“nor any reference to the relationship between mother and children, nor shall he make any reference to his children other than ‘happy birthday’ or other significant school events.” That’s the text of a judge’s oral order in Morelli v. Morelli, No. A06-04-60750-C (Diane Gibbons, J., Bucks Cty., Pa. June 6, 2011). If the father says anything about the mother in public, he could be sent to jail for contempt of court. The order isn’t limited to banning libelous statements (though I think even such a much narrower ban would itself pose constitutional problems, especially under Pennsylvania law), nor is it even limited to statements about minor children (though even that sort of order strikes me as constitutionally impermissible). Rather, the court order categorically orders the removal of a Web site, and prohibits all public statements — factually accurate or not — by one person about another person.
That strikes me as a pretty clear First Amendment violation; whatever the scope of family courts’ authority to protect children’s best interests might be, it can’t extend to criminalizing one adult’s public speech about another adult. I’m pleased that the order is being appealed, and hope it will be quickly reversed. A relatively old (Jan. 5, 2010) archive of the web site that triggered this order, http://www.thepsychoexwife.com, is available on archive.org.
AJK says:
How is “happy birthday” a significant school event?
July 14, 2011, 10:37 pmHoorayforLaw says:
Gibbons is an idiot. She should be taken off the court.
July 14, 2011, 10:38 pmJonathan Goldstein says:
If I were the man subject to that order, I would consider holding a public prayer session on behalf of the woman. Pray for her health, pray for her immortal soul and pray for her to find peace.
July 14, 2011, 11:07 pmScott says:
Surely you don’t think the family court is bound by anything so patriarchal and passe as the constitution, do you?
July 14, 2011, 11:18 pmAJK says:
It appears that the judge was also the Bucks County District Attorney, after a 20 year career as prosecutor. It’s disconcerting that she would not have learned the basic elements of the Bill of Rights over that period. (The transcript suggests that her general judicial temperament also leaves something to be desired.)
July 14, 2011, 11:53 pmOrder of the Coif says:
Neither right, reason, nor the Constitution applies in Family Court. Everything is gastronomic jurispurdence. There are no rules except for the “Golden Rule” — the male partner loses.
BTW, I’ve been (and AM) happily married for over 40 years. I just keep my eyes and ears open.
The laws regarding family matters are so biased today that I would advise no young man to get married. If the milk is free, why buy the cow? Especially if she’ll destroy your life anytime she pleases.
July 15, 2011, 12:43 amrodsmith says:
pity he didn’t put his fist though this idiots empty head when she clearly violated the constution!
July 15, 2011, 1:00 amwhit says:
i’ve said it before, i’ll say it again – the war on domestic violence has done more to violate (especially) the innocent average joe’s civil rights than the war on drugs. it’s not even a close comparison
can you imagine a suspect in a drug case being told via court order by some activist judge they could never talk about drugs, never advocate for their legalization, not be able to read high times, not be able to join NORML, etc?
these court orders are truly abhorrent. thank the WODV
July 15, 2011, 1:07 amSkyler says:
This is daily stuff in family law court. Why is it suddenly being considered unconstitutional? Maybe there is hope after all.
There is a lot of scary stuff going on in family court.
July 15, 2011, 1:19 amSuperSkeptic says:
Congrats; fixed that for you.
Duly noted, thanks.
July 15, 2011, 3:10 amGeorge says:
Yes, family courts do unconstitutional things all the time. I am currently facing trial on contempt charges, because I told the story on my blog about how I lost joint legal custody. The order taking away joint legal custody was written by a psychologist, and I quoted a short paragraph of his reasoning. It did not involve any confidential info, but did expose faulty legal analysis.
July 15, 2011, 3:54 amMichael Ejercito says:
I am surprised that men are not openly advocating the domestic policies of the Taliban.
Did you file a motion to dismiss on the basis that this contempt charge violated the First Amendment or the state’s freedom of speech constitutional provision?
If the motion was dismissed, did you appeal?
And finally, can one person, just one, explain how the Taliban in Afghanistan was worse with respect to family law?
July 15, 2011, 5:41 amMichael Ejercito says:
This article explains how unjust family law incites people to support Sharia as an alternative.
July 15, 2011, 5:53 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Forced marriages?
…Michael, just out of curiosity, did you read EV’s Morelli v Morelli link?
July 15, 2011, 7:14 amA. Zarkov says:
How can the order be unconstitutional? Everybody knows that the U.S. Constitution gets suspended in Family Law Court. Now the appellate court will make its decision, and then send the case back to … yes, Diane Gibbons, who will be furious that she got appealed. She will then proceed to make life miserable for Husband, and if at all possible his lawyer too. Lawyers know this, and don’t want their future clients to suffer so they rarely appeal anything. Besides the Appeals court will bend over backwards to uphold the trial judge anyway. Wise lawyers know they must find a way to tell the judge that the decision to appeal was client driven.
I have seen Family Law judges go into tantrums over being asked to merely write a Statement of Decision (very helpful for appeals in California).
In case anyone thinks I’m joking, go read Marriage of Hoffmeister. There is Hoffmeister I and Hoffmeister II as I recall. The case came back to trial court with an order to modify the original order. Trial judge then proceeded to issue the same order all over again– “so there.” Then a new appeal. Then the Court of Appeals made the same decision, and sent it back yet again to the same judge. Apply, rinse, repeat.
The best advice a Family Lawyer can gives his clients is not to get married in the first place. Or if you got married, don’t do that again– ever. Insanity is repeating the same error over and over again. Thus I am surprised, and mystified over same sex marriage. Why? Don’t give me that love stuff. As a public service ad I once saw pointed out: “Unlike love, herpes is forever.”
July 15, 2011, 7:46 amFloridan says:
On the off chance that you were not being sarcastic with posting this link, I thought I’d give the readership here a sample of the website’s content:
July 15, 2011, 7:47 amOhioian says:
I noticed that the order didn’t include the same “ruling” for the mother?
What website are you quoting from?
July 15, 2011, 9:04 amGiant Frog says:
Perhaps a better question is “why did this very trivial and very typical instance get some attention? Just because there’s a website?”
Hope after all? American men are far too wimpy.
I’m pleased that the order is being appealed,
Talk about wimpy – that’s a lawyer-as-careful-accountant response. A far better response would be to just ignore the silly judgette, and in this case perhaps put up more websites. “Oh, there might be consequences…!” No shit. If more men were actually men the consequence would be the end of family courts.
Forcing a third party to provide insurance?
July 15, 2011, 9:08 amArthur Kirkland says:
One has encountered a remarkable circumstance when the guy whose website is “thepsychoexwife.com” appears to be the most reasonable participant among the litigants and the judge.
July 15, 2011, 9:16 amGiant Frog says:
Here’s what worked for me, somewhat to my surprise: Write a response agreeing that you’re in contempt and will continue to be, and therefore you should be arrested and jailed. And don’t play their creepy game by going to any more hearings. If you’re not willing to take the chance of being arrested, just bend over and say “Yes, massa” instead – it’s the easiest way.
July 15, 2011, 9:18 amPointofLaw.com | PointOfLaw Forum: Around the web, July 15 says:
[...] Pennsylvania judge imposes unconstitutional prior restraint in family law case. [Volokh] [...]
July 15, 2011, 9:24 amAlex says:
Makes me grateful that although we could not live together, my ex and I both have the best interests of our son in mind and actually get along better now then we did.
July 15, 2011, 10:11 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
The mother had a website in which she complained about her ex?
She was told to drink no alcohol. He was not told to drink no alcohol. Both sides were told to quit complaining about the other. Both were reminded that the kids need a mother and a father. I get the constitutional issue that he can’t be told not to be an ass on the internet. I don’t see the one-sidedness that the rest of you do. The woman asked for sole custody and did not get it. Seems like if the decks were stacked solidly against men, she would have.
July 15, 2011, 10:50 amloki13 says:
Yeah, I agree with Laura on this one. First, I think the judge’s order is wrong.
But… I mean, c’mon. Let’s stipulate that the ex-wife is a psycho. You *still* have children with her. Children that are now of the age where they can get on the internet and read this.
The reason you take the high road isn’t for the other person. It’s for you. Even if *every single thing* on that blog is correct and true, I have a much lower opinion of him. Life sucks sometimes- the measure of a person is how they deal with it, and whether they choose to lash out, or work to make it better.
He has every right to do what he is doing- but just because you have a right to do something doesn’t mean it is a good idea. See also, Phelps.
July 15, 2011, 11:19 amJoe says:
I agree with loki13 but would add that the one sided nature of the comments are a bit tedious overall. The judge here apparently thought she had the discretion to put forth this order. If she is blatantly wrong, okay, but what are the contours here? I know Prof. Volokh has written about this issue before. But, some context on what family law judges can do or what others have done in specific situations like this would be helpful instead of this “you go man!” line of posts.
July 15, 2011, 11:24 amDave N. says:
I am not sure why Mr. Morelli thought it necessary to redact just about every name from the transcript, which makes it difficult to see what is happening.
I would note that it appears that the website takedown order was made because someone, name redacted, PROBABLY Mr. Morelli’s attorney, said:
So now, Mr. Morelli is complaining that the judge included in an interim order something he, through counsel, agreed to do.
I agree the order is unconstitutional. But I also think a guy who apparently sabotaged his ex-wife having the kids for MOTHER’s Day is a first-class jerk.
July 15, 2011, 11:28 amloki13 says:
Some free advice for people involved in family court proceedings (take it for what you paid me):
1. The quality of lawyering, from what I remember, is often very low. There were some great attorneys, but most wouldn’t know the rules of evidence if they were knocked upside the head with them. And judges often wanted to knock them upside the head.
2. If your significant other gets an attorney, get an attorney. Period. Don’t sit around all shocked. Don’t think that this is a great time to work it out. Don’t think you can do it yourself. The first mover has the advantage, and it lengthens over time.
3. Understand and identify what you really want. There will be no magical moment when the judge looks at you and says, “Mr. Loki13, you right! You have been wronged! The other person is evil and psychotic. I judge you the better person.” It doesn’t work that way. This is about dividing up assets and figuring out what to do with the children (hopefully, there aren’t any).
4. Understand that every legal proceeding costs money. 95% of the things aren’t worth fighting about. Your goal should be to get on with your life, not to stay enmeshed in litigation.
5. Ideally, you and your ex should be friendly (or at least amicable) and work out an arrangement that is fair to both of you- in other words, one that makes both of you think that you got screwed. There is never “winning” – just moving on with a minimum of damage.
July 15, 2011, 11:46 amAJK says:
Suppose the judge had instead said, “Mr. Morelli, obviously I can’t order you to take down your website. But I do find it very disturbing, and it makes me question your fitness to maintain custody of your children. That’s something you might want to keep in mind between now and the next court date.” Does that pose the same constitutional issues?
July 15, 2011, 12:04 pmes says:
In the past, people complained about their exes to their friends and relatives, but there was no record of the complaints. Nowadays, the bounds between public and private have dissolved, and many people like to complain on the Internet, where there is written record of the complaints available to millions, if not billions, of people.
I do think that family court has a tough job in that the best interests of the children are seldom served by public attacks on the other parent. The sad thing is that once one has a child with another person, one is stuck in that relatiosnhip of co-parents for life as even after the child grows up, there are weddings and other events to celebrate or grieve.
Having a website attackig one’s children’s mother as a psycho is not helpful to the children. Much though some parents want to be winners in court and get sole custody with minimal or no visitation by the other parents, courts generally want to preserve relationships with both parents. S\
July 15, 2011, 12:14 pmStacy says:
Like most endeavors in life, family court is a game with rules. Learn them, and play to win. You can work out your feelings with your therapist later, and nobody is interested in your analysis of the constitutionality of your custody order.
The single best move you can make is to find and retain a good attorney. You do this the same way you find any other good contractor – by shopping around. Listen to your attorney. They know the ins and outs of the system, what works and what doesn’t. Don’t try to understand the system, because it doesn’t make sense. Instead, understand and follow the expert’s recommendations. Don’t try to be clever, just keep your head down, smile, and continue to live your life and care for your children as if none of this was going on.
July 15, 2011, 12:16 pmChem_Geek says:
Linking this discussion to the Cheerleader Mom thread, I wonder how the family and appeals courts would react to the sudden appearance on the Internet of http://www.thepsychofamilycourtjudge.com?
July 15, 2011, 12:19 pmArthur Kirkland says:
The single best move you could make seems to be to avoid divorce and/or a custody dispute.
Far too many children deserve better parents.
July 15, 2011, 12:24 pmGGRR says:
He did not have the kids for Mother’s Day. His son made a card at his mother’s home for the step-mother. The mother went insane about this and called the father and said she no longer wanted the children: that he could have them. They spent a miserable night in tears, knowing their mother had rejected them, and being told by another family member that if she returned to drinking it would be the child’s fault.
This mother has waged an unremitting campaign of terror upon this father of monumental proportions. He has never allowed the children to know anything about it, despite her consistent parental alienation. He created the website as a safety valve, and it was completely anonymous. It became an enormous help to many in the same high conflict situation. It was discovered by the mother whilst cyber-stalking, and she told the children about it–although they have never seen it.
If you look at William Eddy’s High Conflict website you will see something of what Mr. Morelli has had to deal with. I will add that his low contact approach to his ex is rather ground-breaking, and the model is an important tool in dealing with high conflict ex-spouses. When one is dealing with a BPD/high conflict ex, all possibility of amicable co-parenting has been exhausted. This is a situation which is sadly both more common than you would expect, and not amenable to normal mediation.
July 15, 2011, 12:30 pmSteve says:
Whoa, a reasonable point! I did not see that coming at all as I read down the thread.
Maybe I’m colored by the fact that my parents had a contentious divorce and my dad got treated pretty fairly, even within the context of a somewhat dysfunctional system. But while I don’t question that some men get screwed in family court, the rhetoric that I see in these discussions is fairly insane.
A bit of advice: it’s hard to convince me, or any other objective observer, that you are a calm, rational, decent husband and your wife is a crazy person who is entirely at fault, when you rant about how your judge is a stupid bitch who ought to be impeached, how the proper response to an adverse ruling is “to put your fist through the judge’s empty head” (an actual comment from this thread!) or other things of that sort.
July 15, 2011, 12:31 pmTed says:
I don’t know if you should be giving legal advice on this blog. Particularly bad legal advice.
July 15, 2011, 12:50 pmTed says:
Shopping around, eh? OOC, how many divorces/custody disputes have you gone through? How many did it take to find a good lawyer?
July 15, 2011, 1:06 pmCheers546 says:
As an avid reader of thepsychoexwife website and forums, I hope I can shed some more light on this particular comment. The Mother’s Day incident was not something the Father did. The children gave a card to their step-mother and she made a small comment on the forums about it being a nice gesture from them. The ex-wife freaked out about the kids giving the SM a card and massive drama ensued leading to him filing for emergency custody in order to protect the children. And then they wound up with this judge, who did not even let the case be heard properly. She came to her own conclusions without any proper evidence or statements from either party.
