A. Rebel's Rant

Hi Everyone,

This blog is about a Court Order that a then provincial Judge, now Federal Judge, issued after my daughter’s father put in what is called a Notice of Motion, for an Interim (TEMPORARY) Variation in child support. If in case anyone was wondering, the Judge who issued this court order on Friday May 17, 1996 is the same Judge I stood before on Tuesday July 30, 2013. If you haven’t read that blog, please do, it will explain this one. Here’s the link, http://arebelsrant.com/tuesday-july-30-2013/ The information below should SCARE the LIVING DAYLIGHTS out of you because it happens A LOT! If it could happen to me and other people it could happen to you or someone you know.

Before I begin the blog, the best place to start is for me to break this down into its smallest form. Bear with me, you or someone you know may need this information one day.

This former provincial Judge had enough sense to graduate grade 8, graduate high school, apply to law school, get accepting into law school, pass the bar, went on to apply for a position within the provincial government to become a Crown Attorney, was HIRED by the province of Ontario to become a Crown Attorney for family law, then after some time UPON one or more RECOMMENDATIONS of people above her within the provincial family law legal system of the Crown Attorney’s office became a Judge to serve the citizens of the province of Ontario in family law matters by fairly protecting the rights and interests of all parties, including to pay special attention to the needs of the child, as the child’s needs are to ALWAYS come first! At some point, this once provincial Judge was recommended by one or more people above her to become a federal Judge.

After reading ALL of that, one would think this Judge had it going on, you know like her grey matter was moving. Sorry folks, I’m here to tell you that in fact her grey matter was at best at a STANDSTILL or at worse, in REVERSE! Because in my opinion, this female Judge made what is called an error of law/miscarriage of justice, or a HUGE mistake and of course it was at the expense of my daughter and myself. This is what I mean. Just so EVERYONE knows, I have ALL the legal documents like the court order and the Notice of Motion not only in my possession, but they have also been filed with the Family Court.

Now my daughter’s father wanted to reduce the child support that he was paying. In order for him to do that he would have head to the court house, find the right office, ask the right questions, get the right paperwork, and file a Notice of Motion to vary the child support he was paying and a bunch of other paperwork. He did the above, filled out all of the appropriate paper work, and filed them with someone within the family law department, in other words, handed the paperwork to someone. Part of the paperwork that my daughter’s father had to fill out was a financial statement. That financial statement is very telling for a lot of reasons.

One reason is that he claimed that he was unemployed, had ABSOLUTELY no money coming in, not even unemployment insurance. BUT you should see his AFTER TAX expenses! For someone who was, as documented by him, with a date of February 15, 1996 as living at his parent’s house, which was the basement, he had A LOT of what I call interesting expenses. Please see Table 1 one below.

My favourite expense from Table #1 is the Meals Outside of the Home in the amount of $150 which is quickly followed by his monthly Clothing expense of $200! Not even I bought clothing worth $200 per month for my daughter and I combined and she was growing every day and he wasn’t! My third favourite is the $100 in monthly dental expenses because he denied his ONLY child of dental coverage, but I guess, his teeth are more important! I don’t know about you, but all of the above SCREAMS narcissistic behaviour. The amount for debt is very interesting. You’ll know what I mean in a minute. Table 2 below is also very telling.

My favourite ones from Table 2 are the fact that he has no problem spending $60 a month on alcohol and $32 a month on entertainment, but he doesn’t have motorcycle insurance. Maybe that’s why he is taking public transit, but then what about the Vehicle operation, gas and oil expenses. Hmmmm.  It would appear as if he “created” his expenses on the fly.  This is why.

Just so everyone knows the total of those two columns is $2,198.30 in AFTER TAX EXPENSES per month. The interesting thing about this is not only that an unemployed person with ABSOLUTELY no income coming in can spend so much money while living in his parents basement, BUT that my daughter’s father didn’t add the columns up correctly. That’s where, “It would appear as if he “created” his expenses on the fly,” part comes in. This is what I mean. For Part 2: Expenses-Column B the Total Column B he wrote down $598.30. Did anyone at the family law office not check this? I guess not. I did. I told the courts that the money didn’t add up, that there was NO WAY that he had that many expenses and that I thought he was still working. Over the years, I told the courts a lot of things but NO ONE would listen to me. If you thought it gets better, than you would be right! Keep reading!

