Fighting Family Law Injustice in Florida

My Custody Battle-Part 1

2005-05-09T18:01:00.000-07:00

For right now, I won't publish my ex husband's last name on this site until I find out what I can legally do without risking him suing me for slander or libel. But I'm ready to begin my story. It started when I was 19, and in my last year of college (I graduated from high school at 16). I wanted to get away from home because of a lot of family problems, and when I met this much older, seemingly sophisticated man in one of my evening summer classes, I naively fell for him. At 37, Paul was 18 years older than I was. When my father found out that I was secretly dating him, he was totally against it. One day, when he wasn't home, I packed up and left and went to live with Paul. The image of my mother crying still haunts me. Later, my mom told me that when my dad came home and realized that I was gone, he went into their bedroom and stayed in their for a long time with the door closed. Even after all of the problems that we had, I still feel guilty about hurting my father. On New Year's Eve, 1998, Paul and I were married in a simple ceremony in the park. My parents weren't there. I had already started to realize that things weren't right, but I felt like it was too late. I was too ashamed to go back to the home that I had so abruptly left. He had started to hit me, and when my mother suspected something and asked me outright if he was hitting me, I looked my mom in the face and lied and said no. Add to that, the fact that I was discovering that he had many more children than I had originally known about. The signs were there, but I was too naive and ashamed to deal with them. I was already three months pregnant with our first son when we were married, and about two months later, he received a call from a woman that he had had a relationship with to say that she had given birth to a son. I had our son in June, and was pregnant again by the time he was four months old. I was extremely unhappy about it. By the time my boys were two and three years old, I had decided that I had had enough, and one day, I confessed to my sister that I wanted to leave Paul. I was extremely lonely and unhappy, and I had no friends my age. I became friends with a guy at work, and I thought that there shouldn't be a problem with it, seeing as how women were calling my house both times I was pregnant to let me know that they had had a baby with my husband, and someone who Paul was supposedly helping on a campaign for political office, was calling my home at 10 p.m., and Paul was acting secretive about it. Once again, my naivete came into play. I should have realized that someone like Paul, who was always jealous and watching my every move, would not have believed that I could have a friend who was a guy, even though he had relationships with women that were obviously much more than friends. Even though it was okay for him to talk to women on the phone, when my friend called me, he snapped. He threw my cell phone into a wall, smashing it to pieces, then slammed me into the wall next. I blacked out briefly, and when I woke up, I was on the bed and he was on top of me choking me. I couldn't breathe, or cry, and I thought seriously that I was going to die. I think that the only thing that stopped him, was my oldest son, who was three, who was standing there watching, along with my two year old. He began crying and screaming, "No". Just as soon as he had started, he stopped. Terrified, I jumped up and called 911. Paul fled the house, but came back, and was arrested and taken to jail. I packed up my kids and moved back to my parents house. The legal problems that have plagued me ever since, are Paul's way of getting back at me. He no longer can control me, so he uses our children like pawns to control me. He also feels like its my fault that he went to jail, I guess because I called 911. So his goal in life since then, has been to make mine miserable. For awhile, it worked. But I am finally so angry, that I have had enough. I am fighting back in whatever way I can.

Happy Mother's Day

2005-05-08T19:18:00.000-07:00

This post is dedicated to all of the mothers who are able to spend the day with their children today, to play with them in the park and enjoy handwritten cards, handprint plaques, and unidentifiable objects given to them as gifts by proud five year olds with wide grins. This post is also dedicated to the mothers who don't know where their children are, who haven't seen their children in months or even years, and to the mothers whose children are only minutes away, but whom they are barred from seeing or even talking to on the phone by a simple piece of black and white paper. The mothers who must bear society's scorn and questioning looks, because, what kind of a mother loses her children? She must have done something terrible, so the thinking goes. This is dedicated to the mothers whose children have finally turned against her, alienated by fathers and family members who receive so much joy by breaking her down. We are all mothers, whether we are with our children or not, and we must never forget that. The moment that we conceived, we became special beings, set apart from the rest of the world by the tremendous burden and gift that we had been given-to nurture and bring life to another. Happy Mother's Day, whether the tears that you shed today were tears of joy or tears of sorrow, and one day, may our collective tears form a flood that washes over society and makes it clean again.

Hello World

2005-05-07T21:08:00.000-07:00

My name is Alana and I am a Florida mom of two wonderful boys and I am finally ready to go public with my story to let the world know what is happening to women and children in the family law and child protective services systems in this country. I will not give the names of my sons to protect their privacy, as they have already had to go through so much that is not their fault, and my wish to protect them has been the reason that I have not spoken out in an open online forum before. However, I am starting to realize that until more people like me start speaking out, people will remain ignorant and uninformed about what is going on. My story is long, complicated and painful, but it needs to be told. I welcome comments, however, please know up front that I do not take kindly to so-called father's rights groups, which I will talk about in a later post, so if you are a proponent of such organizations, be forewarned that I don't have anything positive to say about these groups, so my blog will probably not be your cup of tea, so to say. Instead of publishing one long drawn out post, I will break my story up into several posts. This is a timesaver for me also, and will allow me to collect my thoughts. Many of the things that I have to say are still painful for me, and I can only write about them in short chunks. So please keep coming back to view new postings. Also, for women who live or have lived in Florida and have had negative experiences with the Florida Department of Children and Families, and/or the family law courts in Florida, I have set up a new Yahoo Group entitled Females Challenging Family Law in Florida. If you would like to join, please send me a message at familylawflorida-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and tell me a little about your situation.