As for the redactions, anyone on the PEW.com site knows it was his first priority to maintain anonymity for the sake of all involved. I don’t believe it was his intention for the press release to go out with any identifying information on it, but alas it happened. Coming from such a similar situation, I can attest that it has been more helpful than I can ever express to know we are not alone. That the things this man and his significant other and the children have gone through are very real, because my family has also endured the same kind of craziness. So similar, that some stories could have been written by myself. Unless you have lived it, you will never understand how awful it really is.
July 15, 2011, 1:08 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
GGRR, I learned something a long time ago that I am now going to share with you.
When two people have bad feelings – mutual dislike, mutual resentment, mutual long-standing grievances – only a fool listens to one side of the story without realizing that the other person would tell an entirely different story.
As to what the truth is? Probably somewhere in the middle.
July 15, 2011, 1:14 pmGeorge says:
I have been down that route before. I was held in contempt of court for quoting testimony from a govt agent in open court. My kids were taken away by the family court for reasons of “emotional abuse”, and I wanted to describe on my blog how trivial the actual allegations were. (The main one was that I set the alarm clock for 7:00 am on school mornings.) I asserted my First Amendment rights, and I appealed. I lost. As far as I know, I am the only one to be punished for quoting testimony against me. The Calif. 6th Dist. appeals court is as much of a joke as the family court, and an appeal is a waste of time.
July 15, 2011, 1:25 pmArthur Kirkland says:
It appears the judgment of Judge Diane Gibbons was questionable even before this former prosecutor obtained the power to issue questionable orders.
July 15, 2011, 1:27 pmSteve says:
I think this is very good advice.
I think the best way to find a good lawyer is getting a referral from someone you trust. The problem with “shopping around” is that the typical layman doesn’t really know what to look for in a lawyer, and the quality that is often prized – an aggressive, take-no-prisoners attitude – isn’t a guarantee of a better result so much as a guarantee of a protracted, bitter dispute. If you have a friend who has been through the entire process and is satisfied with the outcome, odds are that you’ll be satisfied with the lawyer he recommends as well.
July 15, 2011, 1:29 pmloki13 says:
Hmmmm…. interesting. Based on that context, can I assume you were representing yourself?
July 15, 2011, 1:31 pmBarb says:
The big problem in our Am. culture today IS that the milk is too often free. And that has led to our general marital misery –poor marital choices of people who don’t have a lot in common –and beauty fades –and sex and intimacy can only improve in a good marriage. We need Yenta the match-maker and the commitment that comes from faith, tradition, and community. We need to revive our faith communities and live by Tevye’s “good book!” seeing marriage as the foundation of family and community–which it is.
I just watched again the film based on the Broadway musical, Fiddler on the Roof –look at the “papas” and the “mamas” in the story –all having their sense of duty and their “place in the community.” Even the beggar had “his place.” They all know who they are and what they are supposed to do. Golde and Tevye don’t have a good marriage by Christian standards (fruits of the Spirit/Golden Rule standards) but there is no question they know their roles and responsibilities and have no intentions of straying or divorcing.
Not so anymore. We are exploring gender transition and rejecting our traditional gender roles –which are so important to the well-being of children. We don’t wait for marriage to have sex –but sleep with multiple partners –and then wonder why the bonding glue which sex and parenting are to marriage don’t stick anymore!!! Free milk –sex without marriage –ruins the Perma-bond-ability of so many. We are like tape that has lost its adhesion capability. We’re living like animals –i.e. the worst examples in nature instead of the best.
There are good examples in nature –like the Daddy swan who chased me and my little girl guests on our seadoo –He protects his family–puffs up his wings and starts to move menacingly and purposefully toward my seadoo –and then if I start to speed away–he goes faster and faster and rises up out of the water and takes flight with beak aimed to bomb! I didn’t know swans could fly like that. Gave the little girls a thrill and a lesson to remember for a long time –that is, the importance of finding a man with such commitment to his family–and courage to fend off outside evils.
Of course, I don’t mean a man should be hostile –ready to do battle with an encroaching Seadoo driver!
July 15, 2011, 1:35 pmTed says:
Are you a lawyer? Oops, loki13 beat me to it…
July 15, 2011, 1:35 pmTed says:
Shhhh!
July 15, 2011, 1:38 pmA. Zarkov says:
Your advice is very good, but incomplete. Family Law Court is mostly an exercise in theater. Not only should you forget about the Constitution, but also rules of evidence. Don’t ever make a hearsay objection. The rules of civil procedure too are either ignored or enforced sporadically, and seemingly at random. The Civil Code does provide some framework, but be prepared to see that ignored too as it suits the judge. All that being said, a good lawyer can be very helpful for his client. If he knows the judge, he will make arguments that the judge is likely to accept. If there is a business involved you really need a lawyer and a good accountant. This is an area where men get hit very hard. Family Law courts can put insanely high values on a business. Be very careful on this.
If both attorneys are men, then case is more likely to proceed smoothly (absent crazy clients) than when one is a woman. Women tend to personalize everything, and can introduce additional rancor. As with everything there are exceptions, and if you have good information then go with that.
July 15, 2011, 1:47 pmTed says:
They let women be attorneys? Surely you meant “paralegals?”
July 15, 2011, 1:53 pmGeorge says:
I guess you are suggesting that maybe I would have free speech rights if I had a lawyer. Yes, I was representing myself. The judge’s argument was that it is a violation of Calif. WI 827 to quote CPS. He claimed that it was even a violation to show a CPS report to my own lawyer, and that I could not have a witness to rebut a CPS agent if that witness had seen the CPS report. He was upheld on appeal. As you can see from the above link, it says that a teacher can be fined $500 if he gets a juvenile case file under the section and discloses it, but there was no juvenile case and there is no restriction on parents disclosing info.
July 15, 2011, 1:59 pmnamae nanka says:
“I don’t see the one-sidedness that the rest of you do. The woman asked for sole custody and did not get it. Seems like if the decks were stacked solidly against men, she would have.”
lmao
The correct conclusion is:
She is that bad of a mother.
“..and it’s weird since I granted you without a fight 50/50 custody…gave you a huge break on child support…
Huh?!?!
PEW loves to talk about how she “grants” me things, as if she is someone who has the authority to do so. She “granted” me nothing. The court ORDERED 50/50 custody after SHE filed for sole custody. She FOUGHT for it since June of 2004. Eventually, after the court system extracted all of our money, I was awarded 50-50 shared-parenting in 2007.”
http://liveweb.archive.org/http://www.thepsychoexwife.com/discovering-the-psycho-ex-wife/
“Like most endeavors in life, family court is a game with rules. Learn them, and play to win. ”
haha that’s why women love to play by the rules, once they have changed them that is.
“GGRR, I learned something a long time ago that I am now going to share with you.”
“As to what the truth is? Probably somewhere in the middle.”
bwahaha
July 15, 2011, 2:02 pmAnd statistics can detail that “somewhere” by gender.
Barb says:
I’ve used a lawyer/friend (sort of)twice for little things –many years apart–and both times he jumped the gun and said, “I’ll write a letter!” which I would appreciate except he has a hostile, arrogant tone in a letter–a know-it-all, obnoxious, offensive, threatening tone –insulting –and both times it has not turned out as we’d hoped. He scared off a seller of a property I wanted my single-mom friend to be able to buy on lease-purchase arrangement. I won’t go to him again.
July 15, 2011, 2:07 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Also, GGRR and Cheers, I don’t know if we’re talking about the same people and the same incident here.
You are using the term “stepmother”. The case refers to the father’s “girlfriend”. Am I just really behind the times? Because I’ve not seen “stepmother” used referring to a father’s girlfriend before, nor “stepfather” for a mother’s boyfriend.
Also, regarding Mother’s Day, there’s nothing in there about a card. Rather, his attorney said he needed to pick the kids up on MD, the mother said she told him he could get the kids the next day, and she said she learned that he and the kids had been planning “this” (whatever “this” is) for two months and that she asked them, and they said they wanted to be with him. Nothing there about a card at all. Now I don’t know who was in the right here, maybe neither was, and I don’t really care, but if this story somehow got morphed into her objecting to a card one of the kids spontaneously made for his father’s consort, whatever she is, then that is not what was said in court.
I do see where the judge says the man should not refer to his girlfriend as the kids’ mother. If I were their mother I would not care for that either. If it surprises anyone that a mother would object to that – well, I don’t know what to tell you.
July 15, 2011, 2:07 pmloki13 says:
George,
I am not going to analyze your case for you. But law can be a complex thing. There are evidentiary rules that go into what may be admitted in court, and what may not. These evidentiary rules are separate and distinct from the statute, but they must be construed holistically.
Put another way, if a statute says something is confidential, they don’t have to put down in the statute that it can’t be introduced in court if your state evidence rules (and cases) indicate that it cannot be used.
And the First Amendment has no bearing. For example, you have no First Amendment right to introduce hearsay evidence.
These are all things that a competent lawyer would know.
Finally, and I hope this goes without saying, if a judge tells you not to do something- don’t do it. Judges sometimes get something wrong, and you can appeal the decision. But I am uncertain why a pro se litigant, especially given the facts as you have presented them, would be so confident that he was right, and the judge and the appellate judges were wrong.
July 15, 2011, 2:11 pmloki13 says:
Assuming you are the ex-husband (since you wrote “PEW loves to talk about how she “grants” me things”) this reflects very poorly on you. Generalized misogyny… how wonderful!
So it isn’t just one psycho ex-wife- it’s psycho women in general. Quite a charmer, you are.
July 15, 2011, 2:17 pmGGRR says:
In this particular case, I am afraid that this is not true. It is very important that the readers here understand the extremity of dealing with a borderline ex-spouse, parent etc. I refer you to both William Eddy’s website and such books at “Understanding the Borderline Mother,” by Christine Ann Lawson. I happen to know about this particular situation, and I am also a mental health professional of nearly 30 years experience. I can assure you that this is not something that can be approached with the “normal” and balanced thinking that you are suggesting. Unfortunately, the effects of this type of mental illness are far-reaching. The sufferers tend to be plausible and high-functioning: they are highly litigious and frequently impede legal processes. Aside from the very real first amendment issues here, there is also the reality that courts, medical practitioners, social workers, and psychologists are often ill-prepared and ill-educated when it comes to identifying and dealing with the havoc wreaked by persons with Borderline Personality Disorders. In fact, the author(s) of the Psychoexwife went some way to pioneering a low conflict, low contact method of interaction that protects the children.
Not long ago(and perhaps this is still the case in some places), most courts had not heard of the concept and benefits of parallel parenting when dealing with a high conflict situation and trying to protect the children. They would often criticise the people who practiced this, accusing them of not being co-operative with their ex-spouse. More research and information from cutting-edge centres of excellence such as the Tavistock Clinic in London means that many courts now recognise both the usefulness and necessity of such an approach-specifically because it protects the children from conflict. It is completely counter-productive to urge co-parenting when one member of the couple is determined to create as much chaos as possible.
July 15, 2011, 2:19 pmTed says:
Umm, I was confused by that comment too, but I think Mr. nanka was quoting a passage from the PEW website; it was not intended as part of his own comment. I’m still not clear exactly why he quoted it, though.
July 15, 2011, 2:30 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
GGRR, when you use language like this:
it really doesn’t help your credibility. We had a thread here not long ago about a man whose cell phone accidentally called his wife’s and thus recorded her screams as he stabbed her 27 times and killed her. That, together with the preceding bullying and threatening, is a campaign of terror.
If you want to say that she has been irrational and has made things difficult for him, then say that. But are you being totally honest in saying that he is Mr. Perfect and she has no legitimate complaints whatsoever? You “happen to know about this situation”. You are a family friend or something of that nature, right, not getting your info from his website? You’ve heard and considered her side, too?
July 15, 2011, 2:34 pmGGRR says:
That poster is not the ex-husband: he is quoting something, I think.
Laura, the “girlfriend” is not a “consort.” She is a long-standing partner, who has taken care of her stepsons in a loving way, despite being attacked consistently by the ex-wife, including the ex-wife reporting her to the CPS–the result of the investigation: completely dropped-no findings.
The ex is an alcoholic who has made the children so distressed with her behaviour that they have begged to live with their father.
I think that your assumptions really do go to illustrate how we are all automatically programmed to assume that the father and the “consort” are the bad ones and the mother is the poor beleaguered victim. This is so true that there have been cases of posters on that website where the mother had literally to put her children in mortal danger before the courts and social services listen to the father’s desperate warnings and pleas for his children’s’ safety.
But, in fact, the issue here is freedom of speech. And I think that is where it needs to be centred. We are increasingly seeing our Civil Rights eaten away every day–and this is certainly a case in point.
July 15, 2011, 2:34 pmloki13 says:
Yeah, the tone (and capitalization, grammar, and spelling) of the comment didn’t match what I saw on the website. Not that I spent too long there- there’s only so much self-pity and slagging I can take (no matter how much it tries to present itself as even handed).
I found this pretty hilarious-
Really? Running a website where you continually attack your ex-wife is a model of low-conflict interaction? Who knew?
July 15, 2011, 2:35 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
GGRR, look up the definition of “consort”: “companion or partner”.
If she’s not his wife, how are the kids her stepsons?
I think your statement is evidence that any attempt at being objective is thought to favor the woman. Most of “us” on this thread assume that the mother is a crazy bitch, if you’ll just go back and read the other comments. I’m not favoring her. I’m suggesting that we not take his narrative as the gospel truth when the story is not being told from her POV at all. Especially when we’ve had two people here talking about how she went insane over a card, yet both she and his attorney made reference to the kids being physically with him on Mother’s Day and that being what upset her.
July 15, 2011, 2:42 pmloki13 says:
Wow, you certainly seem to… know… a lot.
Let me fill you in on something- kids have two (biological) parents. They will love them both. Sometimes, one of those parents will be a bad (but not unfit) parent.
What do you think, in the long run, makes more sense-
1. Having your own standards that you hold your children accountable for, and never criticizing the other parent in front of them.
2. Starting a website that explores, in excruciating detail, all the faults of the other parent. Oh- and calling her psycho.
Kids aren’t dumb. They figure things out on their own. They definitely don’t need your help. But if you put them in a “you’re either with me, or with the psycho” dilemma, you’re only hurting them.
[EDIT: Not to mention putting your consort/companion in a difficult place. She should be an addition to the family, not a replacement for the "psycho ex-wife." If the ex-wife is truly a "psycho" the kids will figure it out, and appreciate your consort/companion for her good qualities, as opposed to having to continually choose between their mother and your girlfriend.]
July 15, 2011, 2:44 pmTed says:
We forgive you, it’s Friday. But you might be careful if engaging in any high-detail work today…
July 15, 2011, 2:44 pmGeorge says:
Loki13, my confidence is the same as those here who say that it was wrong for Judge Gibbons to order http://www.thepsychoexwife.com to be shut down. An American citizen has a fundamental right to complain about how he has been treated in court.
