Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Serena

Oh, happy days. That is one of my mother’s favorite sayings and it definitely applies to this situation. I’ve been working with Smoke for three weeks now, and today is my first day trying a case before the family law master and I’m legitimately looking forward to it.

Sitting in the courtroom with my client, I shuffle through my paperwork on the case. Barbara is anxious and I want to give her a moment to settle down. Ours is the first case of the day and we arrived early in order to discuss her case. Although Barbara is a good, kindhearted woman, she somehow managed to end up married to a drug dealer. She got a divorce already but now they’re haggling over custody of her toddler, which will set the precedent for her as of yet unborn child.

This ex-husband is just one in a long line of relationships gone wrong for her. My mother says that women who end up in more than one abusive relationship need to fix their picker. I don’t think this is the case with Barbara. She seems fully aware of her ex-husband’s shortcomings. I suspect she is the type of person who picks up baby birds that have fallen from their nest and tries to nurse them back to health. In other words, she tries to see the potential in people with serious problems and thinks she can love them all better. Unfortunately, this need to fix the whole world led to a marriage with a truly detestable man. I hear her divorce had been a nasty one.

Being an attorney means supporting clients no matter their decisions or their guilt. My job isn’t to judge. It’s to assist them with whatever legal problem they’re facing. However, there is also an opportunity to link them with social or mental health services, guide them in making difficult decisions or give opinions if they are open to hearing them.

Regardless of what a lot of people think, attorneys aren’t all heartless ambulance chasers. Some of us actually care about the wellbeing of our clients. Much like the law enforcement officer who supported me when gathering my belongings from Stan’s apartment, I feel protective of Barbara because she is in a similar situation with her ex-husband.

When I look over and see tears sliding down her face, I turn and try to give her options that might make this situation easier to bear. “If you’re not sure what you want to do, we can reschedule your hearing. It’s better to take a little time to think things over, rather than panic and change your mind in front of the judge.”

She runs her hands over her protruding belly as she considers my words. After a few minutes, she explains, “I didn’t want to divorce Dominique. I still love him with all my heart. I don’t want to keep him from seeing his children. I know my decisions are causing him pain, but I have to do this to protect them. It just tears me up to hurt him when I know he’s already had such a hard life.”

“You’re not doing anything to him. He’s doing it to himself by being an abusive husband and a neglectful father. The cold hard fact is that not everyone is cut out to be a parent. If he ends up taking responsibility for the things he’s done, gets some sobriety under his belt and a bit of therapy for his anger issues, I’m sure you’ll be agreeable to talking to the family law master about modifying the order, right?”

Her head comes up and she blinks at me. Sitting up straighter in her chair she wipes the tears away with the back of her hands. “You mean it’s possible to change the order later?”

I nod, “Absolutely. There is a difference between you getting full custody with supervised visitation, and the judge going so far as to terminate his parental rights entirely. We can even set some criteria in the custody order for him to meet, in order to be considered for partial custody.”

“Tell me more about that,” she says eagerly.

We make a bulleted list of things her ex can do to be considered for joint custody and I stress the importance of him having only supervised visitation until he meets the criteria. Her voice becomes stronger, and she seems surer of herself as the courtroom fills, mostly with people associated with the case.

Suddenly looking worried, she asks, “Do you think we have enough evidence to convince the judge to award full custody to me?”

“Oh yes, we’ve got plenty of evidence. Just the testimony of the officers who showed up for the wellness check last month should be enough to ensure he only gets supervised visitation.”

She twists her hands in her lap for a few moments before wrapping her arms around her belly again. “I hope for my children’s sake that nothing goes wrong today.”

“The judge is vested with the responsibility of acting in the best interest of the child,” I explain. “She will review all the evidence presented by both parties and decide if it’s enough to award full custody to you. She’ll also have to decide, based on the information presented, if your ex can have supervised visitation, unsupervised visitation or no visitation at all. That’s a lot of responsibility, but Judge Marsh is very experienced at making judicious decisions and takes her job seriously. I expect she will always err on the side of caution where a child’s safety is concerned.”

