Does Any Australian here have any advice to offer for this guy?

[KeymasterKeymaster]

Hi Everyone. A guy just wrote to us and is looking for help (in Australia) with regards to his divorce / custody battle. We’re not equipped to give legal advice such as this and obviously we are not familiar with Australia. But if any of you have anything to tell the guy, we will send him a link to this thread. No reply is required or expected, but if you have any thoughts feel free. Made it sticky for a day or two. Perhaps there is not enough to even go on, but thought I would post if any of you have a lead. Thanks very much.

---

From: NAME PRIVATE
Subject: Contact
Phone or Mobile: PHONE PRIVATE

Message:

Hello MGTOW just got the site from a friend really like it keep it up. I am from Australia I am going through divorce. Just want to know my rights, and I have a 1 year old kid involved , and my wife is from Macedonia and does not have and Australian residency. My son has both Australian and Macedonian residency. Our fight in court is for who will take the kid. What can use offer me that will help me in court I can explain more in detail if use wish to hear from me again cheers and thank you.

Page origin: Contact »
IP Address: PRIVATE
Date: 2015-04-29
Time: 2:42 AM
—
http://www.mgtow.com

If you keep doing what you've always done... you're gonna keep getting what you always got.

[FitzBonesParticipant 304]

I know this website doesnt really endorse MRA-type folks but I was recommended to use a service called Dads In Distress; I believe they have advice and other services available to the supplicant. I never had to use it myself but I was made aware of it

"If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run,"

[BrainPilotParticipant 7640]

I’m an American, and have no experience with Australian law. But I have significant insight into the way lawyers work in the divorce industry in the US. To the extent that they work the same way in Australia, this may be of some help. It’s a copy and paste of a post I put on another thread, but may be of some use here.

Watching the divorce of a financially successful older sibling get a divorce from a cocaine addict, I gained a couple of insights. The most important, and most difficult thing to do in a divorce is to set your emotions aside and focus on the money. Specifically, there is a very good chance that you will be so p~~~ed off at her that you will make a decision to tell your lawyer to do something to make her life miserable (and I agree she probably deserves it) but when the time comes to make that decision. Try not to do this.

Your lawyer (all divorce lawyers) count on this. The madder you are, the more profitable for the lawyers. You do something like this. Her lawyer counters. Your lawyer agrees that she is a bitch who deserves to suffer and encourages you to do something to ‘get even’ and punish her for the bitchy thing she just did. You respond by doing this, and her lawyer counters again. At some point, watch for a variation of this line from your attorney: “Your wife is the WORST _________ (insert “bitch”, “psycho” or fav insult here) that I’ve EVER SEEN in ALL the years I’ve been a divorce attorney…”. If this doesn’t come before you start to mention how much his legal fees are starting to add up, you can be certain that it will shortly after you make mention of this.

You should also expect that no matter what you offer your ex in the way of a settlement, no matter how generous it is, her lawyer will tell her a variation on the following, “This offer sucks… Your husband is the WORST__________ (bastard, asshole or other of your ex’s fav male insult) that I’ve EVER SEEN in ALL the years I’ve been a divorce attorney…”. He will advise her to counter offer with something that your lawyer will tell you that her offer is the WORST offer he’s ever seen …”. And this will go back and forth at hundreds of dollars an hour until 1) all the money has been soaked up in legal fees and there is no money left to fight over 2) both of you realize that the attorneys are a bigger threat to whatever each of you hoped to salvage from the divorce.

Remember that divorce attorneys in any given city generally all know each other. It’s a small world they inhabit. They are not enemies just because their clients are. Though they will genuinely fight for your side in court, they are very well aware that the longer the fight lasts, the more profitable for both of them. Divorce attorneys have bills just like the rest of us. Do you see the picture I’m trying to paint here?

SET YOUR EMOTIONS ASIDE AND FOCUS ON THE MONEY.

When my older sibling explained his situation to me, he was CEO of a national company. I knew he was a smart guy, but I could see him thinking emotionally (p~~~ed off) instead of focusing on the money, a mental attitude I had never seen him display before. Knowing she was a broke cocaine addict, my advice to him at the time was, “put $50,000 in 20 dollar bills in a suitcase with papers with whatever terms you want. Show her the money, show her the papers and give her the pen and she’ll sign and you’ll be rid of her…”. His response: “I’m not giving that bitch 50 cents…”.

Two years and $220,000 later in legal fees, the lawyers still had a few details to argue over that hadn’t been decided yet.