Like the guy in the above case, I took the stuff down when I was ordered to do so. But I still think that it was wrong for the judge to order it. The First Amendment has no bearing on introducing hearsay evidence, but it does have a direct and obvious bearing on posting complaints about the court.
As Zarkov pointed out, hiring a lawyer who knows the family law judge can be very helpful because the lawyer can be familiar with how the judge practices theater instead of law and routinely violates the rules. If I had such a lawyer, then maybe he would have figured out a way to get more evidence admitted. But that does not change the point that Family Law Court is mostly an exercise in theater, and not what law is supposed to be.
July 15, 2011, 2:47 pmloki13 says:
You cited the First Amendment in conjunction with your argument about contempt of court/evidence. I apologize if I misunderstood you. As I wrote supra, I think that there is a strong First Amendment claim in the instant case, and to the extent you were arguing that a judge prevented you from publicly saying you disagreed with court rulings, I agree with you as well.
(All that said, just because someone can say something doesn’t mean that someone should say something. Moreover, a more interesting question is whether a judge should consider the existence of a website like the psychoexwife as evidence when making a custody determination. That would be more fact-specific. But imagine a case where a wife uses every opportunity to curse out the husband in front of the kids, calling him, inter alia, a psycho- I think that would be a permissible factor in determining custody.)
July 15, 2011, 2:55 pmStacy says:
One custody case, and not knowing anyone else with similar circumstances, I had to shop around on my own. With a lot of googling and a dozen or so phonecalls, I was on my way. Yes, I was also lucky, and in the end I referred my lawyer to a colleague, who also got good, if different, results.
Yes, that’s been my experience. It’s as much a PR exercise as a legal one. It’s a gob-smacking reality when it first hits you, but in the end anyone can play the game if they keep their wits about them.
July 15, 2011, 2:55 pmloki13 says:
I’m procrastinating on MtD. ;)
July 15, 2011, 2:56 pmMichael Ejercito says:
This is a scandal. A judge basically defying an order from court of appeals? How does this judge get away with it?
The following quote comes to mind.
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…”
July 15, 2011, 3:01 pmGeorge says:
It is not known that the dad in this case badmouths the mom in the presence of the kids. His web site mainly complains about the family court, and according to the comments there, it has been very useful to other parents in similar situations.
If the mom is badmouthing the dad, either publicly, in court, or to the kids, then conventional wisdom is that it is very important for the dad to rebut any false allegations. If that means putting up a web site, then that may very well be the best thing for the kids in the long run.
July 15, 2011, 3:04 pmGGRR says:
I have followed the website since it’s inception. I am not a member of the family. The website was anonymous. The author never criticized his ex in front of the children, nor indulged in any parental alienation. The children knew nothing of his anonymous blog–have never seen it–and only know if it because their mother chose, inappropriately to tell them about it.
The website was started as a safety valve, precisely because the author was protecting his children and the rest of his family from the inevitable strong reactive feelings that are stirred up by the behaviour of a borderline personality disordered person. I believe that the author was surprised at how many emails and responses he got from people in similar positions looking for help.
The kids did figure out a long time ago which household they felt safest in, however they have not been allowed to speak or listened to.
July 15, 2011, 3:05 pmCheers546 says:
It is the same incident and same people. The card reference came from the PEW.com forums, which are now locked. It was not in the court records. Also, while the father is not legally married to his “girlfriend,” they have a life partnership and have been together for many years. That makes her no less of a step-parent because she does parent them when they are in her home, even if they don’t have a marriage certificate (which means nothing nowadays anyway, IMO). If I can recall correctly from the blog and forums, she has never referred to herself as the children in question’s “mom” or “mother.” I’m not sure where that came from. But yes, for all intents and purposes, she is the step-mother. I think she deserves more than the title of “dad’s girlfriend” especially since she has been around since they were small children.
July 15, 2011, 3:09 pmCheers546 says:
She had the kids on Mother’s Day (as per court order). He received a phone call (or text) from the ex-wife that evening telling him to come get the kids and she was done with them. Apparently, she saw the comment on the forums that the kids had given a card to the father’s SO, and went nuts on the kids about it. He had them for several weeks or so before filing the order to change custody. Also, the children admitted to the father that the mother has had a drinking problem and they didn’t want to be around that any longer. So there was a lot of things wrapped up in what led to this court case. More than all of us will ever know, I’m sure.
July 15, 2011, 3:28 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
So GGRR and Cheers, you are getting all of your information from his website?
I suggest that it may have come from RL, which can be completely independent of a single aggrieved person’s venting on his blog or forums, and is about 100,000% more relevant.
July 15, 2011, 3:40 pmloki13 says:
True. *None of which is in the court case.*
Look, let’s say that everything you wrote was true. Let’s say that ex-husband is a saint, and accurately records everything on his fancifully-named blog.
What the heck is he thinking?
Why… why… why would a person choose to put that up? I read above that it started as “stress release.” Did it ever occur to saintly husband that at some point, a judge might see that? And that a judge, who will not hear (and will not care) about every detail and nook and cranny of your interactions, and just wants the parties to stop bickering, might… just might… think that a website called “Psychoexwife” devoted to badmouthing your prior spouse wasn’t helpful to the whole comity thing?
July 15, 2011, 3:43 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
…
Ooookaaaay.
July 15, 2011, 3:52 pmShelbyC says:
Wait, if I want to write about my experiences in a book, blog, website, newspaper column, whatever, I have to be worried about how a judge is going to view what I write and if they use it against me? Suppose I have a poem published called Psyco ex wife? Do I have to defend it in court? A play based loosely on my divorce?
July 15, 2011, 3:53 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Only if you care what the judge might do.
This is nothing new, Shelby. Badmouth your employer on a blog and see where that gets you.
July 15, 2011, 3:56 pmShelbyC says:
Uh, you understand the state action doctrine, right?
July 15, 2011, 3:58 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Shelby, Loki wasn’t talking about the judge violating your rights to express yourself. He was talking about the judge making your communications on the internet part of his determination as to your ability to deal amicably with your ex. You think the judge is legally bound to ignore evidence that you refer to your ex as a psycho when looking at your interactions?
July 15, 2011, 4:03 pmSueSimp says:
This comment is so brilliant that I feel it ought to be quoted again.
For us poor female attorneys with our emotional lady brains, it is just so hard not to introduce rancor all over the place. But wait, I thought the stereotype was that women are collaborators and consensus seekers? I guess that’s only when we’re not causing irrational catfights because the other attorney was mean to us.
July 15, 2011, 4:03 pmloki13 says:
In a word, while you are still engaged in litigation, and depending on the litigation… yes.
But that’s common sense. And not just in family law.
Imagine a humdrum landlord/tenant dispute. If both parties come into court saying that they are working in good faith to resolve their issues, but one party has a blog called “The Psycho Tenant” slagging the tenant and talking about what a crazy idiot he is, it’s going to make it real hard to convince the judge you’re trying to really work it out.
July 15, 2011, 4:04 pmShelbyC says:
He wasn’t talking about the judge ordering the guy to take down his website? My bad then. But of course, I would expect a judge to show a little better judgement into how people deal with personal events. Writing about them can often help. But of course, I’ve been of the opinion that judges should have less discretion in family law cases anyway. Because of things like this.
July 15, 2011, 4:12 pmMichael Ejercito says:
Yes, a litigant’s out-of-court statements are generally admissible as evidence in civil cases, just like a criminal defendant’s out-of-court statements are generally admissible as evidence in criminal cases. It can not be credibly argued that the use of speech as evidence against a litigant in a court case violates freedom of speech.
In the instant case, it is about the judge ordering a web site taken down, instead of merely basing an adverse decision on the content of the web site. I fail to see how the order satisfies strict scrutiny.
July 15, 2011, 4:13 pmGiant Frog says:
‘Twas one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, my only regret being that I should have done it much earlier in the process, ie immediately. Live and learn.
But don’t worry, disappointingly few people are willing to stand up for themselves or their rights (it’s not a right if you ask permission), so this evil scam will continue and the children of many of the people writing here will be abused by it – again – when they come of age.
July 15, 2011, 4:17 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Michael, I don’t think anybody is arguing that the judge was right in ordering the website taken down.
July 15, 2011, 4:17 pmloki13 says:
I’ve consistently agreed with this. See, inter alia, my first post at 11:19am.
I’ve just been consistently questioning the wisdom of having the website. It’s hard for me to imagine the judge’s order is constitutional wrt. the website, and I have an even harder time wrt. the prior restraint issues.
July 15, 2011, 4:18 pmGeorge says:
Walk a mile in his shoes, and maybe you will understand. The more obvious question is why so many parents (mostly dads, but also moms) suffer in silence without articulating what a truly evil family court system we have.
Loki13 is essentially saying that the dad should just shut up about what is happening to him in court because a malicious or vindictive judge might see his public comments, and punish him for them. The same could be said about any whistle-blower or protester. Just shut up and accept the injustices in silence, and life will be easier. Maybe that is even true for most people. Fortunately, some men speak up when they see an evil system.
July 15, 2011, 4:21 pmShelbyC says:
Sorry. I just assumed that you agreed with the order. You know, because I disagree with it…
July 15, 2011, 4:22 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
George, the name of the website is not “evilfamilycourtsystem.com”.
July 15, 2011, 4:24 pmloki13 says:
Nope. I think you’re viewing things through your… peculiar lens. I think it’s a good idea, in any litigation, to STFU about the opposing side. And while I appreciate your idea that this is a noble attempt at whistleblowing in the courts, the website isn’t MYCRAZYEXPERIENCESINFAMILYLAW.COM, it’s MYPSYCHOEXWIFE. Little bit of a difference. And hey- I fully support his right to do so- he can do so all he wants to! But if it becomes evidence against him (that he is undermining the mother’s parental role), then he only has himself to blame.
Put another way, undermining the other parent can be a factor in custody situations. Normally, it’s discounted because it tends to fall under “he-said, she-said.” Documenting it for the court is likely not a helpful strategy.
Heh. I think we agreed recently. But I certainly can understand the kneejerk reaction.
July 15, 2011, 4:30 pmArthur Kirkland says:
This is a conservative blog. Conservatives stand up for traditional values. Tradition = women are receptionists and secretaries, maybe paralegals, if they want to work in the legal field. Respecting tradition = recognizing that our society (including the women, if you want to know the un-PC truth) was better off when women were content in their traditional roles, concentrating on faith and family, instead of being riled up by liberals.
So quit whining.
P.S. Does your husband know what you are posting here?
July 15, 2011, 4:33 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
There’s a thing I see people do. It may be immaturity, because it is absolutely rampant among teenagers, but in some people one sees it extend into adulthood as well.
1 – I am going to do exactly as I please.
2 – Everyone else needs to respect my right to do exactly as I please, while
3 – acting in exactly the way I think they should.
Putting up a website calling your ex a psycho is fine. But you can’t make other people think it’s all right. If you’re going to do that kind of thing you need to count the cost ahead of time and make sure the cost worth whatever it’s getting for you. And if you’re going to do this uncivil thing, you can’t expect perfectly restrained and correct behavior from other people in return.
Further, if you know, or think you know, that your wife is mentally ill, and your kids are to some extent at her mercy, and she knows about and reads that website, using it to poke her so that she acts out even more seems kind of counterproductive. If you care about your kids, that is. If you just want to carry on complaining and having people marvel with you at how crazy she is, then it makes perfect sense.
July 15, 2011, 4:39 pmAJK says:
Perhaps that’s because there are separate procedural rules that apply to Family Court?
July 15, 2011, 4:44 pmSid says:
100,000% more relevant…..
Laura, I have always read your comments on this site with great admiration. But this number makes me think of Dr Evil’s demand for a million-ba-gillion dollars. You have led a very professional and objective discussion so far. Don’t let them get to you.
July 15, 2011, 4:46 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Sid, thank you. I will try to refrain from hyperbole.
July 15, 2011, 4:48 pmEdward A. Hoffman says:
This reminds me of one of my own cases, which Eugene blogged about back in March.
July 15, 2011, 4:49 pmSteve says:
In my younger days, I was a clerk/receptionist for a divorce lawyer. Many female lawyers have surely had the unpleasant experience of answering the phone only to have the person at the other end assume they must be a secretary. I had the opposite experience: people would assume that since I am a male, I must be one of the lawyers. They would actually ask me for legal advice. After a while I just started giving it. “No, you probably shouldn’t grab the kids and run off.”
July 15, 2011, 5:33 pmJohn Herbison says:
Divorce and post-divorce litigation seems to bring out the worst in otherwise reasonable and good people. I am a litigator who does some limited amount of family law work. The more I see of parents who can’t get along, the more I appreciate my ex-wife. (We were not always good spouses, but our relationship as ex-spouses and co-parents has been remarkable.)
Men and women ordinarily become parents by being friendly rather than by being hostile. I recall an apocryphal story about a conversation between God and Adam, whereby God explained one of the mysteries of creation.
God said to Adam, “I have designed man with a brain that is capable of complex thought, sound and analytical reasoning and mature judgment. I have also designed man with genitalia such that reproductive acts may also bring exquisite sensual pleasure and gratification.”
Adam said, “Yes, I understand and appreciate that. But tell me, is there a catch?”
God replied, “A bit of one, yes. You see, I have designed man with exactly enough blood so that only one of these systems can function at a time.”
July 15, 2011, 5:39 pmPhlinn says:
So, ____ vs. ____ is redacted in the linked pdf. Perhaps it should have been redacted in your link text as well?
[EV says: I thought about it, but decided against it. Court cases are public documents; lawyers generally refer to cases by the name of the case, [Party] v. [Party]. If people search for comments about the case when they’re writing a law review article about it (for which they’ll surely know the case name) or when a published decision comes out, they’ll search for it under that case name. Likewise, if a newspaper article about the case comes out, it will probably include the names of the parties; if readers want to see more commentary on the case, they’ll likely search for it using the parties’ names.
I might decline to include the names of the parties in extreme situations, but the only rationale for my excluding it here would be that the children might at some point Google their names and find a reference to their parents’ acrimonious child custody litigation. That strikes me as an inadequate basis for my redacting the names of the parties, especially since that would call for omitting the case name in pretty much every discussion of a child custody case. Or am I mistaken on this?]
July 15, 2011, 5:45 pmDave N. says:
I did misread the transcript this morning — and I agree that the evidence appears that the mother had the children on Mother’s Day. So I retract that portion of my original post.
I do note that Mr. Morelli was represented by counsel at the heariug and Mrs. Morelli appeared pro se, for whatever that is worth — though I have seen judges bend over backward for pro se litigants, particularly when the other side is represented.
I further note, as I did before, that the father agreed to take down the website — and while I agree the order is of dubious constitutionality, all it did was memorialize that which the father had already agreed.
