My state is Pennsylvania
My county is Cambria
I am the mother in a custody case
Basic (I think) Question:
I have en existing Consent order for Custody (I have primary physical custody, we have shared legal custody). After my divorce was final but before the current Consent order, I changed my last name back to my maiden name. I have since remarried. I have corrected my name with the Domestic Relations office (just by telling the hearing officer at my last support modification meeting which was initiated by my ex to have our son taken out of the support calculation now that he's about to turn 18). The order entered into the Cambria County Court of Common Please is formatted as follows, [FIRST] [M.] (prior married name) [MAIDEN], so basically Jane A. (Doe) Smith. However, my legal name is now Jane A. Smith-Thomas (Thomas is my now husband's last name, I retained my maiden name and hyphenated).
I am preparing to file a motion for contempt and sanction, what, if anything, do I need to do in regards to my name? Do I need to file something with the court before I can proceed with the motion for contempt? Do I need to simply correct it in the motion? Can I just put my name as it appears on the existing order (maiden name only, no hyphen)?
I had an attorney who I recently let go and her clerk said that I didn't need to do anything, I was still Jane A. Smith (maiden name only) even though I was remarried and my name hyphenated. However, I hesitate to follow this advice as both the clerk and the attorney also assured me that I also did not need to file a formal motion for contempt in family court or pay any fees if I no longer had an attorney and that I could just send the judge a letter with a copy of the order and mail the same information to my ex, which I know enough from college is almost assuredly an ex parte communication that the judge likely won't even see and even if she did, it would be rejected and not even considered.
Background info and the less basic questions:
I am filing the contempt motion pro se. My main issue is that in 2011, I was awarded $500 towards counsel fees as a result of a motion of contempt against my ex and a Consent order (motion of contempt was held indefinitely due to our Consent agreement). The $500 was to be paid within 30 days after our divorce was final (we have not been back in front of the judge since the order). It was final in 2013. I have reminded my ex several times and requested payment be made and he has ignored me every time. When I have asked my attorney of record whether or not we can pursue collection, she has told me that she could, but that it would cost me at least $1000.00 for her to draft the motion and represent me in court, not including the fees associated with a motion for contempt. It made no sense to spend $1000 or more to collect $500. My ex has violated numerous provisions of the order over the years and every time I have raised the violations of the order, my attorney told me that my best avenue of pursuit was for her to e-mail his attorney and threaten court action if the violations did not stop. She told me it would save me money in the long run and that our judge wouldn't take most violations seriously; basically my ex would need to injure our daughter (he is not allowed visitation with our son since he admitted to abusing both him and myself even though he went through counseling in order to be able to see our daughter who is much younger), injure himself or another and be arrested or I'd need to prove that he is an alcoholic or drug addict (he is, but I can't prove that if he never gets a DUI, arrested or enters treatment). Every one of these e-mails sent to his attorney cost me between $50 to $100 and some issues required multiple back and forth e-mails.
I have exhausted every single penny of my $40,000 savings and the Consent order is still being repeatedly violated. He violates the non-derogation clause (derogatory comments to our daughter about me, my husband, our son, my mother and father), the inappropriate TV and interne content clause (she watches R-rated horror movies and is allowed to play Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty when at his house, she's 9 and has so many nightmares that 3-5 nights that I have her she wakes me up in the middle of the night terrified). He refuses to have her homework completed when assigned during his visitation (he tells me that neither myself nor the school get to dictate how he spends his time with his child). He consumes alcohol in front of her even though he is prohibited from doing so in the order based on his admitted prior alcohol-induced abuse towards our son and I. He refuses to bring her to her scheduled activities as required in the Consent order. He refuses to let me talk to her 70% of the time he has her overnight (I call once a night on the weekends he has her at 8:00pm and he is required to answer and let me talk to her or have her call me back before he puts her to bed). He is late 99% of the time when returning her to me after visitation (not even an issue worth mentioning according to my attorney). He doesn't return her clothes back to me when she visits with her (he sends her back to me in clothes he found at goodwill or hand-0me downs form her step sisters that don't fit her even when he only has her for a few hours after school and not overnight); he's been doing this so long that it's actually specifically mentioned in the Consent order that he must return her in the clothes I send her in or send them with her and not destroyed). He also refused to attend the mandated family counseling so that we could learn to communicate in ways that were beneficial to our children; I went for 3 years, twice per month and sat there by myself and more less tattled on him to the counselor (a close friend of my attorney who was supposed to "keep him in line") for violating the court order in other ways. I ran out of money to pay her after 3 years and since he refused to attend, I stopped scheduling sessions, which my attorney told me was fine at that point even though I was required to by the Consent order. We each had to pay for our portion of the session, he didn't need to pay for sessions he did not attend so I spent thousands of dollars just so that I could comply with the court order.
I started letting these issues go and not having my attorney complain to his every time about a year ago (no sense since e-mails weren't working and my attorney had me scared that if we went back to court, I'd run out of money part-way through the process and that even though he is in violation, he might get more visitation since "every other weekend and 4 hours once a week is no longer the standard so the judge may modify our order to give him more time to get in line with the current family law climate even if he didn't request or even deserve it". We have a court-ordered "communication book" where I've been documenting my attempts to have him stop the violations (firm, but as respectful to him as possible), which is what my attorney suggested when I told her I was running out of money since it's free to use the book. However, when I stopped the attorney e-mails, he began having his attorney sending my attorney random questions that he could have (or in some cases, actually did) ask me in the communication book (which is its stated purpose, for us to communicate about issues that did not require mediation or litigation). His attorney is a close family friend who is working more or less pro-bono (he did the same for him during his custody battle with his ex-girlfriend before he and I were married). He is using the process to harass and punish me for leaving him and moving on. I get it, I sympathize with his possession and jealousy issues as I became intimate with them starting about 3 months after we were married but we've been separated since 2010 and prior to that, we hadn't had any sort of marital relations or communication for nearly 2 years. So here I am writing a petition for contempt for the $500 he was ordered to pay me in the Consent order from 2011.
Should I note the other continuous violations of the Consent order beyond the $500 or just stick to the money?
I feel like the other violations are further evidence for his contempt of court, but since I don't feel like I would secure anything other than the $500 he owes me no matter what else I show him to be in violation of. In that case, aren't those other violations extraneous? I don't want to offend or irritate the judge (I assumed judges were people, more or less reasonable whereas my former attorney assured me that they are more often not since they hear this stuff all the time and it's always a 'he said, she said sort of thing' that they sort through on a daily basis).
I don't want to hurt my petition by having stuff in there that is unnecessary but I also don't want to make it seem like this is his only violation (he's been in violation multiple times before and we had contempt proceedings early on in the process where he was forced to comply at least temporarily by the judge). But I DO want the violations to stop if possible as they're hurting my daughter and harming her education.
I realize that this is a lot, but I'd rather give too much information here than not enough. I appreciate any insight here.
Thank you,
Jane
