Players - Robert Sturdy

Robert Sturdy was the county custody evaluator for the case. Unlike almost everyone else involved in my case Sturdy did not make more money by causing more pain. With the lawyers, the longer a case drags on and the more contentious it becomes, the more money they receive. The same goes for mediators, testimony coaches and the majority of others involved with a divorce case. Even the judges, given that they generally come from local law firms and return to them if they lose an election or choose not to run for reelection, have an incentive to drag the case out. After all, if as a judge you ruled in a manner that made a law firm a lot of money then of course that firm would be more likely to hire you. And if you rule in manner that makes both the litigant and defendant's firms lots of money that is just securing your future. I suppose you could argue that custody evaluators benefit indirectly from a system that encourages litigious divorces and I am sure there are some that act unethically because of this but I think the benefit is so indirect and the case loads of custody evaluators so large that most do not view it that way. At any rate Robert Sturdy didn't. He was a decent guy who, I believe, tried to do his best.

The irony is that the custody evaluators are probably the lowest paid people involved in divorce cases. Money corrupts as they say.

One interesting fact about Sturdy is that he was not born in the United States. As such he may have developed a more ethical sense of justice than native born Americans who often view the U. S. legal system as dysfunctional and corrupt.

I met with Sturdy in person, both with and without the boys, several times and talked with him extensively on the phone. He also met with the boys separately. He was very thorough. He also genuinely cared which, in my experience, is a rare thing with people involved in divorce cases. In short, Robert Sturdy was a good person.

Unfortunately Sturdy didn't have a lot of hard evidence. Both Spring and I were asking for sole custody but the way the system works is that one of us needed to agree to accept joint custody or the evaluator could not recommend it. I ended up agreeing to this as I thought it would lead to a quicker settlement which would lessen the pain for the boys and I figured the kids would spend most of their time with me anyway. I was mistaken for the first and correct for the later.


Sturdy recommended joint custody and found no evidence whatsoever for Spring's allegations against me. In fact, he stated that I had a wonderful relationship with both children. I'll always wonder if I had held out for sole custody whether Sturdy would have given it to me. I think it likely and in hindsight it would probably have been a better path. It wasn't the only time the kids and I were hurt by my wanting to just settle things and move on.  

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