I agree completely with John Herbison that “Divorce and post-divorce litigation seems to bring out the worst in otherwise reasonable and good people.”
I do not know the Morellis. I have never heard of them before today. But I think the judge was absolutely, 100% correct with her concluding remarks:
Shorter version. “Grow up. Both of you.” Spot on.
July 15, 2011, 6:39 pmleo marvin says:
Laura and loki,
I think you’re both being unduly harsh with GGGR and, assuming the truth of GGGR’s accounting, the husband in this case. I’ve known well four people with Borderline Personality Disorder, one a close family member, and through her the other three. I say this with the deepest sympathy for what people with BPD go through — two of the four I’ve known are dead by suicide, and the other two attempted it — but there’s no overstating the trauma of being intimately involved with, much less parented by, someone with that condition. If this woman does indeed have BPD, my heart goes out to her, but it goes out more to her children. No child should have to witness the sometimes psychotic behavior of people with that condition, much less be mothered by one.
Laura, you belittle GGGR’s hyperbolic (IYO) use of the word “terror,” apparently believing it should be reserved for physical violence. I’ve been robbed at knifepoint, and I once broke up a mugging in which the victim was stabbed several times and the attacker turned his attention to me before thinking better of it and taking off. (I grew up in NYC when stuff like that came with the territory). I assure you I found neither of those incidents remotely as terrifying as being screamed at by a small weaponless woman with BPD who couldn’t have knocked me over with a running start. Like so many things in life, if you haven’t experienced it, you really can’t imagine it.
Loki, you fault this guy for his website. Does that take account of, assuming GGGR is to be believed, his intention and attempt to keep it anonymous? I never found it necessary to vent in that way, but there is a large body of evidence that lots of people, e.g., family members of alcoholics/addicts, victims of various kinds of abuse, do find such support environments therapeutic. Why are you so dismissive/derisive of this one, again assuming he intended and attempted to keep it anonymous?
July 15, 2011, 7:11 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Leo, it’s my understanding that GGRR’s only knowledge of this thing is from that website. I don’t think you can diagnose mental illness in a person solely from another person’s description of their behavior when the other person intensely dislikes and resents that person.
July 15, 2011, 7:25 pmtwency says:
Speaking as a (more or less) conservative, this looks an awfully lot like a libertarian blog to me. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
July 15, 2011, 7:41 pmleo marvin says:
Laura, I don’t see anyone claiming a proper diagnosis can be done third hand. But that website passes my turing test for someone who claims to be in a relationship with someone who has BPD. Many people with the same experience who read the site apparently agree. (No offense, but by contrast, you’d have failed right off the bat with your claim that “terror” is an inapposite description for what someone in that relationship goes through.)
Maybe the husband is making the whole thing up. If so he’s a very convincing liar, because he’s convinced me it’s more likely than not that his ex-wife does have BPD. Not that his, GGGR’s or my opinion should be admissible in court, but your and loki’s criticisms go beyond the legal conflict. You’re taking the husband to task for the website itself and GGGR for believing/reporting it.
A key item, it seems to me, is GGGR’s claim that
If that’s true, I don’t know what your gripe is. If it isn’t true, if he didn’t create it to be anonymous and attempt to keep it so, I’d certainly agree it was wrong for him to subject his ex to such a public attack, and even more so to expose the kids to it.
July 15, 2011, 8:28 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Well, it’s a big if.
I wonder what her behavior was, that he termed “cyber-stalking”. Maybe she was spending hours online searching every term she could think of, trying to see if he had a presence anywhere. Or maybe she stumbled across it looking for something else entirely and “cyber-stalking” was his uncharitable characterization. It kind of matters, don’t you think? One should know which it was, before one assumes that he is telling the unvarnished truth?
July 15, 2011, 8:34 pmleo marvin says:
Laura, I don’t assume anyone tells the unvarnished truth. If anything, I assume virtually no one does. But I don’t see how it matters. Even assuming, and I do, that much of hubby’s narrative is highly subjective, so what? If he meant the website to be anonymous, the details of his narrative are only relevant for his own therapeutic purposes and those of his readers. If he didn’t, that’s a bigger transgression than any particular part of the story he tells.
As for how hard the wife had to search to find it, that might be relevant to whether he was naive about the ease of keeping anything anonymous on the internet, but again, so what? Either he wanted it solely for own therapeutic use or he wanted to beat his wife up with it publicly. Whether she had to stalk him to find it or just make a concerted effort doesn’t matter much IMO for purposes of judging his behavior. What matters is his intent.
July 15, 2011, 9:12 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
What matters is that he used the term “cyber-stalking”. Either she was stalking him, or she wasn’t. If she was, it’s really bad and indicative of a deep-seated problem. If she wasn’t, it speaks to his ill will and the truthfulness of the rest of the story.
And I’ll say again that unless you have heard her version you don’t really know anything. It’s possible that she could tell her side and you could think, yep, she’s crazy. It’s also possible that she could tell her side and you could go back to him to check details and get some red-faced foot shuffling. I’ve seen enough of that in people I know.
I just really think you can’t know the whole story from one person’s narrative.
July 15, 2011, 9:24 pmleo marvin says:
Laura, of course I agree we can’t know the story without hearing both sides. I don’t pretend to know who’s telling how much of the truth. My only question was and is why you and loki convicted the guy of being a dick for making his website, without accounting for the possibility that he didn’t want his ex-wife or kids to see it, nor anyone else to identify them from it.
July 15, 2011, 10:47 pmGeorge says:
Yes, we don’t know both sides. I think that it is quite likely that the mom was also screwed by the court. They are both victims of an out-of-control family court judge who is trying to micromanage their lives.
The whole idea of a family court judge complaining about a web page is ridiculous. 600M people have Facebook pages. There is no right to not get mentioned on the internet. Maybe there ought to be, but there is not and there will not be anytime soon. Furthermore, it is the family court that invades the privacy of these folks far more than the web site. If there is harm to the kids, it is coming from the family court, not the web site.
July 16, 2011, 2:48 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Leo, what comment of mine specifically are you talking about where I convicted him of being a body part?
July 16, 2011, 6:34 amBanannie says:
Actually Laura, this is the only point where you and I agree in part. The ex-wife found the website while engaged in behaviours that could be characterized as cyber-stalking. Just as she is currently engaged in stalking/following the “girlfriend” via her online conversations via Twitter and other social media outlets.
What is missing in this entire discussion and facts not in evidence is the behaviour/actions of the ex-wife that precipated many of the blog posts. Notwithstanding the fact thatthe timeline of the blog beginning in 2009 does not coincide with the timeline of events in this case, i.e. the first blog post beging in 2009 and is decribing actions occurring in prior years. If you are reading the blog postsin chronological order, you are reading events from prior years. The blogger (the father) is able to comment on the situation as it evolved and includes where he made mistakes as well.
July 16, 2011, 7:28 amloki13 says:
Leo,
Since I appreciate your thoughtful comments in general, let me posit that my I think that the areas of my contention are as follows:
1. Mr. Morelli has a right to have this a website.
2. As a general matter, it is unwise when you are involved in litigation to badmouth the opposing side. This true regardless of the litigation.
3. While you are correct that an anonymous environment to vent and receive support can be therapeutic, this isn’t it. This website details years, with exact facts and dates that are easily checked, and initials of the judge’s name, details of the sister of the PEW, the parents, and son on. In short, you cannot claim anonymity simply because he changed his wife’s name to Psychoexwife. Allow me to make the following two points-
a. If you really want to post anonymously, you take some measures to protect yourself….
b. There is great value to groups that allow you to vent anonymously (see also NA, AA, Al-anon, Nar-anon, Overeaters Anonymous, and about 500 other anon groups). I’m not sure what that has to do with setting up a website with ads where you sell t-shirts and list your grievances against your ex-wife, her family, and the judge.
*shrug* But that’s just me. We’ll agree to disagree! All I know is that I went there, looked at his cast of characters (wow… there’s some issues!), then went to a post about suspended licenses (the charming tale of when he called the police station to get his sister in law arrested because she was driving on the day before her suspended license was going to lifted… part of conflict lessening, I assume)… and that was enough.
So yeah- as I wrote before, even assuming every thing he writes is true, I still think it’s a bad idea; there are anonymous RL support groups, journaling, or myriad other ways to get out the message and to get support. The way he chose will earn him undying support from one particular subset of people (see early comments in this thread), and some skepticism from others.
July 16, 2011, 8:18 amArthur Kirkland says:
Anti-liberal might be as apt as conservative, but this looks little like a libertarian blog.
July 16, 2011, 12:32 pmMichael Ejercito says:
A much narrower order could pass strict scrutiny, e.g., an order forbidding the names of the litigants from appearing on the web site, or an order forbidding the revelation of confidential records or other records sealed by the court. (Of course, sealing records would itself implicate the First Amendment, and would have to satisfy strict scrutiny.)
July 16, 2011, 1:11 pmGeorge says:
Ban names of litigants? Are you nuts? This is the Age of Facebook. People post info about themselves, family, friends, and personal lives. Get over it. Why would some meddling family court judge try to intervene in something that 80% of the population thinks is a completely normal part of everyday life?
Yes, I know some people don’t like the anti-privacy aspects of the modern online world. If so, join the anti-Facebook movement. Maybe they are right. But the family court has no business in that issue.
July 16, 2011, 2:34 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
George, out of curiosity – what do you think the judge was trying to accomplish?
July 16, 2011, 3:35 pmleo marvin says:
This one.
July 16, 2011, 4:39 pmleo marvin says:
loki,
In my quick survey of the site I didn’t see some of the details you mentioned (dates, judge’s initials). I’d agree those fairly call into question his commitment to anonymity, but they’re far from dispositive. It’s also plausible he was just naive about the likelihood of anyone finding a site he believed no one had reason to know existed and which he’d protected from being found accidentally by someone googling one of the names involved.
Bad judgment? Obviously. But we all know famous examples of people in the business of exercising good judgment who failed to heed one of the first instructions many of us received the first day we showed up for work out of law school: Never put anything in writing you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the New York Times.
Even simple bad judgment has ramifications, and being held accountable by the judge is one of them. Fair enough. But it’s orders of magnitude less culpable IMO than willingly exposing the ex and kids to a public diatribe, and that intention remains an open question. (If he wasn’t trying, however ineffectively, to protect them from seeing it, why would he bother anonymizing the names at all?)
As for the therapeutic value of “setting up a website with ads where you sell t-shirts and list your grievances against your ex-wife, her family, and the judge,” I don’t know what ads and t-shirts have to do with it. I do know people who swear by such online support groups, either in conjunction with or in lieu of the twelve step alternatives you mentioned. Obviously YMMV.
July 16, 2011, 4:40 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Leo, in August of ’09 he posted that his ex had read the thing and reacted badly to it. This is the post that NN linked to.
Subsequently we have Cheers telling us: “Apparently, she saw the comment on the forums that the kids had given a card to the father’s SO, and went nuts on the kids about it.”
So first, I do think it’s uncivil to apply the word “psycho” to a person. If he’s going to be uncivil like that, stupid to then complain about the tone of her emails and so forth.
And second, if she’s mentally ill and they know it, and threats to her status as the kids’ mother causes her to act out, do you really think they were justified in posting on this thing they knew she was reading that the kid gave the dad’s gf a Mother’s Day card?
Yes, they are within their rights to put whatever they want online. But ONCE AGAIN – “I can” does not equal “I should”. If my kids had to spend half their lives with somebody who had a hair-trigger temper I’d find ways to deal with my irritation, or whatever these people have, that did not put my kids at risk. And from reading this guy’s eye-rolling, “can you believe this” narratives about her behavior, I can’t rule out that he’s not actually being entertained.
July 16, 2011, 6:20 pmWatson Ladd says:
And so we descend to feudalism in which every person has their place. Does the blood that was shed, much innocent, to create our world, in Paris and in Lexington command no respect? The idea that people will pick those who they will spend their lives with is one that I feel is worth defending, even as I acknowledge the difficulties it produces.
July 16, 2011, 7:27 pmleo marvin says:
I’m not following what your point is here. Please elaborate.
It’s definitely uncivil if he thinks the wife will see it or that anyone he intends to see it will know who he’s talking about. That remains the open question.
This is a different matter, beyond the scope of my comments. I take no position on the relative merits of their mutual criticisms for the very reason you gave earlier. We don’t know the whole story.
If she has this condition, there’s nothing the husband or kids can do to prevent her from “acting out.” Indeed one of the casualties for those close to people with BPD is the walking-on-eggshells, stage-managing every detail of life in a futile attempt to avoid tripping a trigger to “acting out.” Think battered wives who lives in constant fear of saying anything they’ll be told caused the next beating. Of course, again, that assumes she has BPD, still an open question.
If I understand you to be saying the husband posted these things after he became aware the wife had discovered the site, if that’s true it raises yet another distinct question, and a complicated one I’m unsure how I feel about. On the one hand I don’t like the idea of the wife or kids being exposed to the public complaints and name-calling for the same reasons I don’t approve of the site in the first place unless it was intented that the ex and kids never know about it. On the other hand, if his original intentions were benign, taking the site down now because she discovered it falls into the category I just discussed of submitting to the kind of routine blackmail that goes on when dealing with BPD. If it were my site I’m sure I’d take it down, but I have a history of being overly accommodating to people with that condition. (All this assumes again that the wife indeed has it).
I assume you know that wrt that axiom you’re preaching to the choir.
If she has BPD that isn’t effectively treated or remitting on its own (as sometimes happens with age), not only is “hair-trigger temper” inaccurate — people with this condition can be just as unpredictably sweet and patient — it so understates the depth and rage of the dark episodes that… well, just take my word for it, you can’t imagine it by reference to anything you’ve observed in a healthy psyche. In short, the only way not to put your kids at risk from such a person is to deprive that person of custody. Imagine your kids living with an active crack or meth addict. It’s not exactly the same thing, but it’s close enough for government work.
Failing removing the kids from custody, you’re in a triage situation where none of the options is a happy one. Doing whatever one has to do to preserve one’s own sanity may be one of the best things the other parent can do for his kids in that situation. Of course that should be balanced against the considerations that make me ambivalent about this site depending on dad’s intentions, but if the facts are as he describes them don’t dismiss the value to the kids of seeing their father role model doing something, anything, to heal himself from the effects of that relationship. At best he’s certainly done it imperfectly, and he sounds like he may be far from an ideal role model in some respects, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
Maybe he is. Maybe he’s a jerk. But what you’re describing is equally plausible as an expression of gallows humor that’s perfectly consistent with the gravity of the situation, and a useful tool for staying sane. In this particular detail I speak from long personal experience, though I make no warranty as to the success of my effort.
July 16, 2011, 8:33 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
My point with the first part is that he discovered that she was aware that he was maintaining a blog called psychoexwife, in which he detailed and complained about her behavior for a wide audience to see, in August of ’09. And I have to say that a person would have to be really mellow for that not to upset them. It would upset me, and as far as I know I don’t have BPD.