It should not have been a 2 year fight. At the beginning, he had the best, most expensive divorce attorney in the state. She had no money to hire a lawyer, having spent hers on cocaine. At the very first hearing, her attorney, who had agreed to take her case on contingency, entered a motion to the judge that her legal fees (his fees) should be paid from “the family’s assets…” until such time as “the family’s assets” were distributed by the court. I was in the court that day that her attorney argued this motion against the most expensive attorney in the state. I figured it would be a slam dunk, but it wasn’t…

I saw and heard every word of the arguments, and I was not very impressed with the resistance to this motion that was put forth by the most expensive attorney in the state. The motion was approved by the judge (we can all wonder now about the campaign contributions that judge gets from the two law firms in his court that day. My understanding is that some states limit the amount that one person or one law firm can donate to a judge’s campaign. Other states don’t.) The judge approved that motion after an argument between the two attorneys that couldn’t have lasted even 5 minutes. Once that motion was approved, her attorney was as well financed as my brother’s. So later, when my brother’s attorney would send over a settlement offer, her attorney would tell that cocaine addict that it was “the worst offer he’d ever seen in all the years he’d been a divorce attorney…etc etc”. The lawyers kept getting paid….and kept coming up with new things to argue about…

No need for you to go down this road.

The first time anyone meets with any divorce attorney, the first thing you will be asked is wether you have any kids. No one is going to spend $100,000 in legal fees arguing over a $100,000 house. But people with kids will spend their last dollar, and borrow more to finance a fight over their kids. One reason men don’t get custody of kids is that in the US, there are federal matching funds given by the federal government to the state governments to help states collect child support from the non-custodial parent. I think these are called Title 9 funds. Others reading this may have more details info on this than I do.

These matching funds are based on how much child support the state collects every year. State judges are paid a salary by the state using, at least in part, the federal matching funds. So, the state judges (who decide which parent will get custody and who also decide how much the child support of the other parent will be) are financially incentivized to maximize the amount of child support that is collected. There is a realistic limit to how much child support anyone can pay. But the more they earn, the more they can pay.

Since fathers generally out-earn mothers, the state and the state’s employee (the judge) is then financially incentivized to award custody to the mother (lowest earning parent) and thereby maximize child support collected, and the Title 9 funds that go to the state. This is why fathers have so little chance of winning custody here. You’ll need to check the laws in Australia to see if this mechanism is at play there.

The second thing that any divorce attorney is going to want to know at that initial meeting is a list of the “family’s assets” that are going to be fought over during the divorce. By now, you should realize that this is not so that the attorney can start to formulate his legal strategy to help you win all these assets. It’s so he can estimate what the case is going to be worth to him and his colleague across town who will be arguing for the wife. The third thing a divorce attorney will want to know is who the attorney is that will be representing your soon to be ex. No need to explain why that would be of interest to him. He just wants to know if this is one of his buddies across town.

It will not be easy for you to do, but if you can get your wife way from the attorneys for a few minutes and explain this to her, she may start to realize that the attorneys are not your friends. They are focused on maximizing their own legal fees with money that you and she earned. Your wife may not care what the fees are if you are the one paying them. What you can remind your wife of is that all the money you spend on legal fees now, is money not available to spend on your kid later. It’s not available for any of the things your child will need, and not available for them to inherit someday. Basically, a divorce is a way to turn your child’s inheritance into an inheritance for the lawyer’s kids.

It’s very difficult to get someone you are in the middle of divorcing to be cooperative with you. If you guys could be cooperative about things like this, you probably would have used those skills in your marriage and wouldn’t be getting a divorce at all. But you’re in this now. Once the lawyers are involved, they can be expected to do whatever they can to make sure you guys keep fighting until you both completely hate each other, or are completely broke from legal fees. To overcome this, you have to make your wife understand that the lawyers are the common enemy for you and your wife. This is not going to be easy, but it is worth a try. You have nothing to lose here. Worst case is that your wife is too selfish and immature to care about your kid and just wants what she wants right now regardless of the cost in legal fees to her, you or your kid. But if this is her response, your situation is no worse than it is now. However, if she can see the logic in this, then your/her situation can become much better. If the two of you can come to some agreement between yourselves on how to divide assets and custody of your child without lawyers, there will be much more money to divide between yourselves, and much more money for each of you to spend on your child.

