“Sam” is a  parent caught in an awful child custody and support battle whom I interviewed extensively over half a decade.

Sam is a licensed school teacher. Sam is really good with young people. Sam goes to church and understands biblical principles. Sam was given basically no contact with Sam’s own child during a family law case that spanned 18 years and spilled over into the dependency courts.

Sam was investigating appointed minor’s counsel William Spiller when my writing about corrupt court officials came up and we were connected.

Sam’s ex works for the government; a fire department. Sam’s ex brings home over $100,000 per year in salary.

Sam is supposed to pay the ex $100,000 in child support arrears. Sam is not allowed to have a passport. There is a threat of losing Sam’s teaching credentials. There is a threat of losing Sam’s driver’s license. Money is taken by levy from Sam’s bank account and pay checks.

Sam is a woman, but gender is not the issue anymore. Sam is a once affluent African-American. Race is no longer an issue.

Once a human decides to sever intimate relations with the other parent of her child, bureaucrats including judges and Department of Child Support Service workers force the human to let them decide what “the best interests” of the children are, what percentage of the human’s money should be spent on the children, and who will decide how that money is spent. Of course the bureaucrats take a percentage off the top for themselves, their campaign contributors and other cohorts.

Is this “in the best interest of the children”? Not.

Child Support Should Support Children. This is the name of a not-for-profit organization I am organizing.

The concept is simple, but California’s Department of Child Support Services, DCSS, decided to complicate things. The first page of their website states: California’s Child Support Services Program works with parents – custodial and noncustodial – and guardians to ensure children and families receive court-ordered financial and medical support. (Italicization mine.)

Child support is not spousal support. It is not meant to keep the former spouse in the style they have become accustomed to or would like to become accustomed to. It is meant to support children.

At first DCSS was only supposed to collect money to pay back the welfare system. But child support collection became big business, and Title IV-D gave an incentive to the state to collect bigger dollars.

The court, especially the family law court is a big piggy bank. Money goes into it from tax dollars, fees, and private party payments. Then a whole list of little piggies start pulling out. There are judges, bailiffs, court clerks, court reporters, file clerks, lawyers for both parties, lawyers appointed to represent the children, psychological-evaluators and social workers, Child Support Services case workers, Child Support Services attorneys, visitation monitors…I may be missing a few piggies, but I ran out of toes. Lots of people benefit from high conflict divorce; none of these people are children.

Child support is based on keeping the same standard of living for the child as the wealthier parent enjoys. I am not here to debate whether this is right or wrong. Though, some people think The State should stay out of our business. If we want our biological children to just get by, that is our prerogative. If that was the agreed upon way of doing things, child support would be uniform regardless of a person’s income. It would determine the cost to feed, clothe and shelter a child per year and make each parent ante up half that amount. But our government decided the amount it costs to raise a child depends on the wealthier parent’s standard of living.

My proposal does not address how the amount it costs to support a child is determined. It addresses how the support monies should be spent.

The present system is not working and it harms parent-child relationships. The present system takes into consideration the percentage of time a child spends with each parent, each parent’s earning potential, then has one parent hand over an equalization payment to the other parent each month. It encourages parents to fight for a higher percentage of time with the children, to get more child support, or to pay less child support.

I suggest the paying parent be required to set up an irrevocable trust with the children as beneficiaries, and the paying parent named as trustee. Since the trust is irrevocable, the money would eventually benefit the children. There could even be a clause that any remaining money or property in the trust becomes the adult child’s property at the age of 25, 21 or even 18.

Now the parent who seems to have a better ability to grow money is put in charge of deciding how the money is best spent.

Trusts are no more difficult to write than a custody agreement. Accounting would be simple, with equal payments going in monthly and a ledger of expenditures. For the more aggressive trustee parent, there may be investments made and investment income to account for. This is no more complicated than any of the other paper work done when a wealthy person divorces.

If the paying parent is low income and uneducated, it is still simple enough to have people who are case workers in the present system help the paying parent pay off welfare and then buy a grocery card for the children, similar to an EBT card. Case workers in the present system would probably be sitting around, twiddling their thumbs and looking at the job listing ads if the paying parent was made the trustee parent.