It was subsequent to that that, according to our commenter, he or his GF posted about the Mother’s Day card the kid made for her.
I think this was at the very least ill-thought-out.
If you believe somebody is unstable, and your priority is your kids who have to stay with her, it looks like you could refrain from this kind of thing. It appears to her, and may actually be, deliberately taunting her with the fact that her kid is calling another woman mommy.
If your priority is not the kids, then of course you can continue to maintain that website for whatever benefit it is getting for you.
July 16, 2011, 8:50 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I read another cached post about one of the kids having pneumonia. He communicates that he has absolutely zero respect for his ex-wife. Imputes bad motives to her. Accuses her of lying about the kids’ health – even as he admits that the kid really is sick. She tells him not to take the kid to a particular doctor that she thinks is incompetent – and if you’ve never seen a doctor that you concluded was an idiot you’ve led a charmed life – and he takes the kid there anyway and tells her so. And then triumphantly reports that she got upset – well, duh.
That’s not walking on eggshells, Leo.
July 16, 2011, 8:57 pmleo marvin says:
Laura, the whole website is obviously an exercise in not walking on eggshells. IMO, whether any or all of that exercise is contemptable, justified, or defensible but ill-advised depends on variables, some of which I’ve discussed, about which we’re insufficiently informed, foremost of which is the husband’s intentions and expectations when he created the site.
July 16, 2011, 9:54 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I’m talking about his behavior not walking on eggshells, not the website.
Sometimes when people ask you to do something, or not do something, you could just freaking do as they ask.
You have experience with BPD, and I have experience with a person provoking another person into a blowup by discounting what she says and making fun of her until she loses her temper, and then walking away happy that he has demonstrated what a crazy bitch she is. Not kind. Not indicative of superiority like he thinks it is.
July 16, 2011, 10:05 pmGeorge says:
I think that the judge was trying to show off her judicial power to treat adults like children. Like many judges, she probably gets some sort of perverted pleasure out of ordering people around. If she had above average intelligence, then she would realize that she is making the matter worse. I will give her the benefit of the doubt, and assume that she is too stupid to understand the harm that she is causing.
You complain that the dad made some uncivil remarks. What if he did? Are you part of the manners police? Are you advocating that the state take kids away from parents who make uncivil remarks? If so, there are about 50M offenders. If not, then it is irrelevant to the court.
July 16, 2011, 10:10 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
George, you can make uncivil remarks, but then you lose your right to complain that other people are uncivil back at you.
I think the judge was trying to get some kind of stability for the kids. They have two parents. The mom isn’t going anywhere and neither is the dad. They can fuss and argue and complain and bitch all they want, and the ONLY thing that will happen is further victimization of the kids. The judge wants them to shut down the fighting and just parent the kids.
But if people want to act like brats, you can’t really make them stop. You can try to shame them into stopping but if they want to be brats they will. It’s a shame that it’s grownups acting this way, with kids the helpless bystanders. But there it is.
July 16, 2011, 10:25 pmleo marvin says:
Please link so I’ll know what you’re talking about.
July 16, 2011, 10:55 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Here.
These two people are like oil and water. I don’t know how they managed to associate with each other long enough to have 2 kids together without killing each other.
July 16, 2011, 11:12 pmBarb says:
I don’t believe in a matchmaking that ignores the wishes of the matched. But I don’t think we’re doing a very good job with the present generation and methods of experimenting as teens to see which way we swing, straight or gay–and indulging in every kind of sexual behavior and combination without any parameters from family, religion, culture, community–and so many today are single and lonely –unable to find a decent match or make one stick.
What happens when one’s child turns out gay or says he is in the wrong body or brings home a series of sex partners to bed with under your roof? From some people I know well, I hear the equivocation –that the Bible says a lot of things that we don’t hold to today, so shacking up, sex and impregnating without marrying, and gay sex are no longer sins –or if they still are, the mama and the papa and the gov’t can’t speak against it lest they alienate their little darlings (or the voters.) And the grandparents end up raising their grandchildren (if the kids are lucky) or the government does.
Is there no line between right and wrong? Is freedom absolute –except for our feeble man-made laws which are getting crazier by the day.
Our culture is an unqualified mess. We really do need what good biblical religion has to offer –with the Christian fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, faithfulness, goodness and self-control) , forgiveness and Golden Rule teachings leading the way. And also with Christ’s teaching to leave and cleave and stay with one wife. Divorce was provided for our hard hearts, He said –but we are to have hearts of flesh and not stone. We need our Redeemer Messiah –and He has come. But we seem headed down a primrose path to perdition –because no one dares even SPEAK that our culture is awash with sin –without fear of being muzzled, ostracized, shunned.
July 17, 2011, 12:09 amJohn Herbison says:
The wisdom of airing dirty laundry in public is highly questionable (just as the desire to do so may be understandable). From my perspective as a parent and a long ago divorce litigant, I can see little good inuring to these children’s benefit from either parent ratcheting up the conflict.
From my perspective as a lawyer and civil libertarian, the prior restraint order that the family court judge issued is utterly reprehensible. I wonder whether the pleadings requested that relief, or whether the judge acted sua sponte.
A related site, http://www.savethepsychoexwife.com/ , suggests that the father does not own the website in question or the content thereof. If that is true, then the judge’s prior restraint order is all the more egregious. I should hope that the owner of the site pursues whatever disciplinary remedies may be available against the judge.
July 17, 2011, 12:39 amJohn Herbison says:
Your comment is off-topic, but I am curious, Barb. In a situation where a Christian parent first learns that his/her adult child is gay and is now out of the closet, what do you suggest that that parent should say or do? Do you contend that merely exclaiming, “My Holy Book says that you are sinful!!” covers the waterfront?
July 17, 2011, 1:13 amGeorge says:
The judge is pouring gasoline on the fire.
July 17, 2011, 1:38 amleo marvin says:
OK, Laura, I read it. I still don’t get what that has to do with what I opined about, i.e., the justification or lack thereof of putting up the website. It seems to go to what I thought we agreed we don’t have enough information to evaluate, i.e. the quality of their behavior toward each other generally. FWIW, I agree it seems to confirm they don’t get along very well, if that’s a surprise.
July 17, 2011, 3:15 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Leo, there’s a couple of things there.
The page starts out speculating as to whether the ex-wife has Munchausen or hypochondriasis.
This is the same page where, at the end, he states that after several days of antibiotics, the kids still spikes a fever of 103. That ain’t chickenfeed. That is one sick kid. I’d have him back to the doctor at daybreak the next day, asking to have his antibiotic changed. I hope that his webpage that is a bunch of empty ranting, and in RL he is more focused on his child and less on speculating about his wife’s mental illness.
He also complains because she gives him a heads-up that the kid probably won’t be able to go to school on Monday. Would he not have had a bigger complaint if she had let him find that out Monday morning with no opportunity to make arrangements?
So you were saying that the website is therapy for him having to deal with a person with BPD.
I see the website as an opportunity for him to cast everything his ex does in a negative way, while (thinking he is) justifying himself, and the kids aren’t a priority at all. With the added bonus of actively keeping her stirred up, once she found out about it. And if she has BPD, it’s quite possible that he has whatever the mirror image is.
Legally, he can say and write anything he wants. We don’t disagree there.
July 17, 2011, 8:47 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
George, these people voluntarily went before the judge, both asking to have custodial arrangments changed, him also asking that she be made to have parenting classes, her also asking that he quit bitching about her on the internet.
If you had been the judge, what would you have done?
July 17, 2011, 8:56 amloki13 says:
leo,
I think the problem is this- you have dealt with someone with BPD, and I will acknowledge that it can be difficult. But as you appear to agree with- this isn’t the way you would handle the situation. Why? Because you’re… for lack of a batter word, rational.
It’s depressingly common in family court for people to toss around mental diagnoses at the other party to “explain” the other person’s behavior. I don’t know, and Mr. Morelli doesn’t know, if his ex-wife has BPD. Heck, as Laura alluded to, I can “diagnose” Mr. Morelli with issues from the DSM IV based on his postings, and they ave as much validity as his diagnosis of BPD or musings about Munchasuen-by-proxy.
But even if she did, he’s doing it wrong. Not in a legal way (he as the right to do this). In a moral way. Having a website to taunt an ex-wife, with details such that anonymity cannot be kept (other than saying that you can’t google her name), and continuing to post details after you know she’s aware of it, is morally wrong.
I wish Mr. Moreli luck in his court case. But I think it is far too evident that hasn’t practiced any real recovery. This is all about him.
July 17, 2011, 8:59 amGeorge says:
It is not known that they were there voluntarily. They could be just responding to previous court actions that unnecessarily intervened in their lives. But even if they were voluntarily asking the judge to do something foolish, that does not justify the judge making foolish and unconstitutional orders. The judge should stop meddling in their lives.
July 17, 2011, 12:07 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
If you voluntarily go to a judge asking for things, then the judge is not meddling.
So if you were the judge, George, you would just answer all requests with an automatic “no”?
July 17, 2011, 12:20 pmloki13 says:
Laura,
It’s no use arguing with George on this point. I’ve seen this before- the belief that somehow, judges are just chomping at the bit to get involved and ruin people’s lives.
Just like in business, judges can’t wait to have people breach contracts so that they can tell them what to do.
Ask any family court judge, and they will tell you the same thing- I wish that they would just get along; for the sake of themselves, for the sake of the children, and for the sake of my sanity as I have to read another “Motion to Let 16 Year Old Child Use Car Father Purchased for Visitation Purposes.”
Look at the instant case. It was brought before the judge on four separate motions – called petitions, apparently, in Pennsyltucky. (three by the husband).
*shrug* Maybe we should bring back Trial by Ordeal.
July 17, 2011, 12:38 pmMister-M says:
As I sit here reading, with great interest, the debate and discussion over the whos, whats, whens, wheres, and whys of the existence of the thepsychoexwife.com, I do have a very important question for the detractors…
When no one will listen to the horror stories that your family is experiences, at least not with any meaningful help: the court (for the most part – the original judge on the case was very cognizant of her behaviors and slowly, but surely, acted upon them even if not to my complete satisfaction)…. AH, the question:
While you’re focusing on the existence of the blog and my writing style, you’re failing to acknowledge and you’re failing to comment on the grim reality that nearly every story about her is rooted in a vulgar, abusive, harassing, offensive contact from her.
While there are many who will rail against the existence of the site and all of those it helps in similar situations – almost to a person – there will be no discussion about the behaviors of the person described and their impact on our entire family, most especially – the children:
- False allegations to Child Protective Services that caused all of the children and step children great pain and fear.
- Repeated custodial interference on her part – found in contempt.
- Other issues related to prior orders which she willfully violated and has been found in contempt.
- Calls to police from many states away for “welfare checks” for no other reason than to terrorize us.
- Nearly every single petition she has ever filed have been full of or completely false – provably false – and despite this, she has never been sanctioned for filing false petitions nor for lying in court.
- Serious and significant drinking problems which she forced the children to cover up for her for a prolonged period of time until they just couldn’t take it anymore and told me about it.
These issues are a drop… in… the… bucket, folks.
When no one will listen – to whom do you turn? When school counselors, family therapists, judges, lawyers, custody evaluators, and so on KNOW this stuff and do NOTHING for the children – to whom do you turn?
You turn to people in similar situations and you work together with them to ease such experiences in their lives.
The site is not about my ex-wife. It is about me and my family and it is a story based on real life events. I understand that you only have my “writing style” on which to base your assumptions about me. However, if you know anything about how to connect with your target audience, you would know that you write in a style that will convey to them that you truly do understand, that you truly have lived it, and you truly are working to help others avoid the same mistakes I’ve made over the years and detailing my contributions to escalating situations with my ex-wife.
Don’t assume the style in which I write is who I am as a person. I’ve written for a lot of venues and I write for the target audience… be they children, families, investors, sports fans and yes – people going through very high conflict child custody and divorce cases. If people judged every writer by the content of their writing and/or the style in which they write, we would have a whole lot of misconceptions about a lot of very famous authors.
The bottom line is, we’ve been stonewalled at every conceivable turn by “official channels” who continue to line their pockets with the fortunes of people who simply want meaningful parenting time with their children in the aftermath of a divorce and to protect them from dangerous and/or unstable situations.
And in this case – the judge is trying to shut down the ONLY outlet, the only source of information that has been able to successfully bring about change in so many people’s lives, if not my own situation.
And she’s leveraging my freedom and the children’s health and well-being to do it.
I’ll ask your forgiveness when I say to you, “Spare me this – just shut down the blog” nonsense. These issues affect me on a micro scale and untold numbers of people on a macro scale. The blog existed for years before she discovered it. She’s known about it for almost two years. Has it changed her behaviors? Not at all. Her behaviors won’t change if or when it’s gone for good. And if it is gone for good, who does that help? Certainly not our children. And now an entire community of people have lost a valuable resources that has seen more successes in family court as a result of our collective experiences than any other site I’m aware of.
Of course, you can’t read about any of them because it’s locked down until this legal matter is resolved one way or the other.
The children don’t read the blog. They have no desire to read the blog. They’re only aware of the blog because my ex-wife inadvertently stumbled upon an issue I was writing about at the time and recognized the content of one of the emails as potentially her own.
The kids will not be irreparably harmed by the mere existence of the written word. Further, reading about situations that they have actually experienced will never, ever rise to the level of “potentially damaging” as having gone through the actual experiences themselves.
I don’t hate my ex-wife. I hate the things that she puts our family through and I write about it in a way that will connect with people going through the same unimaginable horror.
As for me, I’m simply a mild-mannered, family loving homebody who is very worried about the future of our children and seeing no end in sight because the “official” channels can’t see the forest for the trees no matter what’s sitting right there in front of them and what has taken place in their court room time and time and time and time again.
July 17, 2011, 12:55 pmGeorge says:
The court should seriously consider allegations of criminal child abuse or neglect, and allegations that a parent is unfit. Any other parenting complaints should be summarily rejected.
As noted above, this blog attracts libertarian readers. If there is any core libertarian concept, it is that the govt should not be unnecessarily meddling in peoples’ lives. It is no excuse to say that some busybody plaintiff asked some busybody judge to meddle. The judge should have no authority to do it.
July 17, 2011, 1:29 pmloki13 says:
Wow. That’s great.
You have the same theory for contracts? If two people disagree about a contract, government (judges) should have no authority to decide it? Just let the parties get guns and shoot it out?
Two parties have children. They split up. Party A decides to keep the kids. Government should just stay out of it.
You’ll never get it, but I’ll try and explain this one last time. The judiciary is a means of resolving conflicts so we don’t just take justice in our own hands. If you don’t like the family laws of your jurisdiction, work to change them. Judges resolve disputes brought before them. Don’t want them to do it? Don’t have a dispute.
Take care with who you marry. Do a pre-nup. If you end up divorcing, try to work it out amicably. Keep the kids’ (not your) best interests at heart. Remember there is no winner- just degrees of losing.
