Justice...

or "injustice".

Frustration isn't a strong enough word. I'm incredibly angry and sad and wildly frustrated with the situation that I find myself in.

I'm doing all of the right things.

I've done all of the right things for the past 11 years.

And yet DH lies and manipulates and submits more applications for orders to the Family Court and although I can clearly see how outrageous his submissions are, I have to spend thousands of hours and dollars trying to prove him wrong.

And even then it might not be enough.

I can see why people give up. I can see why respondent mothers lose their kids, and why respondent good fathers surrender to not seeing their kids. The system protects nobody, except divorced litigious fathers, right now. The Family Court system is shrouded in secrecy and has been since it began. Nobody is allowed to know the details and outcomes of cases which have been through the court. And without this information, people like you and me continue to believe that the system is fair and just. Until we have to live it for ourselves.

DH has declared his half ownership in the house. It has just been sold, and between that and "other investments" that he's inherited, he will be over $300,000.00 richer in June. Never mind that. He still can't afford to pay his debt to me. Any of it. And his reasons why are both ridiculous and insulting and outrageous.

Just to give you a hint of what I'm putting up with.... the first paragraph of his Affidavit attached to an Application to remove all Spousal Maintenance (NOT about custody).... states that he considers that I am mentally unstable and refers to my stint in the Psychiatric Hospital with PND in 1998 as evidence of this. And it gets worse from there.

I feel as though my lawyer has given up. It's as though he's realised that DH isn't going to settle or to go-away, and that from here on in it's going to get nasty and cost the big bucks (which he knows I don't have). He's not volunteering any information or advice to me. He's asking for my instructions. I have "instructed" him to advise me as to what my next step should be.

For all these years, the legal fraternity has told me that the only thing stopping me being able to enforce the payment of the debt was my not being able to prove that he had the money to repay it. Well, he has now. He's even admitted it. Yet, apparently, according to my lawyer, this means very little.

I'm guessing that he's half believing the ridiculous lies in DH's statement, or at least considering that a Judicial Registrar may have trouble getting past them, and therefore thinking that he is on a sinking ship.

The stress that I'm under is insane. Surely I should have an opportunity to point out that, YES, I suffer from depression BECAUSE of how DH has treated me and my children over the years. YES I suffered from severe, hospital-needing PND, BECAUSE of how DH treated me during my pregnancy and because I was going through Family Court during that pregnancy. And YES, I am less able to cope with the stress of his litigiousness through the Family Court now and I think he knows that all too well. He is applying for shared parenting to remove all future financial obligations to me and the boys, closely followed by removing a debt which is OWED. He SIGNED a court order saying that he would pay for spousal maintenance as Boo wasn't born and therefore could not be on the order for Child Support. He signed the court order to pay for our Health Insurance, which he cancelled 6 years later without telling me. He signed the court order to support me while I was on my own with two babies under 16 months. And he simply didn't pay. Any of it. And now he simply wants it to go away.

But that reasoning isn't "legal-ese" and is "too emotional" for an affidavit.

I'm going truly crazy.

There was a rally in all major capital cities in Australia today. It's main focus was on getting the Family Court to pay attention to the children and to stop allowing abusing parents (predominantly fathers) unsupervised access to their kids. It's about reversing the assumption that "shared care" is the ideal parenting arrangement in EVERY situation.

I didn't attend. I had the boys and didn't want all of us to wear the red hoods to distinguish us as people who are currently going through the Family Law Courts, as well as to cover our faces and protect our identities from the press.

I feel sick about not being there. I'm SO desperate for change, and can't even manage to get to a rally.

I guess that's just a part of depression.