Doper in need - TruCelt (fundraising request)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

(permission asked and received before posting this)

As many of you know, fellow Doper TruCelt is in the middle of a legal battle for custody of her daughter.

Many of the details cannot be posted directly on the board because this is an ongoing legal case, but as she has said on previous threads, she is currently without a job and has no income (though she is hopeful this will change in the near future).

Hampering this process is that she has had incompetent legal counsel. Rather than stand up and help fix his mistakes, the lawyer has said he is withdrawing from the case.

Unfortunately, because this is an ongoing legal battle, we cannot disclose much more than that on the boards without risk of the opposing counsel finding out and using it against her - but I (and my husband, Typo Knig) can vouch for the situation being serious. We can provide more information via PM.

Living with the father poses serious welfare concerns which the courts are not addressing. The opposing counsel has managed to get the courts to mandate significant expenses on TruCelt, which she has no way at present to meet. Among other things, they have deliberately impeded her knowledge of proceedings, and that’s counting against her, badly. They have ignored case law (even a Supreme Court decision!) on several occasions.

If any Dopers feel they can contribute to the legal fund, I know TruCelt would be beyond grateful. She needs assistance in paying off mandated court fees from the previous hearing, guardian at litem fees, funds to find her own expert witnesses, and possibly a retainer to find another lawyer for the appeals which she must launch.

Questions may be sent to me or TruCelt via PM.

Contributions can be made via Paypal (email in my profile), or directly to TruCelt or myself. (pm for details.)

2

Using my bump to post links to a couple of papers that could almost have been written with the current situation in mind:

http: // www.svnetwork.net/attachments/ pas1.pdf
http: // www.svnetwork.net/attachments/ pas2.pdf

(remove spaces to make the links work). These are work-safe but will probably make you ill.

3

Hi Mama Zappa, I’ve made a donation for TruCelt to your PayPal account.

Best of luck to her.

4

Holy shit, you are not kidding.

5

Thank you so much.

TruCelt will be offline for the weekend starting this evening; I’ll see her before then and let her know of your kindness.

6

Has anyone contacted the folks at the celtlings private school? I imagine they would love to help keep this child in the best environment possible.

7

She’s not at a private school right now. Her teacher did provide some feedback directly to the court though I don’t think TruCelt knows what it contained.

8

Hello all! I’m sorry I haven’t been able to post sooner. I want to say Thank You! to those who have donated, and to Mama Zappa and Typo Knig for all their help. Knowing that people care is incredibly encouraging at a time like this.

The school has done what they can, but the opposing counsel is extremely sly at keeping things out of court, and my lawyer has been lazy to the point of outright falling down on scheduling an appeal and providing Discovery and Witness lists. As a result, I didn’t even get to testify at the last hearing. The GAL has blatantly left the school’s concerns (and support for me) out of her reports.

This time I filed the appeal myself, so I’ll at least be informed of the scheduling hearing; but I truly need legal help, and the local “Legal Aid” groups don’t offer a lot of support in custody cases.

It’s a nightmare.

9

Popping in again to say thank you, again. Enough was received to take care of some very immediate bills (e.g. the fee for filing the appeal).

I think I responded to everyone who has donated - either via PM, or via email in the case of one donation that came via Paypal without a dopername attached. If you contributed and did NOT get an acknowledgement, please let me know and accept my apologies.