Who is in therapy? Are we talking about your records or your child's records? If its your child's records how old is your child?
What is the backstory? That could determine whether this is a somewhat meaningless fishing expedition or something where a judge could determine that the records should be included in the case.
The child is not in therapy; I am, and have been for several years, with pretty good results.
This past spring, the mother hired an attorney to have an out of state child support/parenting time domesticated. In the course of that process, the mother, with influence from the attorney (as told to me by the mother) grew unreasonably fearful that I was a danger to our son. However, this is something that she recanted to me directly after a mediation session, but then reasserted after the mediation broke down.
Basically, over the past 7 months, I have been accused of not paying any child support (which I disproved), not visiting while I was working out of state (which I also disproved) to more squishy things like asserting that I 'could' be a danger to our son, or to myself. The mother called two local publicly funded social service agencies for a "title 36 diversion" claiming I was a danger to myself and to our son, that I was abusing alcohol, not taking prescribed meds, that they had "concerns" about my mental health, and that I had 'persistent and severe mental illness' (although neither have any credentials to make such a statement).
The police came to my home and nicely delivered me to the first agency. I was evaluated by their staff psychiatrist and released that same afternoon as not being a threat to anybody. I had to go the second agency the following day to undergo a second eval, and was likewise released shortly thereafter. Obviously, they're not going to release someone they think is a danger.
We were ordered to attend mediation in June, which we did. Surprisingly, we actually made progress developing a parenting plan. The mistrust and anger lifted a little, and we went to lunch together after the mediation. That was when she told me that her attorney had pressured her into characterizing me as dangerous. By this I mean, the mother would say to her attorney, "I've known him for 12 years and he's never ever been dangerous, he has never hurt me or our son, or himself, and he's a great dad, even though he has ptsd and anxiety problems that make it difficult for him to work". The attorney, then, would say, "but how do you REALLY know?", "he COULD hurt somebody, and he owns guns!!". The mother HATES guns (even though I took her and the boy shooting twice-an experience which she said she enjoyed, at least at the time).
Back to the mediation. After the first session, suddenly I was seeing our son everyday, all day, unsupervised. Mother was, using her words, "on cloud 9", and everything was peachy. The parenting plan was 4/5ths complete. By the third session, we were friendly and making plans to take the boy to a movie. She was going to let her attorney go. The only point of contention in the proposed parenting plan was guns. She wanted one year of no guns around the boy, and no taking the boy shooting for that time. We compromised at 10 months.
After the third session, while things were going great, she came to my apartment to pick up our son. I also reload ammunition so I have a bench with some equipment (press, scale,etc), and components like powder and whatnot. There was no live ammo, as that was part of the "no guns for 10 months" deal. She didn't dig the reloading bench. The next day, she accused me of deceiving her, and knowingly violating the terms of the agreement; something I dispute. The guns and ammo are locked, and that was ok with her, but she didn't even ask me to lock the reloading gear, only hide it. The mom, when she picked him, started talking about how horrible guns are and such, then she asks him about the reloading stuff, and he breaks down and admits that I showed him was it was for (because he wanted to know).
That was the end. After that, I didn't get to see him, and still don't. By her account, I'm responsible for just about everything that goes wrong, and has gone wrong in her life. After 6 months of being on the defensive, I'm pretty much beat. I don't have money for an attorney so that is why I'm posting here.
The weird thing is that I'm still not clear on what the mom is trying to accomplish with all of this. She denies that she is trying to minimize my parenting time. She has said that she was ok with joint legal decision making. What is also clear, is that under the influence of her attorney, she has shared every personal, confidential, or sensitive thing I've done, said, or written for the purpose, presumably, to make me look as badly as possible. There is a good deal of hearsay in the accusations.
The last thing I got were the interrogatories that included the requests for signed hipaa requests for treatment records going back 2 years.
Hope this helps.
