Court and Cthulhu!
Jul. 3rd, 2003 06:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsWell, the big question is: how did court go?
I learned that comissioners have very little power of discretion. They are the janitors of the legal system, cleaning up what the judges don't want to deal with. They have a comission from a superior judge and marching orders and that's about it. They do "raw numbers" work and the petty spats over monthly enforcements and crap like that. The comissioner in our case looked over the details and had more or less made up her mind when we walked in; she didn't want to deal in petty grievances or micromanagement, she just wanted to get the child support done according to the letter of the law.
And that's what she did. Ex predictably tried to argue, to wheedle, to contradict; I figured out quickly enough that this was a no-nonsense comissioner, but Ex managed to get the comissioner's ire up a bit. She does this every year. Still, I get the feeling the commissioner's been doing this enough that it would take a lot for her to get personally worked up about such a small difference. So the Ex gets told that she does have a financial responsibility to Yamaarashi-chan whether she wants it or not, gets told what that amount is, and that was that. Ten minutes and it was over. Omaha was actually disappointed that out of the four inches of documents submitted to the court over the past two years, it all came down to four pages the commissioner herself filled out in a spreadsheet. That and absolutely unambiguous law and doctrine.
Cthulhu lives! Yes, ladies and gentlement, Cthulhu has washed up on shore in Chile. When night comes, be prepared for screams.
I learned that comissioners have very little power of discretion. They are the janitors of the legal system, cleaning up what the judges don't want to deal with. They have a comission from a superior judge and marching orders and that's about it. They do "raw numbers" work and the petty spats over monthly enforcements and crap like that. The comissioner in our case looked over the details and had more or less made up her mind when we walked in; she didn't want to deal in petty grievances or micromanagement, she just wanted to get the child support done according to the letter of the law.
And that's what she did. Ex predictably tried to argue, to wheedle, to contradict; I figured out quickly enough that this was a no-nonsense comissioner, but Ex managed to get the comissioner's ire up a bit. She does this every year. Still, I get the feeling the commissioner's been doing this enough that it would take a lot for her to get personally worked up about such a small difference. So the Ex gets told that she does have a financial responsibility to Yamaarashi-chan whether she wants it or not, gets told what that amount is, and that was that. Ten minutes and it was over. Omaha was actually disappointed that out of the four inches of documents submitted to the court over the past two years, it all came down to four pages the commissioner herself filled out in a spreadsheet. That and absolutely unambiguous law and doctrine.
Cthulhu lives! Yes, ladies and gentlement, Cthulhu has washed up on shore in Chile. When night comes, be prepared for screams.
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As I see it...
Date: 2003-07-03 09:22 am (UTC)Even though you bring up the psycho-drama that is the relationship with the mother (as if thousands of people on the net don't feel they know all about it), it really doesn't speak to any failing on the part of Elf and Omaha as parents at all.
In the decade we have known them, I have had no worry about who would raise our two daughters were my partner and I killed in some bizarre gardening accident. We had every confidence that Elf and Omaha, even when they had no children, would take care of our children and provide for them, sometimes in ways even better than we have.
As a father of two almost grown daughters, as someone who has seen Elf and Omaha per kids, as someone who has witnessed their attention and dedication post kids, I see no reasonable stance on questioning them as parents -- even if you toss in the psychodrama of the mother.