Most importantly, life goes on.
July 17, 2011, 2:59 pmloki13 says:
Let me finish with a little anecdote to explain something about family law. People come in with their preconception about who was right, and who was wrong, and what really matters. But legally, what they care about (and who is an “evil person”) doesn’t matter.
I remember seeing a case. A woman hired an attorney in a divorce proceeding. She was convinced she had this fact, that, once revealed, would destroy her husband. She kept referencing it. Everyone, of course, was curious about this.
[As an aside, my jurisdiction is pretty pro-father, with an assumption of 50/50]
Her attorney kept trying to explain to her that this devastating fact wasn’t a big deal. But he just couldn’t convince her. Something about a barn… of course, all of us immediately assumed the worse.
Turns out that when the marriage went south, the husband once went to the barn (there were no animals, if you’re curious) to, um, relieve his pressure. He went there because they were no longer sharing the marital bed, and because the kids were in the house (privacy).
From this one thing, the woman thought she was entitled to full custody, enormous support, and, well, everything. Unfortunately, there’s no “relieving pressure in the barn” provision in the statutes.
I hope it goes without saying, but she didn’t get it.
July 17, 2011, 3:07 pmleo marvin says:
It’s easy to be rational when I’m having a rational discussion. That doesn’t mean I know what I’d do in someone else’s shoes. This guy’s an easy target because his website gives us access to one and only one side of the kind of protracted, ugly fight in which neither side may be painted in a flattering light by even their own version of events, as your closing anecdote implies. It’s easy to recognize that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions about mom based only on dad’s side of the story, and I agree we shouldn’t. She may be a saint, and he may be the self-concerned jerk you and Laura seem to think he is. What’s harder to recognize, but I’d say equally valid, is that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions about him based only on his side of the story.
I agree. I don’t think we should assume she has BPD. My only point has been and continues to be that neither should we assume we know how we, all well intentioned, rational, people, would behave in his circumstances if his ex does have BPD.
Maybe so, maybe not, but without re-litigating the whole thread, I’ll just repeat that it’s easy to say when you’re not in his shoes (assuming again that they’re the shoes he describes).
Who are you under the impression recovery is supposed to be about? And for the nth time, I’m not claiming this actually is recovery. I’m only saying it’s plausible, assuming the facts as he describes them, that he would make a website like his in an attempt, effective or not, considerate or not, advisable or not, at recovery.
July 17, 2011, 5:04 pmleo marvin says:
Which is kind of my point. If you’ve never known anyone who has a close family member with a severe drug addiction or a mental illness that manifests psychotic behavior, it may not occur to you that some of the symptoms of these conditions are indeed contagious. Which is why I said early on, if the wife has BPD, I’d never suggest anyone withhold compassion from her. On the contrary, my heart would go out to her. I’d only urge that such compassion also be extended to the husband, because he might well be afflicted too.
July 17, 2011, 5:12 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Leo, no one is saying she is a saint.
People on this thread have asserted, more or less, that he is one though, and I think his own words and actions put that to rest.
July 17, 2011, 5:15 pmloki13 says:
Leo,
I think we’re talking at cross-purposes here. Let me posit this for you-
I think what he did was a bad idea. Even accepting everything he says is true. I find what he did to be awful, and also poor judgment (from the general litigation perspective).
In my early law school life, I saw enough family court to know that slinging around mental illnesses at the other party was, unfortunately, par for the course. So perhaps I’m jaded. I also know that creating a site called “Psychoexwife” is a little beyond the pale.
As to your other point- yes. But there is a difference between understanding and condoning. If someone’s wife has a crack addiction, I could *understand* why that might drive them to be an alcoholic. Doesn’t mean I condone it.
If she has BPD, and everything he says is true, I could *understand* why he might be a little off; doesn’t mean I condone how he has handled it.
July 17, 2011, 5:37 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I also don’t think the website could be helping him.
What he’s getting from his readers is encouragement and reinforcement as he describes her every word and deed like she’s the Wicked Witch of the West. Not healthy and not solving the problem. If there are real grievances, that’s one thing, but complaining about her giving the kid OTC meds to keep his fever down? Please. And commenter after commenter playing Ain’t It Awful with him. If he has a problem, I don’t see how the website can’t be making it worse.
July 17, 2011, 5:59 pmGeorge says:
Yes, of course. If a judge in a contract dispute decided to micromanage the lives of the parties, try to censor what one says, order the other not to drink, etc, then I would certainly say that the judge is exceeding her jurisdiction. It would be much better if family law judges acted like contract law judges. Instead, it is the opposite. Parents cannot write contracts that will be upheld in family court, because the judge can always substitute her judgment for the agreement of the parties.
I am not saying that the dad is a saint. Chances are that he has some of the same character flaws that are common to millions of other parents. But that does not justify censoring him. The family court is doing something that is truly terrible and evil in this case, and the dad has posted his experiences. That is a good thing, not a bad thing, regardless of whether the dad is a saint or a sinner. It is bizarre for anyone here to complain about the web site, when the real evil is being perpetrated by the family court judge.
July 17, 2011, 6:58 pmleo marvin says:
As I said more than once, I agree it was at least poor judgment not to anticipate that the site might be discovered. But you haven’t explained why, assuming he made a good faith but poorly executed attempt to keep it anonymous, it was morally culpable to create such a site. And for purposes of this question, let’s put a pin in the arguably inculpating fact that he kept it going after his wife discovered it.
But again, you’re analyzing it from the point of view of the legal dispute. I agree that from that perspective there’s nothing good you can say about what he did, and that from any perspective an amateur’s diagnoses should be viewed skeptically. But I’m asking you to also consider it from the hypothetical point of view of someone whose diagnosis happens to be correct and who attempts to keep his bitching and moaning unknown to anyone else in the legal dispute, and to keep them unidentifiable by anyone reading his tale of woe.
I don’t think alcoholism is a matter for condoning or not, any more than eczema or diabetes.
Agreed, though I’d reiterate that I’ve known people who were thrown a lot more than just “a little off” by such relationships.
July 17, 2011, 6:58 pmleo marvin says:
Consider the possibility that something might be therapeutic without your understanding how it could be so. There are people who do in fact derive at least a limited kind of relief and sanity from having their narrative uncritically heard and supported. Of course it would be very ill advised to rely on such a forum for one’s reality testing, but it would also be a bad idea to hammer nails with a screw driver. That doesn’t make a screw driver a bad tool.
(Stipulate the usual disclaimer about assuming facts of wife’s mental illness as husband describes them.)
July 17, 2011, 7:23 pmMister-M says:
You quoted, “Dad,” there, George. I dropped by to make a few points of my own.
July 17, 2011, 8:44 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
That’s what I’m talking about.
When people have a difficult person to deal with, whom they dislike a great deal, it helps to have an objective person to talk to who can help them sort between legitimate grievances, petty gripes, and circumstances where the difficult person is actually in the right.
That objective person is helped if he or she is getting the other person’s viewpoint of course, but even in the absence of it he or she could ask, for instance, exactly what the problem was with the heads-up about school on Monday and the OTC fever meds. Reality check, as you say. Let’s not fold non-problems into problems, it doesn’t help anyone.
Having an audience of people waiting to read the next psycho story? Hm.
July 17, 2011, 8:50 pmloki13 says:
Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?
Setting up an “anonymous” website with full details of the opposing litigant, time and dates of important events, initials of the judge, and full identifying details of the opposing litigant’s family members (including, but not limited to, how many times they have had gastric bypass surgery) is a bad idea, and I would recommend against it. Continuing to do so after it has been discovered speaks volumes.
July 17, 2011, 8:53 pmJohn Herbison says:
Government is a blunt instrument. It is especially unsuited to rear children when parents abdicate their responsibilities.
Unfortunately, where parents cannot resolve their differences regarding the children that they were once friendly enough to conceive, the processes of court are too often the only alternative to self-help (which itself is an option which may also upend the parent-child relationship).
A family court judge can ratchet the controversy up or down, depending in large part upon the judge’s temperament. Whether the parties come away from the hearing perceiving that they have had a fair opportunity to be heard has a great deal to do with the effectiveness of the process.
July 17, 2011, 10:42 pmJohn Herbison says:
Perhaps parents (or prospective parents) should take a cue from the comedian Rita Rudner, who said that while she was single and dating, she would ask herself, “Is this the man that I want my children to spend every other weekend with?”
July 17, 2011, 10:46 pmGeorge says:
Mister-M, I also have an Angry Dad web site. I believe that it is very important to name names of those who do bad things in court. A newspaper article about the case would always name the judge. The judge is a public official, and the public needs to know how she is conducting her official business. I would also name court-appointed psychologists and others if they incompetently, unethically, or give any false or irresponsible testimony. They are also public officials, and they need to held personally accountable for what they do.
On the other hand, I only blame my psycho ex-wife for what she says in court, and for what she voluntarily puts on the public court record. It is not that I think that she deserves a free pass for the other things she does, but the object of my blog is to complain about the court and the public officials, not my ex-wife.
I think that you should be able to tell your story any way you want, so I am not criticizing.
July 17, 2011, 11:59 pmleo marvin says:
I’d recommend against it too, but I’d also recommend against tempting fate with harsh judgments of people in circumstances we haven’t faced. I’m divorced, thank goodness from a very sane, very decent woman. We both worked hard to make it as easy as possible on the other, and years later we remain close. Still I look at this guy and think “there but for the grace of God go I,” because despite knowing I wasn’t an a-hole when many people are, I also know I’ve never been married to, and then divorced with children from someone with BPD. And I’m sorry to say that in a less demanding familial relationship than that with such a person, I did say and do things I’m not proud of, even if none of them found their way onto the Internet. Because when rationality leaves the building in a close relationship, it often abandons everyone. If you’re not in a position to physically walk away in those moments, you find out about parts of yourself most people would rather not know. Or at least I did.
So for the final time, and then you can have the last word if you want it, I’d caution against thinking “I know I’d never do anything like that” when we haven’t been in the situation the person was who did it.
(my usual factual disclaimers)
July 18, 2011, 1:01 amBarb says:
I think I agree with you about this, George. I think it’s a shame how little we know and can find out about judges who are elected –and that those who are appointees are even more shielded from public scrutiny and thus accountability. There are all kinds of web sites rating doctors and professors –why not judges and other people who are paid with our taxes??? Does anyone evaluate them in any way that reaches the public? Who holds them accountable?? Granted, lawyers may know who’s who and what’s what –but how much mutual supervision is there within the profession? And I would like to know the “world view” of judges before election–and how they’ve voted on issues important to me. But it’s very hard to find out, say, if a candidate is pro-life or pro-abortion. They can claim neutrality, but we know better, don’t we?
July 18, 2011, 1:32 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Leo, in a case like that I feel pretty confident that I would think of my children and would not find it too hard to remember that somebody has to be the grown-up.
July 18, 2011, 6:35 amleo marvin says:
Maturity ≠ sanity.
July 18, 2011, 8:59 amCourts Gags Divorced Father « The Republican Heretic says:
[...] interesting case highlighted by Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy: a court bans a father from making any comments about his ex-wife in a public forum. If the father [...]
July 18, 2011, 9:04 amloki13 says:
I don’t know him. I can still say that, based on the evidence that I have, I think what he is doing is wrong.
That is not a judgment on him. Perhaps he has suffered so much is lashing out. Perhaps he is vindictive. Perhaps he thinks, in a good-faith way, this is the best way to deal with an intractable problem.
But I can still judge the actions as wrong. It’s one thing to have empathy, and imagine scenarios (taking everything in the best possible light) where his conduct is understandable- it’s another thing to condone it. I just don’t condone it.
IOW, there’s a difference between saying-
A. You’ve been wronged, your conduct is understandable, so it’s okay.
B. You’ve been wronged, your conduct is understandable, but what you’re doing is wrong and counterproductive.
I choose B. With the caveat that I don’t know enough to know whether his conduct is understandable or whether he’s been wronged. Remember- there’s his truth, her truth, and what really happened.
July 18, 2011, 9:37 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Leo, are we really talking about insanity here?
Maturity = not trying to control other people, because you can never do that and it’s destructive to the relationship to try.
Maturity = owning one’s own behavior and controlling onesself.
See how the judge is saying to her: “They don’t want to see you drunk. I don’t care what he did. I don’t care what he did.” That’s pretty much telling her to quit pointing the finger at him and using him to excuse her bad behavior. Well – goose, gander.
And I don’t think it’s too much to ask. If you really cannot control yourself, then we are getting into insanity territory. Do we want to go there?
July 18, 2011, 12:26 pmleo marvin says:
Well, that’s the question. Insanity is an ambiguous term that I’ll use here to mean (still ambiguously) “not in one’s right, rational mind.” And I’d just encourage you explicitly, as I’ve more or less done implicitly throughout this thread, to look into the experiences of family members and others trapped in long term relationships with violent drug addicts, alcoholics and sufferers of non-substance-abuse-related mental illnesses symptomized by psychosis (BTW, there’s a high incidence of overlap among those three). What you’ll find is that significant features of what most of us consider our sane minds are usually casualties, temporary or permanent, of those relationships. Which is just another way of repeating what I’ve also already said in this thread, i.e., that much of what for lack of a better word we call the “insanity” that characterizes certain mental illnesses can be contagious.
July 18, 2011, 5:53 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Leo, I think we have to be careful to distinguish between insanity and personality disorders.
Insane people cannot function. Andrea Yates thought she had to kill her children before they reached the age of accountability because she’d been such a bad mother and screwed them up so bad they would go to hell if she didn’t. Loughner is insane – look at the question he asked Gifford, that she couldn’t answer because it made no sense, and her failure to answer in a way that made sense to his disordered mind drove him to assassinate her. That is insanity.
Whereas personality disorders make for unhappy people – both the people with the disorder and their family members – but they can function.
I suppose that personality disorders are not binary, as in you have them or you don’t, but they exist on a continuum. And a person who has one might slide around on that continuum over time, due to changes in external circumstances, changes in their own brain chemistry, medication including things like birth control pills, not just psychotropic drugs, and their own attempts to solve their problem.
So suppose that you have a grievance, that a person is always harsh and abusive when she talks to you. You cannot make her not be that way. You can let her know that she is doing that and that it is bothering you, and it’s possible that she’ll stop, but it’s possible that she won’t. Then what? Well, you could tell yourself that’s just how she is and go on. Maybe draw a line where you will tolerate a snotty tone of voice but not screaming. But that may be the extent of what you can do. You cannot make her not be that way. All the venting and all the therapeutic websites in the world will not make her not be that way. So then you have to look to yourself, and as I said, concentrate on controlling what you can. You can’t keep her from cursing and talking to you in a snotty tone but you can control yourself. You can refrain from adding to the ugliness. If you can’t, then you need to either get counseling or change counselors.
