I realize from my header that I could write the longest post in history if I were to use all my examples of his people show they love themselves more than their kids, but the example I was thinking of was in the news recently. Apparently, a man attempted to evade police who were at his apartment to arrest him for nonpayment of child support (which means this man was REALLLLLYYY behind in payments). To avoid having to go to court and pay some fricking money for his kids, he jumped out of a third story building and broke his legs. My first thought was, “good”. Then I regurgitated the same series of thoughts that go through my mind every time I see deadbeats (of either sex) stand there almost confused when the judge explains how their children like to eat EVERY day, not just when the deadbeat got around to saving up a couple of bucks. Sheesh.

I know that I get some hostile comments on these type of posts, but since all I do is family law, I have made some general unscientific observations. At the Daley Center where couples go for divorces and deal with the related child issues, most non custodial parents have jobs, pay their support, and are involved with their kids. At 32 West Randolph, where parents who were never married go to court, almost every non-custodial parents there claims to be broke, out of work, and so on. Most of the relationships were not ‘serious’ if you know what I mean. It takes a special kind of selfishness to have unprotected sex with a one night stand when the person knows that they cannot afford to care for a child.

And lest the men think I am picking on them, I don’t have much sympathy for the women who come toting 2 toddlers into court (often from different fathers) and are eight months pregnant. A good barometer of how good a job a parent did raising their daughter is to look at how many separate support cases she currently has at 32 WR. In other words, how many deadbeat fathers does she have for children between 1 and 18?

I wish I had a link to an instructional youtube video on ‘how to use a condom’ to post here.

Just had a quick thought today in court (it happens). Anyway, a pro se (which is latin for ‘I want to lose’) litigant complained that the other party was lying. When the judge asked them what evidence they had to rebut the supposed inaccurate statement, the pro se litigant said, “trust me judge, I know this man is lying”. In other words, she pulled out the super secret objection that I missed in law school which I call the “Liar Liar Pants on Fire retort”.

On a more serious note, I also was reminded how asinine some attorneys can be. Recently, opposing counsel on a case filed a pleading regarding a motion to substitute the judge. In his poorly drafted motion, he claimed that I had lied to the court in my initial Petition. His claim was I had not notified the court that the case had already been filed once and withdrawn. Unfortunately for him, in my handwriting on the initial Petition is my note to the court that this was a refiling. Now the other attorney looked pretty stupid, because he either cannot read or he was too lazy to read my Petition (I bet the former).
An attorney signing their name to a court document accusing another attorney of lying to the court is pretty serious. I could file a motion for sanctions but quite frankly, I’m too busy to police every jerk at the Daley Center. Oh well. Today’s lesson for new attorneys is be careful with bold claims of lying, deceit.