“I hate that my kids are going to grow up without a father they can trust in their lives, and I hate that Dominique won’t be allowed to take them on outings and be the father he wants to be, because we simply can’t trust him to do the right thing. Everything about this sucks,” she laments.

I respond quietly, “You have to trust that you’re doing the right thing and everything will work out for the best in the end.”

“The thing that keeps me up at night is thinking that I don’t have any better judgement than Dominique. If I did, I never would have fallen head over heels in love with him.”

“I managed to get away from my own Dominique very recently. My takeaway from that situation was to slow my roll when it came to future relationships, be more cautious about giving my heart away and wait until the man proves himself trustworthy, before I let him fully into my life. If we don’t learn from our bad experiences, it’s like going through life with an anchor around our neck. I won’t allow my past mistakes to weigh me down or give me low self-esteem. I’m learning more every day about the person I want to be, and I’m not going to let any man get in the way of me making a decent life for myself.”

Jesus, I don’t know why I said all that and it really wasn’t professional. She didn’t ask for my opinion after all. A short silence spins out between us.

She looks pensive for a long moment and then lifts her chin. “You’re right. If we can learn from our past mistakes, then so can the men who hurt us. It’s their responsibility to better themselves, not ours to coddle them.”

“Yes, and you’re well on your way to making a better life for you and your family,” I say, wishing the freaking judge would walk through the door already. “Every day is an opportunity to learn something new, teach your children how to live better lives and just enjoy a chaos free existence.”

“If not for our children, I wish I’d never met Dominique.”

“You don’t mean that, Barb.” A rough, raspy male voice drifts from behind us. “You said that you would always love me, no matter what.”

Barbara glances over her shoulder, watching her ex approach. “You promised that you’d never hurt me too. What about that promise?”

My eyes search around the room for the man’s attorney. I see Barbara’s social worker, her mother, her best friend, and even her grandmother hobbling through the door on a walker. Unfortunately, Dominique’s attorney seems to be running late.

The man sniffles, like addicts sometimes do. He’s wearing a brand-new shirt. I can see the creases where he took it out of the packaging and put it on without washing it first. His hair looks freshly washed and still damp. He’s clean shaven at least. It’s clear his family is important to him and he’s trying to do what he thinks is the right thing. When he steps closer, I can see white powder coating his nostrils. For the love of God, he’s showing up at his children’s custody hearing, high. He’s more oblivious than I imagined. He takes a step closer and squats down to talk to her.

“I know that I’ve messed everything up. My old man used to say I was weak, stupid, and a fuck up. I guess he was right after all.”

“Look, Dom I still love you. You’re none of those things. Addiction is a disease. You need treatment.”

“I know. Call this whole thing off and I’ll go to rehab. I swear to you that I’ll fight this addiction with everything I’ve got for you and the kids.” Barbara isn’t wrong about him being heart wrenching. Even I feel bad for him. I look down at my paperwork, giving a silent prayer that she manages to stay strong, for herself and those kids. I also surreptitiously check that there are law enforcement agents nearby, just in case things get unpleasant.

“You’ve promised me that you would get treatment a bunch of times and never followed through.”

“This is different,” he says irritably. “You know that it is.”

“I’d like to believe that this is the one time you mean it. It’s not just you and me anymore, Dom. I’ve got to put our kids first. I’m not prepared to gamble on their safety and well-being on your good intentions and promises. One day, when you’re clean, you’ll thank me for protecting them when you were too sick to see the damage, you’re doing to us.”

One of his arms is resting on the edge of the table. He lifts his fist and slams it down. “You always do this, run when you should be sticking by my side when I need you most.”

The bailiff rushes over, closely followed by one of the police officers. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to step back.”

Thank goodness, Dominique’s attorney rushes through the door a step ahead of the judge and pulls him over to their table. I watch his irritated attorney pull out a tissue and shove it into his hands. He automatically brings it to his nose and begins cleaning his nostrils. Watching their interaction makes me wonder how I would handle having a client like Dominique, one convicted of being a domestic abuser and accused of being a neglectful father.