Table 3 is for his assets.

To some extent I understand the motorcycle and hockey equipment but if I had to support my daughter, I’d down grade the audio and video equipment. Unless of course I wanted to drown out her cries of hunger or sorrow because she was hungry and just couldn’t have what she was LEGALLY BOUND to be ENTITLED TO!!! The above is another example of what in my opinion, is narcissistic behaviour comes into play.

Table 4 is for his debts of which he recorded at the time of owning $1,000 but made monthly payments of $324 per month. Which would seem a bit odd, since on Table 1 he recorded a monthly debt repayment of $320, and what responsible parent repays $320 or $324 a month on a debt of $1,000 when they have a child they have to support via child support? Exactly!!! See how I found that interesting? At that rate he would have repaid his $1,000 loan in 3.08 months which would free up more than enough money for child support in the amount of $306.30 per month. If we include the interest on that $1,000 loan, you know to be FAIR, in my estimation, it would have been paid off  in 4 months!

So the point of the above is to state to everyone reading now and in the future that the Judge that day was LEGALLY BOUND to have reviewed ALL of the above and to have considered ALL of the circumstances in a holistic view and should have asked the appropriate questions pertaining to the information she was given.

In my opinion, the questions that the Judge SHOULD HAVE ASKED that day are, “Mr. (name of DEAD BEAT DAD), when did you first become unemployed? Have you applied for unemployment insurance? If so, when will you be receiving your first unemployment cheque? Do you know the amount? Have you started looking for work? What is your skill set? From what form of employment were you let go of and why? How is that after we minus the child support of $306.30 per month, you have $1,892 in AFTER TAX living expenses, $150 of which you have claimed for Meals Outside of the Home and $200 in Clothing when you are a grown man. You don’t need new clothes. Your daughter does because she is GROWING! Do you really think that you should be drinking $60 in Alcohol and spending $32 in Entertainment per month? You are claiming a monthly after tax dental expense of $100. Have you provided your daughter with dental coverage as you were ordered to? Because according to another court that YOU yourself initiated, on January 19, 1995 you were supposed to!”

“Those five expenses alone are $542. Do you REALLY believe that you should be eating outside of the home, buying new clothes, buying alcohol, and entertaining yourself before providing for your ONLY child? Open wide I want to see your teeth because I am having a hard time understanding why you are paying $1,200 a year for dental expenses when you are not providing dental coverage for your ONLY child! And how is it that you are spending $60 a month on public transit and $100 a month on Vehicle operations, Gas, and Oil when you aren’t paying motorcycle insurance!” On a side note, this is what ALL of his financial statements/financial disclosures look like. You should have seen the one I received in mid-July of this year! It was a real piece of work!

So did the Judge ask one or any of those questions? Not that I remember, so a BIG FAT NO!!! Did she review the income statement which was part of the Notice of Motion? In my opinion, it is readily apparent, or BLATANTLY OBVIOUS that she did not! And in all fairness, after my 15 minutes of “court room fame” from Tuesday July 30, 2013, I guess the Judge recognized that she made a HUGE mistake on Friday May 17, 1996. A mistake that was at the EXPENSE of my daughter and me. A mistake that financially benefited my daughter’s father and his then girlfriend, now wife on the FINACIAL back of my daughter! Since I did not succumb to being on welfare/social assistance/ mother’s allowance or any other form of government assistance, and instead chose to WORK MY BUTT OFF 7 days a week straight for months on end. The tax payers of Ontario did not have to support me or my daughter. I supported both of us. However, at that time, my daughter and I were living in geared to income housing, so the TAX PAYERS of Ontario were making up my financial short fall AFTER my child support was SLASHED to less than HALF!

If you read the blog, What I Said On Tuesday July 30, 2013, then you would remember that I stated some of the above to the Judge that day and she is the SAME Judge who SLASHED the child support to less than half WITHOUT a second thought! Why would she do that? I have several theories. One is that, in my opinion, it is BLATANTLY OBVIOUS that she didn’t review the information before her like she was LEGALLY BOUND TO DO! Another is that I looked younger than my age. When I gave birth to my daughter at 23, I looked like I was 16! When I was in court that day, I was 28 but looked 20! Maybe the Judge thought I was a teen-mom and wrote me off as a “loser” Or well maybe she had to pee, wanted a cigarette or was hungry.