July 18, 2011, 6:30 pmBarb says:
discouraging. I’ve been telling a 12 year old this same advice about her mother –I try to reduce the tension –the reasons for stress –helping the family, but I can’t make the mother stay off these emotional tirades toward the kids. “Snotty tone,” is right. I talk to the girl a lot about doing what SHE should and having the self-control she should have in every conflict –but I feel frustrated that i think I am also a little afraid of the adult –that I can make things worse if I try too much to correct her or suggest she is doing some wrong things. I believe in real spiritual conversions –but not everyone wants one if it means humility –admission of guilt.
July 18, 2011, 8:36 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Hard on the 12-year-old. Maybe she can get through this and end up with real strength of character and self control, and insight into people who have personal pain. It’s a hard school and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.
July 18, 2011, 9:29 pmleo marvin says:
Laura, I don’t mean to sound disrespectful, but most of your last long comment (the one before Barb’s) betrays a deep ignorance of BPD, and some of it is flat out wrong. I’ll just respond to a couple of the highlights.
“Make for unhappy people?” I don’t know if you’ve inferred from the term “personality disorder” that BPD is just a fancy name for bad mood swings and difficulty getting along with people, but it isn’t. It’s a serious mental illness. Yes, of course, some have it worse than others and some respond better to treatment than others, but dealing with a BP bears no resemblance whatsoever to managing a garden variety difficult relationship like a school bully, a tyrannical boss, or a simply ill-tempered family member. One in ten people with PBD commits suicide, a much higher percentage tries to or otherwise self-harms, and virtually all of them routinely threaten to do so. That’s not in the same area code as “functional.” One in five hospitalized psychiatric patients has BPD. Those people aren’t functioning either. Sure, some people with BPD get jobs, but at least until middle age, few hold them.
David Berkowitz, a nutty-as-a-fruitcake paranoid schizophrenic who killed people on the orders of his neighbor’s dog had no trouble holding down a job at the post office. John Wayne Gacy didn’t let running a successful construction company get in the way of burying children under his house, a real role-model for multitasking, way ahead of his time. Ted Bundy, another textbook psychopath, ran the Seattle office of Nelson Rockefeller’s 1968 presidential campaign, then worked for the Washington State Republican Party, where he was so well thought of he got into law school largely on the recommendation of the Governor of Washington. Pretty damn functional, I’d say.
In short, functionality is anything but a given in people with BPD, but even if it was, you’re sorely mistaken if you think it’s a reliable predictor of sanity.
Finally, while “insanity” has no medical definition, “psychosis,” “dissociation,” and “paranoid ideation” are closely related concepts to how the term is commonly understood. And studies have shown that “up to 24% of BPD patients reported severe psychotic symptoms and about 75% had dissociative experiences and paranoid ideation.”
A few other helpful links are here, here, and here.
July 18, 2011, 9:56 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Leo, if Ms. M is insane enough that she is a threat, like Gacy and Berkowitz and so on, then she needs to be committed somewhere so she can’t kill anyone.
Is that what you’re saying?
Because if not, then somehow her family will have to deal with her. Somehow.
I hate to harp on these details – but if telling Mr. M that the kid probably won’t be going to school on Monday, and that she has been giving OTC meds to him to keep his fever down, are actions worthy of his calling her out on his “psycho” website, I refuse to think things are that bad. If things are that bad, how would this kind of thing even make your radar screen.
Look:
And this is the smoking gun email he is complaining about:
OH THE HUMANITY.
And in fact, the kid is too sick to go to school Monday.
The next email from her is described by him as “another email full of PEW direction” but if you read it, it is simply a straightforward communication of information he needs – should she not have told him about the nebulizer? – except for him putting in unflattering names for the doctors she is talking about.
He TALKS about her berating and cursing on the phone, but we don’t get a transcript there, and you see how he characterizes her emails.
So if you see psychosis and paranoia and crap there, Leo, I’ll have to ask you who you see it in.
July 18, 2011, 10:19 pmleo marvin says:
I hope that’s a rhetorical question, because you should know that’s not what I’m saying. The point I used Gacy and Berkowitz to make was a straightforward refutation of your argument about the relative sanity and ability to function of murderers and BPD patients. If you want to change the subject, fine, but please don’t use the occasion to imply a question like this one needs answering, if that’s what you’re doing.
That’s a double false choice. They’d probably have to deal with her whether she was raising the kids or in a mental hospital, a maximum security prison or a traveling minstrel show. And not being a homicidal lunatic who should be incarcerated doesn’t necessarily make her fit to have custody of children. So I’m not sure what your point is.
All those details are irrelevant. Your failure to engage anything I’ve provided, and your moving expressions of empathy (“OH THE HUMANITY”) don’t inspire confidence that another round will make much difference, but what the hell. To recap:
I’ve agreed from the outset that putting up the website was terrible litigation strategy, hurtful to the wife and kids, and to the extent Mr. M didn’t want and try to make it anonymous, wrong. The only question is whether he nonetheless deserves any of our sympathy in judging his culpability. IMO the answer depends on at least three presumably unknowable unknowns:
(1) whether Mrs. M has BPD and/or a serious substance addiction;
(2) if so, whether Mr. M has been traumatized by their relationship;
(3) if so, whether Mr. M wanted and tried to make the website anonymous;
If the answer to any of those is “no” (certainly (1) and (2), and at least to some extent (3)), Mr. M is screwed, i.e., he gets no sympathy. So for purposes of this discussion, I’ve assumed the answer to all three is “yes.” And if that’s correct, the fact that Mr. M strikes you as the more psychotic and paranoid (I’ll assume you’re using “psychotic” hyperbolically, since there’s nothing remotely psychotic in those posts; “Paranoid?” Conceivably) is perfectly plausible and consistent with our assumptions. We’re stipulating that he’s been driven into an irrational state, and you’re saying, “Can’t be. He’s acting irrationally.”
Let me change the facts and see if that makes it easier for you to conceptualize. Instead of being the website and narrative of the husband of someone (presumably) with BPD/addiction/alcoholism, imagine it’s the site and narrative of the wife of someone who physically brutalized her. Can you imagine her writing these posts?
July 19, 2011, 1:41 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Leo, first, you brought in Gacy and Bundy. THey weren’t insane, they were just bad people.
I’m using the word “psychotic” because that is “psycho” means. Mr M is accusing his wife of being psychotic. It’s not my hyperbole.
No. Absolutely not. From the link:
That’s not an abused spouse, Leo.
July 19, 2011, 8:02 amloki13 says:
leo,
I’ll just try to distill this quickly-
1. We both agree wrt. the First Amendment.
2. We both agree wrt. it being a bad idea when involved in litigation.
3. This where we disagree (IMO)-
a. I think that what he is doing is wrong. Period. I think it is possible that what he is doing is understandable (although, for reasons that have been listed by me and laura, I tend to doubt it), but it’s still wrong. Since you keep drawing analogies to AA, NA, Nar-anon, and Al-anon, I’ll use the same analogy; just because you steal money for your drug habit (and you’re a drug addict) doesn’t excuse the theft. Just because you lash out at others because you’ve been living with an alcoholic doesn’t excuse the lashing out. Forgiveness? Sure. Working to make sure it doesn’t keep happening? Definitely. Excuses? Not so much.
b. As near as I can tell, you are trying to minimize his actions by assuming conditions that excuse his behavior. But even with those assumptions (which I have reason to doubt) I still think his behavior is wrong. Explainable? Yes. But wrong.
July 19, 2011, 11:36 amloki13 says:
As an addendum, while I fully appreciate anonymity and recovery, I am not familiar with any program whose credo is, “The Bitch Made Me Do It.”
July 19, 2011, 11:47 amGeorge says:
Loki13, you are like the Iraq war supporters who said that the war protesters have a right to speak out, but that it is wrong to do so because it undermines our troops.
I think that Mister-M has done a public service by exposing how horrible the family court can be, regardless of whether some busybodies disapprove of him speaking up.
July 19, 2011, 12:53 pmloki13 says:
George,
While it might be unwise to start a blog explaining the rulings in the case, how they made him feel, and why they were wrong, that wouldn’t be wrong (in a moral sense). A poor strategy for someone involved in litigation, but not wrong.
This is different. This is a series of attacks on the mother of his children (who will always be the mother of his children) and her family. I think that is wrong, regardless of the validity of the attacks. As I wrote long before, kids are smart. They figure things out. If the mom is as bad as the dad alleges, they’ll know it without him taking every opportunity to point it out.
July 19, 2011, 1:00 pmGeorge says:
Loki13, I actually agree that it is usually better if parents do not badmouth each other. But this problem is almost entirely created by the family court. The family court makes child custody and support decisions based on how much the parents are able to badmouth each other in public court documents. When one parent gains primary or sole custody in court, it is almost always the result of a bogus character assassination, and the kids nearly always learn that is what happened. In that case, it is sometimes best for a parent to counteract the damage that the family court is causing, even if it means making negative comments about what the other parent did.
July 19, 2011, 1:22 pmloki13 says:
George- there’s old saw; forgiveness is never about the other person, it’s about you. If you think that you’re “counteracting damage” the family court is causing by “making negative comments” about your spouse, then you’re doing it wrong.
Put another way, you don’t help a problem by exacerbating it. While I think that leo is correct in the sense that sometimes these reaction are explainable, they are never excusable. People need to hold themselves to higher standards even if they don’t always attain it.
July 19, 2011, 2:03 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
George, did you miss that this case involves shared custody and that both parties asked to get primary custody and that the judge did not grant it? I don’t know the situation well enough to say that the website amounts to “bogus character assassination” but it very well could, and yet the judge did not take this opportunity to give either party primary custody.
You have a story and apparently it is traumatic to you. I’m sorry about that. But it does not follow that every story out there is a variant on your story. You’re trying to apply your experience to this story and it just doesn’t fit.
How is it that Anna Karenina starts out? Happy families are all alike but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way?
July 19, 2011, 2:52 pmleo marvin says:
Another false choice. Outside of the criminal justice system which has its own idiosyncratic definition, “insane” means “mentally deranged.” Gacy and Bundy were psychopathic serial killers, which by most reasonable metrics is the epitome of mental derangement.
Tell that to my friend who was raped by her ex-boyfriend, and recounts her subsequent exchanges with him in eerily similar terms. You seem to have a rigid view of how people are damaged by, react to, and attempt, wisely, responsibly, or otherwise, to heal themselves from psychological trauma. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to any of those questions. The image of abuse victims cowering in a fetal position reflects one strand of widely shared experience, but that doesn’t make even that strand universal. Some victims never allow themselves to be seen cowed. Nor is that posture necessarily how they appear later on when they feel safe enough to voice their rage. And when that rage is voiced, it isn’t necessarily rational or coherent. You seem to impose rational notions of how you think someone would necessarily respond to conditions I’m guessing from your comments you haven’t experienced. That’s your privilege and the mistake is understandable. You have plenty of company among those who haven’t seen mental illness and trauma close enough to shed their preconceived notions.
None of this means I’m suggesting you conclude from this guy’s posts that his ex-wife has BPD, or that that would explain any of his behavior. I certainly haven’t drawn such conclusions myself. If anything I’m somewhat more skeptical than I was after my initial skim of the site. I’m just urging you not to be so sure you can deconstruct his postings to a reliable belief that he isn’t telling the truth.
July 19, 2011, 10:36 pmleo marvin says:
loki,
I agree with much of your assessment, and we’ve been over this ground enough that I doubt we’ll find anything new, but here’s my gloss on your status report of our disagreement:
I don’t see what’s wrong with putting up a website like that if he honestly and reasonably believed nobody he talked about would see it or be identifiable from it. If he honestly but unreasonably believed it I’d find that culpably negligent, but not malicious. You guys apparently think either it was categorically wrong no matter what he was thinking, or he couldn’t have honestly believed the site would stay anonymous. If it’s the former, I don’t understand your reasoning, if it’s the latter, I understand, but simply disagree.
Keeping the site going after he found out his ex knew about it is wrong, but depending on his mental state, IMO it may be somewhere from understandable to excusable. I’m not sure any of the three of us agrees with either of the others on the details of his culpability there.
July 19, 2011, 11:04 pmleo marvin says:
Yes, but then for the most part demanding such personal responsibility of themselves is in the twelve-steppers’s own interest, as well as ours, so there’s little incentive to question the fairness of it. That doesn’t mean people whose behavior is compelled by addiction or other brain disorders necessarily have the same moral agency as the rest of us.
I’m assuming the three conditions I mentioned last night because without those assumptions the guy’s just a jerk. End of story. That may indeed be the scenario and conclusion, but I haven’t spent much time discussing it because where it leads isn’t very interesting. So let’s be clear. I’m not assuming anything to minimize his actions. I’m assuming things without which we have nothing to discuss.
Let me be even clearer about my biases. If Mrs. M has BPD, I have a sympathetic bias toward her, her kids and her ex-husband. I have no bias in favor of giving them the benefit of my biases if Mrs. M doesn’t have BPD.
Another qualified “yes.”
Back to my soap box about moral agency, I understand and mostly sympathize with holding people socially and legally responsible for their behavior with only a few, narrow exceptions for their differences in mental and psychological health. That’s only because the state of brain science is still too primitive to make the distinctions necessary for a finer grained approach. But I predict our descendants will look back on us as cruelly draconian in our legal and moral judgments of addicts and other brain damaged and mentally ill. Anyone who’s watched people with those conditions up close knows that the notion that we all have similar enough free will to hold everybody equally morally responsible for their behavior is sadly ridiculous.
And to be clear, I’m not just talking about the easy-to-sympathize-with (at least for some folks) addicts who go to jail for committing some petty crime to support their habit. I’m talking about the people who commit the crimes we all agree are irretrievably evil — the Bundys, the Gacys, and yes I’ll even go there, the Hitlers. If we eventually find out, as I suspect we will, that some of these people had no conscience because they never could have, i.e., their brains were simply broken, we may still decide that if they can’t be fixed they have to be locked away for life or even killed, but I doubt we’ll find it so easy to shower them with our moral wrath.
July 19, 2011, 11:56 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Leo, I’ll repeat what I said on July 17:
I don’t see what’s wrong with putting up a website like that if he honestly and reasonably believed nobody he talked about would see it or be identifiable from it.
July 20, 2011, 8:53 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Whoops, I meant to hit b-quote not submit.
What’s wrong is that he has found an echo chamber that encourages him in his unreasonable attitude toward even the innocent and unobjectionable communications he is getting toward his ex-wife. This moves away from, rather than toward, a healthy relationship. Remember that he is going to have a relationship with her whether he wants one or not, because she is and will continue to be his children’s mother. He would like it if this were not so, but it is.
So what positive purpose is his Greek chorus serving, when he complains about her letting him know the kid is sick and they commiserate with him about what a psycho she is? Especially after she finds it and he continues?
July 20, 2011, 8:58 amGeorge says:
Laura, yes, I agree with the judge not changing the custody. I don’t agree with the orders about the drinking and the web site, and how the family court encourages these silly allegations by using them to make custody and money decisions.
