Looking Forward

Small Claims and Other Shit

Ah, such shit lately. Where to begin…

X served me papers in April for a small claims suit for $4300.00. I’ll take this moment to remind you all that he has paid ZERO dollars in child support over the last three years. 

We got a court date of July 1st, we hired a lawyer and off to court we went. X showed up wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and jeans. He hadn’t shaved in weeks. He looked like shit. 

During mediation he showed pictures declaring we had DESTROYED the place, and demanded repair costs and past rent monies. Our lawyer asked if he had anyone living there now. He said he did. My lawyer asked when that person moved in. “May 1st” X answered. Our lawyer did some quick math and said that his claim against me was now reduced to 1635.00, as he can’t charge me rent that he’s already receiving from someone else. X said “Ok, I guess so.”

Our lawyer also asked him about the past child support he was going to owe me. X said, “I’m not going to owe her anything. In fact, I have my oldest son the majority of the time now, she’s going to have to pay ME support.” This made me laugh a little. 

We had a side meeting and decided that we would offer X $500.00 to avoid a hearing. When our lawyer offered him this, he laughed at my lawyer. He laughed at me. He said, “I don’t think so! That’s not even CLOSE to what you owe me!” And off to a hearing we went. 

In front of the judge he was so disorganized. He was fumbling. He was confused. He had too much paper, and didn’t know what to do with the papers he did have. He talked too much. Before too long he had the judge sighing and frustrated. 

He stated we “trashed the place” and left all kind of things, like bikes, in the yard.
The judged asked him “Could they have been your children’s bikes?”
X answered, “they could have been, I don’t know.”
The judge said, “You don’t know if they were your own children’s bikes or not?”
He said, “No, I don’t.” 

X talked about how “lucky” he was to have a renter ready to move in as soon as I’d moved out. When asked why he didn’t have someone move right in, why wait until May?
He answered “I wanted to put down new flooring.”
My lawyer countered with, “You realize you have no claims against my client for flooring?”
X said, “I know. I was trying to keep the costs down for her.” 
When X was asked about the broken window, he was asked at what point he learned about it. He said he had no idea until he did the walk through after we left. Liar.

He said he had no idea there was mold in the house. There was a persistent mold problem since 2007. Well before he left the house. “I had no idea” he said. 

While I was a witness, X got to cross examine me. “You testified our divorce was contentious. Correct?”
I said, “yes.”
He said, “You filed for divorce May 2010. Is that correct?”
I said, “Yes.”
He said, and then I lived with you for three months after that before I left. Is that correct?”
I said, “Yes.”
He said, so why would I live with you and be nice to you if our divorce was so ‘contentious’ as you stated?”
I said, “Your motives are your own, I have no idea.”
Then the judge stepped in and told him that this was not the time to be rehashing old wounds. He needed to focus on his claim against me and my defense to it, nothing else. 

In regards to a hole we missed while patching the others, X cross examined my husband. We’d already taken responsibility for the hole in question. We were already prepared to pay for it to be fixed. However, that wasn’t enough for X. “Were you aware of the hole in the wall?” he asked Husband.
“From the pictures, yes, it appears that we missed one.”
X kept going, “Would you say it was a big hole?”
Husband said, “I’m not sure the size, I’d need to see the picture again.”
The judge interjected, “The bench already has a copy of this picture, is this really necessary?”
And with that, X sat back down. 

During our time on the stand, husband and I took responsibility for the broken window, for one door, door trim and a hole in the wall. These are things we intended to pay for, but instead of talking to us about it, rather X just sued us. In the end, those are things we had to pay for, totaling $274.00. 

X was not happy about this. At all. He was out the door and in the elevator very quickly.
Then he started feeling sad. He tried to contact A. “I miss you buddy.” But that didn’t get a response. So he called D. That’s right. D. At 7:15pm. Wanting him to come over. D said he didn’t want to, but maybe on Wednesday. They hashed out a plan for Noon until 8pm. I, like a normal person, expected an email from X confirming this. It was like pulling teeth, but I he did email me. One hour before he was to pick D up.

Once D was returned home, he said he’d had a good time. He said they played Black Ops zombies for 8 hours and made it to level 52. He said he’d had pizza for lunch, and the icecream he was eating was dinner.
D also said he’d like to back and do that again. Before I could email X and try to work out a plan, he emailed me.

The details of D’s pick up and drop off were emailed to you yesterday, and for the record you were already aware of the times and where it was to take place based on the discussion you had with D while I was on the phone with him at the time he decided he wanted to visit (7/1) – because he specifically asked you about it and relayed the message back to me as to what you said. Your emails suggests that you were not aware of dates and times and that is highly misleading – if in the future you would simply like a confirmation from me of information you already know I will be more than happy to send one along, but I do not appreciate the attempt to suggest otherwise. I would have been more than happy to attempt to work with you on a time he could visit with me, but each time I have attempted to discuss visitation with you, you have told me he does not want to visit – once again this was clearly not the case. I am really happy he had a great time and asked to do it again.
I was quite disturbed to see that D has a huge scar on his left cheek (with a smaller one above) – as this is the first time I have seen this and was not made aware of him being so injured, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind explaining to me what actually occurred, when it occurred, and who the doctor was that took care of his wounds – given the size of it I cannot imagine that it did not require a number of stitches at the emergency room.

As I previously stated in an email to you, I have already looked into this provider (__________) and had ruled him out. However, I may reconsider if my initial look at this provider was inaccurate. Please obtain the following – Education, type of psychological practice, number of years practicing, specialty areas, years of experience working specifically with children, what type of psychological method employed while working with children, and his availability for new clients. Please get a letter from his office verifying the information requested and send that to me, at which point I will be more than willing to take another look at him. I will be sending along a list of my choices for providers just as soon as I can.

A. Stop trying to justify your inability to NOT run messages through the kids. It’s wrong. Always. Wrong.
B. There were no ER visits or stitches that you’ve not been made aware of. D was playing with the dog. The dog was too rough. This happened in January. Odd you weren’t this shocked about it when you saw him in May.
C. Stop being a dick about the therapist. Seriously. Just cut it out. You know nothing. At all. Stop pretending you’re important and people care what you think. You’re not. And they don’t.

Perhaps if I could come up with a response that isn’t “FUCK YOU”, I’d respond.