The same rules of contempt would apply if the trustee parent did not make payments into the trust regularly. Don’t pay in, go to jail. My guess is we would free up lots of jail space to incarcerate the real criminals. People who commit dishonest services fraud, for example.

Sure, there are little details to work out. Child care and health insurance may present an issue. But this might be solved by saying the first X dollars is paid to child care and health care. What we are trying to accomplish is to take out the financial incentive for one parent to try to get a high percentage of time with the children, and to give the income producing parent the opportunity to decide how all that extra money should be spent on the children.

Child Support Should Support Children.

Thank you to attorney Patricia Barry for posting the following comment on a story about judicial candidate Debra Losnick. Readers asked for it to gain prominence, so here it is as a stand alone article:

I am an attorney with direct knowledge of Comm Losnick’s unethical misconduct on the bench.

In Yolanda Cuesta’s case Losnick consistently declared any evidence showing that the detective, the medical practitioners who examined the child and who found physical evidence consistent with sodomy, the child’s therapists, the child’s disclosures, Yolanda’s reports of sexual abuse, and DCFS’ conclusions that the child was sexually abused by the father irrelevant. She retained an incompetent and unqualified mental health evaluator, Michael Ward, at the expense of the taxpayers to say that Yolanda is an alienator and that she made it all up despite the overwhelming evidence that the father had sodomized his son. Ward admitted he had no background in child sexual abuse. The only individuals who said there was no sexual abuse were the father, his attorney, the minor’s counsel who always supports the abusive parent, Losnick, and Ward. Only because Fox News reported on the case several times was Yolanda able to keep custody and the child was protected.

In C.J. Park’s case, Losnick did not demand that the medical and police records be attached to the report of CSW Aguilera. Besides not attaching the records, Aguilera lied in her report. A year later after Losnick took her children, C.J. received from the Court of Appeal a report of SART Nurse Cabrera who had interviewed the children. She reported that the children did disclose that their father was molesting them in the shower. Losnick gave full custody to the molesting father and placed their mother in supervised visitation without the reports and solely on the perjured hearsay of the social worker Aguilera. Losnick hired another unethical mental health evaluator, Mr. Kraman, who said C.J. was making it all up — he said so even though he admitted that the children were not doing well in their father’s custody. Kraman did not have the medical and police records. He did not care. Rendering an opinion on the mental condition of an individual without all the records is a violation of protocol for a mental health evaluator.

In Jennifer Hebert’s case, Losnick was warned by County Counsel Melissa Searle and DCFS investigator Larryenaga not to give custody to the father Alexis Hebert because he was paranoid as a result of the schizophrenia he suffers from and because he had shown that he could not care for children. They said if Losnick awarded Alex custody the children would be at risk. Losnick gave custody to him, Since custody was awarded to him, numerous professionals have made mandated reports against him. The children’s therapist whom Alex hand-selected quit in disgust and testified in a deposition that Alex is unfit, that he witnessed Alex suffering from a bout of paranoia, that Alex believed a woman in a car in the therapist’s parking lot was after him. The therapist also testified that it is detrimental to the children seeing their mother only 1 hour a week which is what Judge Zeidler ordered. Judge Zeidler was assigned Jennifer’s case after I disqualified Losnick from the case. The children’s therapist also testified that the children are always filthy even with cookies in their hair, and their little bottoms and genitalia looked like they had suffered burns. The children are constantly ill, the 2 year old with gastroenteritis. The older child was diagnosed with anxiety because of being taken from her mother. The children are developmentally delayed. Alex refused to remove them from day care although the older child who could speak consistently reported being hit and abused there. She even had bruises on her legs where she said she was being kicked. The older child reports sleeping with “Dada” and not in her own bed. She masturbates in public spaces. Only because Jennifer, their mother, reported the day care to the State Dept of Licensing did Alex move the children to a different day care.

