Monday 29 October 2007

Still between

Well, the time between tick and tock has become longer than we expected. Tock is now 2 weeks late, but it is still coming!
In the mean time, my big court battle has been resolved to my satisfaction. We reached an agreement in principle with the other parties and are now just working out the logistics of doing that which has never been done. Tick and tock again, but mine will resolve on December 4,5,or 6 or the agreement goes down the drain. I don't think either side wants that to happen. Watch the national news and CPAC during this period, it will be historic.
There is that old Chinese curse about living in interesting times.....

Thursday 11 October 2007

THE TIME BETWEEN TICK AND TOCK

We have learned that much of life exists between the tick and tock of events. We are in such a place now. One great event has occurred, and we must wait for the inevitable tock that follows. "Tock" occurs (god willing and the creek don't rise)on next Tuesday, October 16th. I will be posting about it, but right now I don't want to throw any monkey wrenches into the clockworks (to extend the metaphor perhaps a bit too far). In the mean time, I want to share some quotes on fear that struck Nanc and I as appropriate to this time:

Eleanor Roosevelt:
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.

Marcus Aurelius:
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

David Oliver-Godric:
Fear is one of the essences of what it is to be alive. Courage is to have fear but act anyway, cowardice is to have fear and fail to act. Life is about action, failing to act is the same as being dead, although even the dead act as fertilizer so perhaps it is worse.

See you Tuesday!

Thursday 4 October 2007

NUTSHELL - PART 2

The abuser appealed and won his appeal before 3 male judges who had little family law background. They were corporate contract lawyers. Their mantra was "if you sign it you are done, regardless". In their finding, they say some very bizare things. According to them, Nanc knew perfectly well what she was doing when she signed the documents (that she couldn't even read), She had access to a lawyer and accountants, and it isn't the abuser's fault that they were incompetent and relying on the abuser's fraudulent financial info. The appeals court dismissed the trial judge's findings of fact. Nanc has appealed to the SCC to overturn the BC Appeals Court Ruling in the interest of justice, equity, and clarity of law. We are currently awaiting leave to appeal to the SCC.

!!!WOMEN TAKE NOTE: this finding is a LEGAL precedent that means that an abusive spouse has no obligation under the law to provide accurate financial info. Banks and accountants are encouraged to deny the woman access to her own accounts and financial info.
Your mental/emotional state at the break up of the marriage is of no interest to the court, you are assumed to be equally as competent as your spouse/abuser. Abusers are not accountable for tormenting their spouses into submission.
Merely having access to professionals is sufficient to assume proper and competent legal and financial advice.

This decision should scare the hell out of every woman in Canada, and make every legal professional hang their head in shame.

IN A NUTSHELL

Several people now have asked for a simple version of what this is all about. I sat down to write a "simple" version and found that harder to do than I thought. Like life in general, it's just not a simple thing. Did my best, though.
The nutshell version is this: Nanc was in an extremely abusive relationship for 27 years. She lived in near isolation on a dairy farm, and her church and community turns a blind eye to even obvious abuse. Her 2 youngest girls removed her from the farm in 2001 in a basically catatonic state. Nanc got a bit better, still suffering what her doctor termed “one of the most severe cases of PTSD” he had ever seen and he is a specialist in PTSD, and she commenced divorce proceedings. Her abuser provided all the financial info relied upon in negotiations, and we have subsequently proved he hid large amounts of money, the full extent will never be known. Now Nanc is absolutely brilliant in matters of the heart and family, but she never finished grade 10, she was never involved in the finances of the business. Nanc was in such a highly emotional state that she found that she was unable to see what was written on documents relating to the divorce. We now understand this to be a symptom of her PTSD. Nanc signed the agreement, relying on advice from an incompetent lawyer that she could revisit the agreement’s terms within a 2 year period. I came into her life about this time and introduced her to a competent lawyer, Jack Hittrich. Nanc went to court to have the agreement overturned. She testified to the circumstances in court and the trial judge found her credible and the agreement unconscionable.