Sunday, April 26, 2020

Liars's Court

Even attorneys understand that it is common for litigants and defendants in family court to lie. Indeed, many lawyers refer to family court as "Liars Court" although they don't often acknowledge that it is often the lawyers themselves who are lying and encouraging their clients to lie. Clearly,  Nelly Wince lied and no one, not the judge, not law enforcement, not the Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board, not the county attorney's office did a thing about it. Why? Because lying, fraud and other crimes have become so ubiquitous in family court that it is considered normal. Like death in a Nazi concentration camp.
Family court has an unflattering nickname among attorneys already. Some refer to it simply as “Liar’s Court,” in a dry reference to the fact that just about everyone involved in the cases that end up there seems willing to lie to get what they want.

Saturday, April 18, 2020

Duty To Report

It continues to amaze me how well the Minnesota Rules of Professional Conduct are written. Although credit should properly go to the American Bar Association's model rules which interestingly, were created primarily as a result of unethical and criminal actions by lawyers during the Watergate scandal.

One of the rules, know as duty to report, requires lawyers to report the misconduct of other lawyers if they know that the lawyer has violated the rules. There is very little wiggle room to the rule.

Rule 8.3 Reporting Professional Misconduct
(a) A lawyer who knows that another lawyer has committed a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct that raises a substantial question as to that lawyer's honesty, trustworthiness, or fitness as a lawyer in other respects, shall inform the appropriate professional authority.
(b) A lawyer who knows that a judge has committed a violation of the applicable Code of Judicial Conduct that raises a substantial question as to the judge's fitness for office shall inform the appropriate authority.
(c) This rule does not require disclosure of information that Rule 1.6 requires or allows a lawyer to keep confidential or information gained by a lawyer or judge while participating in a lawyers assistance program or other program providing assistance, support, or counseling to lawyers who are chemically dependent or have mental disorders.
So any lawyer who has seen the evidence I have agaisnt Nelly Wince, which is simply unquestionable, is obligated to report Wince's violation. Although I would be surprised if a lawyer has ever been disciplined for their failure to report another lawyer under this rule. Another example of a great rule which is ignored in practice.

Saturday, April 11, 2020

The Perpetuation of a False Accusation

Dismantling Family Court Corruption has an short blog post on  The Perpetuation of a False Accusation which discusses the prevalence and false accusations and how damaging they are in family court.

The article rightly states the reason:
Even though the Target parent is exonerated of all charges during and after the trial, the judge can still be highly influenced by the lies, ruling an unfair judgement anyway
The reason litigants and lawyers lie so much is that it works. There is little if any chance that such lies will be prosecuted for the crimes they are and judges are influenced by such lies no matter how much they are proven false.

Here is an extract from a transcript of a pure lie Spring's lawyer Nelly Wince made in court where she asserted quite strongly that she had not received a vocational assessment. The fact is that she did as the affidavit of service states.  Real names have been removed.

10 THE COURT: The evaluation is at least
11 part of the submissions that (ME) has provided.
12 MS. (WINCE): That was not part of what
13 was provided to me, Your Honor. I did not receive
14 any exhibits. So I would like --
15 THE COURT: We have a document filed in
16 February 8th, 2011, and it's Document 42 in the court
17 file. It's a December 1, 2009 evaluation by
18 rehabilitation counselors regarding (SPRING), now
19 (SPRING).
20 MS. (WINCE): Could the court tell me what
21 else was filed with (MY) affidavit?
22 THE COURT: Well, you can take a look
23 in the file.
24 MS. (WINCE): I did not receive any of
25 that. The only thing I received was his pay stubs as
1 part of an exhibit, so that is why our affidavit does
2 not address the vocational evaluation. Because we
3 did not know that he had filed it with his motion,
4 otherwise I certainly would have done that, Your
5 Honor.
6 THE COURT: Okay.
7 MS. (WINCE): And I'm really disturbed by
 8 the fact that I didn't receive a complete copy of the
 9 submissions.

Nelly Wince's claim that she did not receive the vocational assessment was knowingly false. The docket she received contained an Affidavit of Service, which she  did not refute receiving,  from a third party which stated:

“I served the attached documents, namely Notice of Motion and Motion to Modify Child Support/Spousal Maintenance, Affidavit in Support of Motion to Modify Child Support/Spousal Support, Supplemental Affidavit in Support of Motion to Modify Child Support/Spousal Support, Financial Affidavit for Child Support, Pay stubs for (ME) for the periods June 2010 and December 2010, and Vocational Assessment of (SPRING) f/ k/a (SPRING) performed by (EVALUATOR)  of Rehabilitation Counselors Inc. “

The evidence could not be more clear. Yet Nelly Wince and Spring got away with it. Pure crime, clear corruption.

Saturday, April 4, 2020

Pair Bonds and Marriage

After I received my undergraduate degree, I continued to taking classes part-time for several years. I had maxed out my government student loans but, because of the weird rules at the time, if I continued as at least a half -time student, I could defer paying the loans off and the longer I deferred the less I had to pay back in real dollars due to inflation. Basically, it was free for me to continue taking classes. But that was a rational. I liked going to school. And without much of a plan I took classes that interested me. I took a few computer classes, which oddly ended up becoming my career, but mostly I took anthropology classes. I essentially ended up taking all the classes required for a masters and toyed with the idea of formally entering the program but the idea of spending a couple years doing research for a thesis was daunting financially. And then, through sheer luck, I was hired as a programmer despite my limited computer science training.

I never lost my interest in anthropology however. For years I read extensively on evolution, genetics and human cultures. I still do in fact. 

Which is why I so like the article on Aeon, Is Marriage Over?

With a few really interesting exceptions people in all human societies form pair-bonds, usually formalized in the institution of marriage.  Yet, to quote Bob Dylan, "the times they are a changing."

As marriage provides fewer and fewer financial benefits and more and more disadvantages, it has become less prevalent. At my company, there is no difference between adding a spouse or cohabiting partner to your insurance. On the other side, if you are reading this site, you know how divorce can ruin people financially and all the pain, suffering and crime it can cause.

So what is happening? Marriage is declining and pair-binding, although strong, is becoming for more serial than forever.

In Iceland more than 70 per cent of births in 2018 were outside of marriage, however, the vast majority of nonmarital births in Iceland are not to single mothers; they’re to cohabiting couples.

People still couple up, still live together, have sex, rear babies, pool resources. They’re just not getting married

Pair-bonding is not just another name for marriage mainly because of the ease of breaking the bond and forming a new one. 

In the US, the number of heterosexual cohabiting couples rose from 1.6 million in 1980 to 8.5 million in 2018.
when women rely less on their sexual partners, pair-bonds become weaker
The only way to save the institution of marriage is to evolve it. How so? Primarily by getting rid of the negative aspects of marriage. Specifically, there should be no financial differences from being married or cohabiting. Either in the formation of the bond or the dissolution of it. The advantage to society will be great. The divorce industry with all the pain, crime and financial drag on our economy will be gone. Dependency and all the discrimination it brings will be reduced.  People will be happier.

Maybe need to go further. Why not remove marriage as a civil institution? Make it a religious or secular ceremony.  In the end we would be far better off as a society if the term husband and wife just referred to who you are cohabiting with not some legal arrangement. Counterintuitively  this would actually strengthen relationships not weaken them as it would remove money, (which has been called the source of all evil) from the equation.