Jennifer is now in Judge Iwasaki’s court (family law). Alex told Judge Iwasaki (Dept 63) that Jennifer is harassing him with false complaints. Judge Iwasaki agrees with Alex although it was Jennifer who got the children out of the abusive day care. Alex works full time, has the children living in a converted garage, and makes music videos day and night in the bedroom he shares with the children. He posted his 3 year old daughter’s photo with a music video in which he sang he had had seen the devil over and over again. The former children’s therapist also testified that he had made three mandated reports about the two children, and DCFS disregarded them. He testified that the police came out twice to Alex’s home because other individuals had made reports (not Jennifer) about the children. Judge Iwasaki is more interested in protecting Losnick and Judge Zeidler than protecting these two little girls. Alex has deprived the little girls from seeing their mother going on 14 weeks (order is that at a minimum Jennifer and the girls must visit one hour per week). When the children did visit with their mother, they cling to their mother and cry when they have to leave, because they do not want to go with their father. What kid would?

Comm’r Losnick is not fit to serve as a judge.

******************************************

Thank you Ms. Barry.

Losnick is running against the qualified gang homicide prosecutor Shannon Knight. Please vote on June 3rd: Shannon Knight for Judge.

(This commentary was not paid for in any way by any committee or candidate or anyone else. It is the opinion of the author and court watcher Laura Lynn)

The following is a press release from the FBI. This writer does not advocate taking your children and running, ever. But, had I done so, my children would be much better off and society would save money and pain. When biased judicial officers like the California Supreme Court called Alan Friedenthal write draconian orders, as the appellate court called orders written by Elizabeth Feffer, the court opens the door to anarchy.

I do not know whether the mother in this story was a protective parent or a looney toon or a mean, vindictive explitive; Because I do not know if her orders were written by an honest judge or if they were written by Steff Padilla, Debra Losnick or Patricia Ito.

God save the United States of America.

Finally the Court of Appeals, Justice Woods and Perluss in particular, recognize the nature of Judge Elizabeth Feffer’s orders separating children from their mothers.

This reporter watched a hearing between Elizabeth G and her ex spouse Gregory G. The words on the transcript could not capture the callous and bitchy tone of voice Feffer used in addressing the beautiful young mother.

Apparently the words spoken in a different hearing, where Elizabeth G was represented by attorney Robert Canny did appeal to the justices’ sense of decency.

You can read the “unpublished” opinion by clicking here, but the online version is only available for 60 days from when it is posted. If the link no longer works, write to bohemian_books@yahoo.com and I’ll try to send a pdf. When I have more time, I’ll try to convert the entire pdf to a word doc and post it here.

Elizabeth G Appeal

My favorite line from the opinion was toward the conclusion.  “Issuance of such a draconian restraining order was not proper unless failure to issue it might jeopardize [the child’s] safety.”

Something bothers me:  the practice of taking out the identifying names in the opinion, supposedly to protect the innocent children. The stigma from having the school, church, friends and neighbors told that Elizabeth was such a despicable human being that she could have no contact with her son was irreversible and defamatory. If the Court did not grant itself absolute immunity from liability, it seems Elizabeth G would have a slam dunk, multi-million dollar lawsuit against Feffer and her employer. It is the least the Court could do to print and broadcast a retraction on the cover of the L.A. Times. There is more good than harm done if the names of the victims of court abuse are published.

(Elizabeth G did not give me permission to publish her full name. The opinion was emailed to me by a third party and I recognized the parties from my prior investigation.)

Commissioner Debra Losnick is running for judge and this turns our collective eyes back to Family Law Los Angeles Style.

Can we coin the phrase Kindercaust to describe what happened to the first generation of children who fell under the court’s authority due to the desire of their parents to get a divorce?

Judges did not march children into ovens, but they destroyed countless lives and left these children emotionally, educationally and sometimes physically crippled. Biased judges separated children from perfectly good parents and left children in the homes of probable abusers.

Some of the judges were motivated by drumming up business for their friends in the cottage industry. Some were sickos. Some were stupid.

When a parent-litigant began to make strides against the family court, often, the case would be transferred to the Dependency Court.

The dependency court was able to operate like the Star Chamber. There was little transparency. Somehow, not allowing open court was supposed to protect the young kids from embarrassment and stigma, but it really just protected abusive parents and less than adequate judges and commissioners.

Commissioner Debra Losnick served in the dependency court for many years. She is running for judge now, and thinks her longevity entitles her to the respect and power that comes with the upgraded title. She turns her memory from 1996, when the following report was made by County Counsel as told in the L.A. Times.