One strategy used by one of my friends with his wife was to agree with her in the beginning that any money or asset that could not be decided upon between the two of them would be put into a trust fund for their child. Regardless of who brought it or earned it, if either of them disputed what the other wanted to do with it, it would then be assigned to a trust fund for their child. They could both easily agree that they’d rather have any disputed asset go to their own child than to the lawyer’s child. As they started to have the discussion about what they would do with the assets, and started to disagree, the assets in the trust fund started to pile up. As they fought, the kid got richer and richer. Eventually, they both ended up with almost nothing, and the kid’s trust fund was loaded. That made them both see that either of them could bankrupt the other, but not without bankrupting themselves in the process. They started over on the discussions and the second time through, she ended up with 1/3, he ended up with 1/3 and the child’s trust fund ended up with about 1/3. They agreed to share custody.

Had they proceeded with lawyers, the lawyers would have taken about 1/3 and let some judge who neither knew or cared anything about them or their kid make the decisions for them regarding property and custody. Doing this yourselves is the better way if you can get her to see it… But both of you have to give up trying to ‘win’ against the other and start focusing on protecting your child’s inheritance from the legal fees of your attorney’s.

You don’t have to have lawyers to get a divorce. Here in the US, if the two sides agree, the paperwork can be downloaded from the internet, filled out and signed by you and the wife and taken to the court and the divorce can be done for the cost of court fees (under 500$). If that’s not possible to do for the paperwork of the Australian courts, then go to the Australian court yourself (with your wife) and ask the first clerk you find how to document the agreement you’ve come to between yourselves WITHOUT either of you using a lawyer. Even an imperfect divorce, decided between the two of you, is probably going to be better than a ‘perfect’ divorce decided after spending 1/3 of all the money on their legal fees.

‘Hope that helps…

Look, it's not my fault that tornado dropped a house on your sister. Now get back on your broom and get your ass out of here... and take your monkeys with you

[AFTParticipant 2722]

This is a really tricky subject. If you were married in Australia and domiciled here immediately prior to separation then you’ll be using the Australian Divorce Law, and the mother may find it harder to take the child overseas. However the courts tend to favor mothers in awarding custody, the fact she doesn’t have permenant residence is not good, she could get custody, and child support in Australia, and move to Macedonia, and live it up. This happens quite a bit. I don’t like any man’s chances of getting custody in an Australian Family Court. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you need a good lawyer, as BrainPilot illustrated, try to get one referred from a good trusted friend. I learnt the hard way, no kids, but my ex went back to Eastern Europe, funny thing is in Eastern Europe they have fairer divorce laws, if I was to ever get married, I’d move there. If your family were domiciled in Macedonia, then it’s their laws you’d be looking at.

When the war cemeteries are half full of the corpses of dead conscripted women, only then will women have earned the right to speak of equality. Sidecar “A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” - Bob Dylan

[KeymasterKeymaster]

Thanks very much gents. Far exceeded expectations with your replies and suggestions. He wrote to say thanks and we wished him every bit of good fortune with his case. I would be beside myself it a battle for a 1 year-old . How bad does a marriage have to get – and how fast can it go sour – that the mother of your kid wants to split after a year.

One minute she wanta a wedding and a baby, and then with the same enthusiasm, can’t wait to get the f~~~ out of the country … stealing whatever and hurting whoever she can.

If you keep doing what you've always done... you're gonna keep getting what you always got.

[AFTParticipant 2722]

Keymaster wrote:

How bad does a marriage have to get – and how fast can it go sour – that the mother of your kid wants to split after a year. One minute she wanta a wedding and a baby, and then with the same enthusiasm, can’t wait to get the f~~~ out of the country … stealing whatever and hurting whoever she can.

I’ve seen this too much, especially with older women, the ones that are on their last hope before they dry up.  As they approach 40, pregnancy takes a much bigger toll on their bodies and minds.  They fall apart and send everything to s~~~, because they are “entitled” to, they have the “right” to do it.  I think women at that age are either going through or close to the “change”, and therefore are at the peak of crazy.  So keeping it together for a full year is a huge accomplishment at that age, but after the toll a birth takes at that age, its impossible for them to keep it together.

The younger ones are different, their not ready to settle down and be mature, they need to enjoy themselves and experience the carousel.  It’s the really shrewd ones that get pregnant to avoid work, they actually get pregnant again as soon as the child hits the age where they need to go find a job.

When I got married, I knew, and I waited two years before having kids, but after the two years my unicorn was just another ho-arse.  Lucky I waited?  No clever, would have been even more clever to not have gotten married in the first place.

NAWALT?  Yeah some are bad the others are worse.

When the war cemeteries are half full of the corpses of dead conscripted women, only then will women have earned the right to speak of equality. Sidecar “A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” - Bob Dylan

[Author]

Posts