This story sounds to me like a case of “deadbeat dad” in reverse.
Once mom had a child support judgment against her she quit working, quit the academy, and has taken menial jobs to avoid paying child support. Drop off of the employment radar so they cannot garnish her wages.
And the dad, has been raising all 3 of these kids for how long without incident or complaint about their treatment? 8 years!! Without any support from mom. And how much time has mom spent with these kids during that time?
It sounds like mom is now re-married, and in a better place financially, and wants all those years where she was the deadbeat erased.
Life does not work that way. Dad spent many years and a considerable amount of money raising these children while mom was absent. Doesn’t matter that dad is now “living in a trailer!” and she has a nice home. Pencil that out. Who spent the money needed to raise those kids? Who took care of what needed to be done and who skipped out?
The best she could hope for is to contact a lawyer, who will contact the dad, and see if there is some way to ameliorate the situation for the benefit of the children. Maybe some of the money could be forgiven.
This all sounds like an attempt by her to protect her new husband from her debt. The whole issue with the DA testifying and her lawyer’s behavior just points to her being a flake, at least at that time, maybe she is better.
Your co-worker is a dead-beat parent hoping to recover her long lost children and protect her new husband from the money she does owe.
If the genders in this story were reversed most people would have no sympathy for the deadbeat, and I have none for you co-worker.
Disclaimer: I am was a single dad who raised my kids in a similar situation.
Okay, the part that no one seems to be getting is that I have known these people for the entire time. She had custody of the kids, he had visitation. She asks him to take care of the kids for a couple months while she is in the academy. He goes to court and gets an emergency order because he says she abandoned her duties. She doesn’t know about the court proceedings, and doesn’t show up, so of course the judge takes away custody from her. The ex legally can take the kids out of state, so he takes them to New Mexico, but he did it in a very underhanded way. I have heard all of the stories of how they have been trying to get him into court, yet he always found a way to get out of it. Now maybe my buddy has been blowing a smokescreen this entire time, but I can’t see why.
See, right there we’ve got something funky. Even if he got an ex parte emergency order, she should have been served with a copy of the order, with opportunity for appeal immediately. If she was NOT served, as soon as she found out she had opportunity to go to court and contest it on the basis of lack of notification. (I don’t know Maryland procedure, but here in Kansas it would in most cases be the clerk of the court who mails out the papers to the address on file at the courthouse.)
And yet only now, many years later, did she get her day in court? Why the delay?
This whole story by your friend sounds like grade A bullshit. Whenever I hear one of these “All this terrible, awful bad shit happened legally through the courts and I had NO idea at all what was going on” I have to stop. When you unpack these stories and try to verify them it usually turns out the complaining party is mischaracterizing the facts of the situation.