I enjoy reading about Michigan family law attorney Mindy L. Hitchcock’s various battles and victories against the anti-male family law system, and I thought I’d share this one with my readers. It involves a dad who was the victim of his ex-wife’s phony, tactical-maneuver-in-divorce domestic violence restraining/personal protection order. He was almost jailed for the “crime” of visiting his little daughter’s kindergarten
Mindy (pictured) writes:
“David and Julie had five kids during their marriage. Julie was unable to win the exclusive legal custody of her children in the divorce court, so she filed another case and persuaded the judge to issue a personal protection order. The PPO prevented David from appearing within Julie”s sight or communicating with her except by email.
“Armed with this order, Julie then proceeded to make child rearing decisions without input from David. When September came, she picked a kindergarten for their youngest daughter. On the first day, David showed up to meet the headmaster, and there was his ex-wife with their daughter. Julie ran to the county prosecutor, who dragged David into court on an alleged violation of the PPO.
“David had previously faced a similar ‘violation’ with a lawyer who advised him to simply plead guilty, so this was a second offense and he was looking at jail time. When we appeared with David at the arraignment, the judge showed that he was biased against him by volunteering to the prosecutor, ‘If you had asked me to, I would have terminated his parenting time.’
“Nevertheless, we decided to take the case to trial. We told the judge that Julie was using the PPO as a sword, not a shield. With a few well-placed questions we were able to establish that Julie”s goal for getting the PPO was to freeze David out of the children”s lives.
“David also got a little help from the headmaster, who testified that David was never closer than 25 feet from his ex-wife and not 4 feet, as she claimed. David was exonerated of the charge, and Julie”s bad purpose was exposed. He and his ex share joint legal and joint physical custody of their children.”