As I mentioned in that blog, the Judge was CLOCK WATCHING!!! It was supposed to be a simply matter, you know, “they’ll be out of here before the door closes behind them,” and I was cutting into her lunch on Tuesday July 30, 2013. Maybe the issue of my child support on Friday May 17, 1996 was cutting into her lunch time that day too! Even Judge Judy will say, “Hurry up! We’re having seafood for lunch. It’s my favourite. I want to get out of here!” That is probably why the Judge has given me so much time between court dates. She, just like EVERYONE else in the court room that day, knew what she did, because on Tuesday July 30, 2013 I TOLD her that. In my opinion, her uneducated decision changed the life of me and my daughter.  I think that’s why Duty Counsel SHOT out of the court room! He must have been embarrassed about our justice system.

So here’s the math. The child support before the Judge, in my view, made an error of law/miscarriage of Justice was $306.30 per month or to keep it simple $3,675.60 per year. AFTER the Judge SLASHED my child support to LESS THAN HALF, the child support was $150 per month or $1,800 per year. Over the course of 14 years, the approximate difference is $26, 258.40. I am trying to keep it simple because there was an increase in the child support of $2 per month beginning in January 2000.

I don’t know about anyone reading but even in today’s dollars, (present value) $1,875.60 in after tax dollars per year is nothing to sneeze at BUT back then, in 1996, $1,875.60 would have gone further. I could have really done a lot in 1996 and beyond to increase my daughter’s standard of living. If only the Judge did what she was supposed to, but I am of the belief that she DIDN’T!!! I wonder how much she was getting paid in 1996.

And you know in the early 90’s were strange. What I mean by that is somewhere in the early 1990’s the federal and provincial governments had a mandate to break the glass ceiling in government positions to include minorities of (then) women and people of colour. So the question of the day is was this provincial Judge even qualified to be a Judge or was she just “PUSHED” through the Family Law division of the provincial legal system to meet its mandate? A mandate that was a global initiative set out by OECD? In my opinion, well, I’ll keep that to myself.

If you read the blog, Tuesday July 30, 2013 then you read that this Judge was dealing with C.A.S cases that day. For anyone who doesn’t know, C.A.S. stands for Children’s Aid Society or Child Protective Services for any American readers. So the other question of the day is if this former provincial Judge didn’t financially protect my daughter’s best interests in 1996, is she as a federal Judge protecting the children of Children’s Aid Society. Or better yet, has this Judge protected any cases of children whom have been before her since 1996? Because it is readily apparent/blatantly obvious that she FAILED to financially protect my daughter!

Let’s face some facts, there is, to a certain extent, a direct correlation between ones level of happiness and their financial well-being. I can tell you RIGHT NOW I had to tell my daughter no A LOT of times to A LOT of things. Both of us were saddened by that. I needed to provide the necessities first and foremost. And financial insecurity can really mess with ones physiological well-being because it negatively affects ones mental bandwidth, you know their grey matter!

Is this the first and only Judge to do make such a mistake, an error of law? NO! As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, it happens a lot! The most memorable case that I have read is Myriam Rodriguez v Jaswinger Singh. In one of the many times the above went to court, Judge Bovar decided that because the payor parent said he was unemployed, the Judge set the child support to ZERO!!! That’s right, NL, NADA, NONE!!! Did the judge check that, or ask if the payor parent was unemployed? No! So just like that, a judge changed the mother’s life until ONE bright judge, REVERSED the order. Funny, I went to court FOUR more times to get my child support back to what it was supposed to be but to no avail.

So there you have it people, TAX PAYERS of Ontario. Our hard earned tax dollars are paying for the INCOMPETENCE of the people who are supposed to protect the best interest of our children and ourselves while single parents like myself, work our BUTTS OFF as they sit on their!

Before I thank the province of Ontario’s legal system and it’s ever widening gaps, I think the province of Ontario should thank me for not being on the “system” and for raising a HIGHLY PRODUCTIVE TAX PAYING daughter.

Thank you reading, A. Rebel’s Rant! ;D

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