The judge calls the hearing to order. Barbara sits up straight and tries to pull herself together. “We’re making the right choice,” she whispers to me.

I nod my agreement and the hearing begins. Judge Marsh calls on me to present our case because Barbara is the one who filed for full custody of her child. We’ll have to file for full custody again when her second child is born.

I come to my feet and begin presenting my case. “Your honor, my name is Serena Sommers. I am the legal counsel representing Barbara Bailey—”

My presentation is interrupted by Dominique screaming, “You went back to your maiden name! You said you always hated your last name. We agreed that our children would have my last name.”

Barbara opens her mouth, but Judge Marsh beats her to it. “Defendant’s legal counsel is instructed to control his client. I won’t tolerate outbursts in my courtroom.”

I notice that his attorney is doing the best he can, but Dominique is livid. We’re getting a taste of what he’s like when he’s strung out on drugs, and it isn’t pretty. Unfortunately, it’s not terribly different from how Stan acted when he was drunk. I suppose if anything good comes out of it, it’s that Judge Marsh will likely award custody to Barbara, however good her ex’s defense is.

When they were quiet, I started again. “As I was saying, my name is Serena Sommers. I am the legal counsel representing Barbara Bailey-Gobel who is asking the court to award full custody of her twenty-four-month-old daughter, Kristina Gobel to her, since she is the biological mother and the only parent in a position to provide a safe home and appropriate care.”

“On what grounds do you wish to deny the father joint custody?” Judge Marsh asks.

I launch into a brief summary of my case, including how mediation was waved, secondary to the mother having a protective order against the father for domestic battery. I went through my very sound legal reasoning for believing the father was incapable of providing appropriate care for his two-year-old daughter based on him leaving her in the car to run in a convenience store to purchase beer, and him being arrested for leaving drug paraphernalia out on the kitchen table while caring for his child. And a slew of nasty video clips the defendant had sent to the plaintiff, one of which was him threatening to slit her throat.

When I say it out loud, the information supporting a change in custody sounds shocking and dangerous. If the expression on Judge Marsh’s face is any indication, she’s all ears. We start by having both parents swear an oath then Judge Marsh states, “Call your first witness, Ms. Sommers.”

I do exactly that, starting with one of the officers who responded to a wellness check at the defendant’s house one month ago. He verifies that the pictures I made copies of from the police file are accurate. It shows a white bag of powder, thin straws, what appears to be weed and a pipe along with a lighter and a pack of rolling papers. Of course, marijuana isn’t illegal in California anymore, but that doesn’t mean you can leave it out where a two-year-old can get to it. The white powder was verified to be cocaine. I didn’t even know people still snorted cocaine. Until getting this case, I thought people were mostly using meth.

I also enter the videos Dominique sent when he was all strung out, into the official court record. I don’t think anyone misses the fact that he is acting very similarly today as he did in the videos. I also call various eyewitnesses to talk about risky or neglectful behaviors he exhibited while trying to care for his young daughter. The more witnesses I called to testify, the angrier he gets.

After I finish questioning each witness, his attorney gets a chance to do the same. I don’t know how I would have gone about rebutting the evidence I presented if I had been representing Dominique, but claiming the drugs were out of reach of his toddler on the kitchen table and that he could see his car from the cash register while buying beer didn’t sound all that appropriate. I suspect he was drinking and driving but since I can’t prove it, I don’t bring it up.

The defense attorney gets an opportunity to present his side of the case and talks about how his defendant acknowledges he has a drug problem and is scheduled to go to rehab in ten days. He calls a couple of character witnesses and talks about how he has his own apartment and space for his child during visitation. My client is currently residing with her mother as her pregnancy is advanced to the point that she can no longer be on her feet all day per her doctor’s orders. Since it’s a stable home and the defense didn’t even try to dispute that fact, I feel our chances are pretty good.