I lost my kids because of false allegations of emotional abuse. Even the court-appointed psychologist said there was no abuse. I personally think that it is important that I publicly rebut these false accusations.
Other cases are not like mine. Mine had no drugs, alcohol, domestic violence, or restraining orders. Other cases are screwed up for other reasons. But I have watched dozens of cases go thru the local family court, and the interventions by judges and psychologists have made things worse in every single case.
Family court is all about parents making nasty accusations against each other. If you think that Mister-M’s website is wrong, then it seems to me that you should think that most of what the family court does is wrong.
July 20, 2011, 10:30 amloki13 says:
Why not put the blame on the litigants? After all, the reason that they are in family court is because they’re having a dispute. If there are false allegation (as you allege in your case), then the fault doesn’t lie with the court system, the fault lies with the people in the case.
July 20, 2011, 2:17 pmleo marvin says:
I don’t understand what that has to do with me. I’ve said only that IMO, under a narrow hypothetical circumstance I find plausible, you’re judging Mr. M and his behavior too harshly. If you think I’ve beatified him, please show me where, because I seem to recall also saying several times that under any other plausible hypothetical, his behavior was flat out wrong and obnoxious.
As I said a few days ago, if she has BPD and/or active addiction/alcoholism — which remember is the arguendo stipulation for everything I’m discussing here — there is no possibility of a “healthy relationship” as healthy adults understand that term. There’s only at best the possibility of a triage of holding onto compassion for the person without surrendering to and enabling their irrational demands, fighting to protect the children from the disease’s abusive effects, and doing whatever one can to rescue one’s own health and sanity.
I already told you what positive purpose it might serve — Remember our discussion about not using it for reality testing, screwdrivers vs. hammers, etc.? — and I’ve also acknowledged that after she discovers it, it’s no longer acceptable. I more or less agree with loki that however understandable, it was still wrong. But putting that “however understandable” into context, of the dozens (hundreds?) of people I’ve met who were engaged in the kind of triage I described above, I don’t know any who would claim they’d made more good decisions than bad. A .300 lifetime batting average can get you into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and the same standard may apply here.
July 20, 2011, 6:27 pmleo marvin says:
For some players, even a .285 lifetime average is good enough for the HOF, despite having played their whole career in Fenway Park, where really everyone should hit .300. That said, I’ll concede he did have a good year in 1967. Not that I’m talking to anyone in particular (*cough*loki*).
July 20, 2011, 6:50 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I think you go too far here. You cannot know this.
Even if a healthy relationship cannot be had, there will be a relationship of some kind. Either side has the power to make it worse if they want to. Making up grievances out of whole cloth and airing them so that people not even associated with his family will egg him on has absolutely zero possibility of moving the relationship in a positive direction. Are you arguing differently?
July 20, 2011, 6:53 pmleo marvin says:
Categorical pronouncements are always dicey, so I probably should have said “virtually no possibility.” All the same, show me evidence of even one healthy adult relationship with an untreated BP or actively-using addict/alcoholic, and I’ll be impressed. Show me evidence of more than a de minimis number of such healthy relationships and not only will I stand corrected, I’ll declare you:
Until then I’ll stand by my assertion, admittedly anecdotal though it is.
True.
False. If the condition isn’t being effectively treated, most such relationships are beyond either person’s ability to meaningfully effect for better or worse. Sure, you could throw fuel on the fire by giving the person drugs or alcohol, but I don’t imagine that’s the sort of thing you had in mind.
I’d say that’s more or less correct, though not for the reasons you think it is. To repeat, getting treatment may help. Short of that, nothing has a meaningful chance of doing so.
Sorry, I forgot one thing. Many BPD patients’ symptoms do remit on their own with age. So anyone who’s willing and able to ride it out for ten or twenty years, assuming that by then the BP hasn’t committed suicide, died of overdose, hepatitis, drunk driving or other complications, stands a pretty good chance of seeing some improvement. On the other hand my family member BP was 50 when she killed herself, so it’s no guarantee.
July 20, 2011, 9:19 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Leo, the fact is that Ms. M has never been diagnosed with BPD or with any other problem. We only have Mr M’s say-so that she is more than just an ill-tempered person who let alcohol get on top of her. In the absence of a diagnosis, it’s kind of nihilistic to say that he might as well have his website because he can’t make things any worse. Especially since at least some of the texts of the emails he chose to put up as demonstration of her derangement show no such thing.
Am amused at the list of titles you gave me. I’ll have to email that to my daughter. She and I have a hobby of Queen Victoria’s relatives and descendents and their geneology, unto the present day. Here is a text conversation we had on July 9.
Daughter: Did you know that Juan Carlos of Spain, who is Ena’s grandson, is married to the daughter of Paul and Frederika of Greece and Denmark?
Daughter: She looks like her mom.
Me: What is her name?
D: Sophia of Greece and Denmark. Well, now she’s queen of Spain.
M: And is she related to the Romanians?
D: Probably.
D: Her mom was the Kaiser’s granddaughter, right?
D: Yes.
M: Was she not descended from Vickie through her Sophie?
D: Im working on it. Well, Freddy’s mom was Viktoria Luise who was Willy’s daughter.
D: And Paul’s mom was Willy’s sister. Ick.
D: His grandmom was Olga of Russia.
D: Whose husband was actually the brother of alex and dagmar.
M: Constantine or something?
D: Tino’s parents were George and Olga.
M: OK.
July 20, 2011, 10:20 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
BTW, Paul’s mother who was Willie’s sister (that would be the Kaiser, of course,) was in fact Vickie’s Sophie.
You see how we are.
We probably have a condition. There may be medication for people like us.
July 20, 2011, 10:25 pmGeorge says:
I don’t blame millionaires for the federal deficit either. They are just taking advantage of the system. The higher the authority of the govt official, the more responsible they should be.
In my case, the factual accusations against me are fairly trivial, and of no obvious concern to the court. I’ve been evaluated 10 times for the court, and none of them said that there was anything wrong with joint custody. And yet the court strings me along forever with temporary orders that separate me from my kids.
July 20, 2011, 11:12 pmleo marvin says:
Straw, straw, straw. When have I said otherwise?
No, for the umpteenth time, in the absence of a diagnosis I’m assuming one arguendo because if she’s a healthy individual there’s nothing to discuss.
Which would be relevant if I was claiming the website makes a convincing case she has BPD. But since all I’m saying, for now the umpteen+1th time, is that I’m assuming for the sake of argument she has it, because otherwise there’s nothing to discuss!!!, it isn’t.
So you can keep your family tree in order I’ll tell you that the person who had that title (adjusted for gender) before you was Wilhelm II, though “Defender of the Faith” is an embellishment I stole from the Brits, and “Most Infallible Omniscient Arbitor of the Volokh Conspiracy Comment Threads” is of course yours alone — or at least it will be as soon as you come across with that evidence.
July 20, 2011, 11:37 pmleo marvin says:
By the way, my second choice as the template for your title was:
July 20, 2011, 11:44 pmloki13 says:
YOU GO TOO FAR!
This is pretty rich coming from someone who roots for the true evil empire. Speaking of bad hall of famers, how is that everyone from a certain period gets in, including the an all-time choice like Phil…. ahem.
July 21, 2011, 7:48 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Leo, that list of titles does not appear in any of the 2+ bookshelves worth of books about these people, probably because it’s ridiculous. If they were mine I wouldn’t want it bandied about either.
We are going to disagree here. Whether Ms. M has BPD or not, Mr. M does not have a diagnosis and therefore has no excuse not to treat her like a human being. Even if she does, he has no excuse not to treat her like a human being. If he believes that she is mentally ill and even though they live apart that has induced mental illness in himself, the onus is on him to get himself some help.
Going from her personal email to him, “Are you going to be able to stay home with him monday? It’s not looking good for him being able to go to school by then. If not my mom is home, but you’d have to drop him off.” to him using that personal email to hold her up to his audience for ridicule, “It’s frigging FRIDAY, people. Friday. He’s been out of school the entire week and 3-days in advance, she’s already got him ‘too sick to go to school.’” – there is no excuse, Leo. She can’t have normal interaction with him, without his holding it up to his audience and painting her as a psychotic witch. She can’t win. No excuse, Leo. Sorry.
July 21, 2011, 8:28 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
George, assuming that you are being straight with us, your story entirely sucks. Wish it were not so.
July 21, 2011, 8:31 amleo marvin says:
Laura, you keep looking for your lost keys under that street lamp. That would be understandable, though still illogical, if you hadn’t already accurately observed that they can’t possibly be there, i.e., even professionals can’t competently diagnose a woman’s mental condition from her ex-husband’s blog. And whatever you think his website tells us about her mental condition is irrelevant for two more reasons: First, we’re stipulating for the sake of this discussion what her mental condition is, BECAUSE OTHERWISE THERE’S NOTHING TO DISCUSS — I may have mentioned that one before. Second, if she is indeed mentally ill, the fact that for reasons more indicative of his own mental state he rants about things that shed no light on hers wouldn’t make her less so. The one purpose it does serve is that it allows you to keep changing the subject, so I’ll give you that.
As for what he has no excuse for, that depends on what you mean by “excuse.” Yes, he should be held responsible for his behavior, whatever the circumstances. But if the circumstances are as I’ve assumed for the sake of this discussion, I’d argue he should be judged a little more compassionately than you’re doing, which doesn’t mean taking any compassion away from his ex or their kids.
Finally, I agree Phil Rizzuto doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame, but I doubt you’ll concede the same about Yaz (no, not you, Laura). Because, let’s face it, like all Red Sox fans you’re just a mean, spiteful person. Who will ever forget the images of those Red Sox fans cheering and dancing in the streets outside Fenway on 9/11?
July 21, 2011, 3:53 pmloki13 says:
Oh, that’s generous of you. 43 players in the HOF, and you might concede one of the worst HOF inductees of all time? And to even contemplate doing that, you’d take away… him? I know you feel great citing batting average (what is this, the 80s?), but are you aware that the stats were a little different back before they lowered the pitcher’s mound?
We’re talking about a time when someone won the batting race with a .301 average. Wait… who was that masked man? ;)
BTW, he ranks 28th all-time in WAR (wins above replacement). Placing him ahead of Joe D. So while he wasn’t banging Marilyn, his stats, adjusted for their time, are damn impressive.
July 21, 2011, 4:19 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Leo, my lack of compassion amounts to me thinking he’s a jerk for taking her unobjectionable and necessary communications and writing about them the way he does. And this is independent of whether she has BPD or not. I continue to hold that opinion. You are writing about my lack of compassion like you think I want him jailed or something.
July 21, 2011, 4:34 pmleo marvin says:
That’s because I think you do want him jailed.
Obviously I’m kidding — it’s loki and his fellow traveler Red Sox fans who want to steal our liberty to root for the right team, the team with authentic American values. Seriously though, I think your compassion deficit is exactly where you say it is.
July 21, 2011, 5:28 pmloki13 says:
Heck no! I want you to root for them! It just makes it that much sweeter when they lose.
My favorite beverage is the tears of a Yankees fan. Perhaps it would taste good washing down some popcorn fed by Cameron Diaz? :)
July 21, 2011, 7:51 pmleo marvin says:
loki, since this thread is begging to be put out of its misery, I’ve continued our exchange on the “Fear of a Muslim America” thread.
July 21, 2011, 9:49 pmMister-M says:
I find it interesting that Laura manages to pick on one or two isolated incidents, and from within them only one or two lines of interaction, and then describes them with her own spin on the context on the story – and attempts to wrap up the entirety of my family’s experiences (and my descriptions thereof) as somehow irrational.
Perhaps someday and in another forum, we’ll have the opportunity to debate and discuss the decidedly more serious situations that our family has had to endure as a result of the ex-wife’s actions, and not a discussion over how to take care of a child suffering from a normal childhood illness which I’m plenty equipped to handle without incessant phone calls, texts, and emails directing my every action.
Regardless of how anyone wants to spin the existence of the blog, my writing style, or what has been accomplished with the blog – there is one underlying reality that is inescapable…
Reporting abusive situations (regardless of the tone in which they are written) will never actually be “child abuse” – no matter how anyone in the family court system chooses to rule. What is abusive – are the situations being described and the perpetrator of those acts isn’t the writer.
Further, holding hostage the health and well-being of children in order to “kill the messenger” – will never, ever be in the best interests of anyone, certainly not the children.
Laura – the blog is not about publicly shaming the mother. It was years before it was ever discovered. It was about sharing stories based upon real life experiences in and around family court. From that, a community has grown and worked tirelessly to help people in similar situations avoid the types of mistakes I made early in the process, utilizing everyone’s collective experiences.
July 23, 2011, 11:44 pmJason says:
Several times it seems the reaction is that he was just “airing how crazy his wife was”. While those types of blogs are certainly entertaining, they are not helpful. After going through similiar insanities following my divorce, I can say without a doubt that what this site did first and foremost was give good examples of how to deal with this type of condition.
Pyschoexwife might not have been the best name, but honestly if it wasn’t named that I might not have found it.
Having repeated links for how to deal with a high conflict ex, explaining how low contact works. Examples of where he went wrong, and where he went right using this method. Quite often he even referred to earlier posts where he messed up and engaged her way to mention, hencewhile feeding the beast that is a BPD. I learned more from this than anything.
If you even want to consider that the children might read this and by some end are harmed by him writing it, which I think is highly unlikely, consider this instead. The number of children he has helped by documenting how to deal with this is obviously unknown, but my experience there tells me the number is greater than any of you realize.
And yes, he worked tirelessly in all those posts to keep it completely anonymous. I can tell you with 100% certainty that until this judge did this, I had no clue who this man was, who his ex was, or even any idea at all where they lived! Me and my wife speculated often when reading the site where they could possibly be, but never had any clue at all.
Quite frankly, if you havent went back and read the site from beginning and followed through what he’s been through, you have no right to comment at all anyway. Your just spouting an opinion after hearing 1% of the conversation.
July 24, 2011, 3:47 pmBlogging Family Law says:
[...] there have been some recent cases in which men have been unconstitutionally ordered by judges to take down websites when they criticized judgesR…, and I can’t afford such an order until I am legally in the clear. Nevertheless, there will [...]
August 4, 2011, 7:39 pmDivorced Father Challenges Judge’s Order to Shut Down His Blog | BlawgIT says:
[...] renowned First Amendment expert and UCLA law professor, Eugene Volokh, seems to agree. According to Volokh “That strikes me as a pretty clear First Amendment violation; whatever the scope of family [...]
August 9, 2011, 1:38 pmBashing your ex in public may be free speech, but is it in your children’s best interests? – Written by Lylah Alphonse | CEL & Associates says:
[...] and First Amendment expert Eugene Volokh reacted to Gibbons’ ruling on his own website, The Volokh Conspiracy. “The court order categorically orders the removal of a Web site, and prohibits all public [...]
August 13, 2011, 5:54 pm