“The county counsel said two toddlers had been ordered by Commissioner Debra Losnick back to the home of their father, who was shown on a confiscated videotape lying on a bed, nude except for a T-shirt, having his son demonstrate how an older cousin had sexually abused him.

“The counsel’s report said that Losnick rejected an allegation of sexual abuse and ‘found that there was no risk to the child.’

“In fact, the [offended] judges said, Losnick rejected a sexual abuse finding but affirmed ‘inappropriate conduct by the father which placed the child at risk of harm.’ Losnick’s order allows the father to see the 3-year-old boy and his 1-year-old sister only with a monitor present, an arrangement that even the county’s own social workers have supported since this spring, the rebuttal states.

“On Aug. 27, the state Court of Appeal served notice that it would overrule Losnick and send the case back to another judge. The order admonished the lower court that the ‘purpose of Juvenile Court Law is to protect minors.'”

Someone just wrote another negative review about Judge Elizabeth Feffer on The Robing Room website. It mentioned how she ordered an eviction of a poor family, even though they paid their rent, so the slum lord could raise the rents. I don’t know if there is truth in what they wrote.

But I am involved in a real estate dispute in San Diego and am pro per (representing myself). You can read about it at SanDiegoEstateSale.wordpress.com.

Thanks to the private legal training received at the hand of Alan Friedenthal and Elizabeth Feffer, trying to protect my children from their corrupt decisions, I am holding my own against a team of specialized attorneys. But, I am not normal. Some, not qualified to diagnose, call me insane. Really, I just have developed my logic, creativity, research and writing skills. God blessed me with good genes and an environment that encouraged achievement.

Most people are not so blessed. Heaven help them if they ever need to protect their rights, or their children’s rights in court.

Here is my idea of the week. Any one of you readers involved with the court may adopt it as your own and take full credit for saving the world. We will know the truth.

When someone wants to become a therapist, they are required to put in a significant number of hours working as an unpaid intern under the direction of a licensed therapist. I don’t have the exact number off hand, but think it works out to full time for a year.

Why not require all law school graduates to do the same? Or, even better, make it a requirement that all attorneys work 1/10th of billable hours on pro bono work?

Besides feeling good about themselves, the attorneys may also use their wins for the little guy in advertising and PR. Imagine. “William Spiller Helps Sunday School Teacher Save Her Home.” “Linda Grillo Gets Young Drug Addict Rehab in Lieu of Jail.” “Ken Sherman Wins $10,000,000 Law Suit for Children Who had Their Mother Taken Away.”

Hey…It’s my fantasy. I can end it any way I want to.

The Metropolitan News-Enterprise writer Kenneth Ofgang wrote about candidates for the open judge seats. Kenneth was never too interested in seeing my documentation regarding Commissioner Alan Friedenthal, and the Met News even endorsed Friedenthal when he made his unsuccessful bid for the promotion to judge. Ofgang’s motivations as a “journalist” seem suspect to me.

So, when Ofgang wrote about Commissioner Debra Losnick’s campaign, I had to read between the lines. Ofgang did not endorse Losnick. He did give her valuable “air time” for free, and did not dig too deep into the public’s opinion of the dependency court commissioner.

Losnick was reported as saying “She entered the race, she said, one (sic) the advice of a friend who noted that she had ‘worked really hard, for a long time, in a tough climate.‘”

Really? And that qualifies her for the more respectable title as Judge? She worked in the star chamber of dependency court, which until recently was not open to the public. One of the parents who was subjected to Losnick’s judgment told me horror stories about the commissioner. This parent is one of my most reliable sources and is a lovely woman with a teaching credential. It is one of the several cases I heard about, where an intelligent parent had her (or his) rights to a parent child relationship denied by the family law court, fought back against the evil, and had the case transferred to dependency court, where the facts of the case would be kept confidential.

If I was a voter in Los Angeles, I would definitely check off one of Losnick’s opponents.

Though, like in my favorite episode of The Simpsons, when a school election comes up, the children are asked to choose between a walking douche bag and a turd sandwich. I hope L.A. has better options.