearlman?” I asked.

                “I’m not exactly sure what they will accomplish,” came Russ’s slow southern drawl. “It could very well backfire on them. The court won’t take kindly to challenging an expert they recommended in the first place,” he continued.

                I hoped they would just drop the deposition. The final evaluation wasn’t anywhere near a glowing recommendation of my abilities of a parent or my personality. Couldn’t they just take pleasure in having a written document that detailed many of my faults?

                Dr. Pearlman’s deposition was scheduled for mid-December at Miriam’s office in San Francisco. Russ said I didn’t have to attend. Best news I had heard in a while. I would never be able to make it through a deposition of our child custody evaluator by Scott and his out-to-get-me lawyer without rolling my eyes and sighing a million times. Russ would handle this for me. Of course, four hours of his time for the deposition and then an hour for Russ to review the transcript would cost me another thirteen hundred dollars. That sucked, but I couldn’t do much about it. At least Scott had to pay more than that, including his lawyer for preparation time and deposition time, Dr. Pearlman’s minimum daily fee for the deposition, and the court reporter. It was small comfort that Scott was spending more money than I was on this fiasco. What an incredible waste of time and money for both of us.

                Russ sent me the transcript of the deposition a few days later. It was a sixty-page document and took me some time to read through it all. I was completely underwhelmed. Ms. Hades asked most of the questions of Dr. Pearlman. She wasn’t forceful at all, asking about his education and experience. And then she kind of lost steam. She never got to the main point. She never directly challenged his authority. She didn’t challenge any of the recommendations he made. Scott apparently jumped in, and asked Dr. Pearlman several questions himself, trying to challenge a few of the points in the evaluation, but he answered them steadily and did not waiver. Dr. Pearlman’s unvarying stance did not give them any room to maneuver. I read through the document again. Now it made even less sense, and I couldn’t understand why they went to all the effort of deposing Dr. Pearlman. I was doubly glad I didn’t go to the deposition. It ended up being just a big puff of steam. The only potential outcome from this deposition was for Dr. Pearlman to be a little pissed off at Scott. And perhaps it provided Russ with a little comic relief.