My Experiences with the Nevada Family Courts in Las Vegas
Eman Kcin
There is no doubt about it, the family courts are indeed biased
against males. It is an unspoken truth amongst the attorney circles.
This is my dialogue of my experiences.
I was divorced around August of 2004. The divorce was mostly
uneventful, it was an agreed upon contract and we were out. In the
Nevada courts however, a person has six months to contest the
contract. Sure enough, 5 months and 29 days later, I received a
notice that a motion was filed in court contesting the divorce. Now
begins the dialogue of a, so far, 5 year battle.
I was originally divorced because my wife of 5 years decided to move
out of the house and live with a boyfriend. She left me with my 1 and
a half year old son to take care of. The economy had recently taken a
slight dip and I was on unemployment. I was left with the bills, the
child, the house, and everything. Under the gauze of a visit,
sometimes my soon-to-be ex would arrive, and I would notice things
disappear from the house, but other than that, she did not take much
interest in me and spent time with her new secret boyfriend.
As much as it pained me and as much as I suspected, I had no real
proof of a boyfriend for a long time. She always denied it of
course. One day, she asked me to take my son for a while. I informed
her that I was nervous about the idea of her taking my son out when I
had no idea where she was living now. Eventually, she gave me her new
address and I allowed my son to visit.
At first, she coordinated events so that I would not meet her new
boyfriend. Her boyfriend had not quite moved in permanently and she
always arranged my pick-up and drop-off times so that I would never
see anything. My first real proof was when I asked to use the
bathroom and found a condom package in the trash can, right on top of
my son's thrown away diaper. It pained me horribly to see something
so perverse on top of a symbol of my son, something so innocent. I
confronted her about it, she denied it, I was never really allowed in
the home anymore after that day.
The next real proof that I had was when I went to pick up my son and
found a 'lease renewal notice' on the door. It listed my still
current wife's address and the name of her new found boyfriend. That
was the day I finally confirmed the name of the person.
Eventually, what I found out is the she was using the 'battered wife'
excuse to justify her actions. It should be noted that there was no
abuse and as such no evidence of abuse. Nothing in court ever pointed
to abuse. This was what she was telling people outside of court to
try and solicit their sympathy. "Watch out for him, he is abusive!!"
I was remarried at the end of October of 2004. We met through a
friend exactly one day after my divorce. At the same time, my ex-
wife, being originally from Ecuador, was beginning to have issues with
immigration questioning the validity of our previous marriage. One of
the things they questioned was that she did not have full legal
custody of our son. Coupled by the fact that I had remarried and she
was furious over this, and the immigration issue, she filed for
custody of my son.
This was the beginning of my experience with the Nevada courts.
The first thing that I learned was that it is a common knowledge
amongst attorneys that you should take the cases that represent women
for a minimal fee at best, and should always charge in advance for the
men. The reason provided to me by an attorney and ex-judge speaking
off the record, "Because they win." Even my ex had told me at one
point that her attorney had made the statement to her that, "Women
have more rights than men in court."
I conjecture that at this point that it is not necessarily because
they win, though it is true. What I learned is that the attorneys
themselves are contributing majorly to the problem when they
systematically take cases based on gender, it is not always about the
judge, though that happens too. When I worked for the Eighth Judicial
District Court, I learned that on one occassion, a female judge,I
believe her name was Judge Zimmerman, had learned that a male judge
had used the toilet in her chambers once. As a result, she ordered
that the entire toilet be changed out. This kind of mentality
severely bothers me. On another occassion, I had heard in a meeting
at 'Equal Rights for Divorced Fathers' that there was a female judge
that was so biased against men that he would do everything he could to
try to help any man that had to stand before her. One attorney even
said that he had witnessed this same judge giving custody of children
to drug addicts, unfortunately, I do not remember the name of the
judge they mentioned.
The second major problem with the court system is their bias against
those that do not have attorneys. I learned this quite first-handed.
My observation goes something like this....
One of the major attacks that attorneys use is that they claim that
the person filling out court paperwork is doing it for fraudulant
reasons. They do not have to have any solid proof on this, they just
make the accusation and hope it sticks. After all, the person who
filed the papers has a personal gain from this, as opposed to an
attorney who has no personal gain other that his fees. A judge would
see this and note that it is an easy way out so he can get the case
over with quick. He sites that the attorney had reason and provides
for attorney fees against the person who had no attorney, case done.
One of the biggest excuses an attorney would use, especially against a
male, is "He just wants custody because he doesn't want to pay child
support, all the other facts are just false".
On the other hand however, it is a different thing for one attorney to
accuse another attorney of filing papers for fraudulant reasons. To
do so intentionally would risk his attorney's license, and the
attorney has no real cause. Therefore it is important to remember, an
attorney needs to be the one to file papers with the court and he
needs to have his name upon it. It basically certifies is at being
legit. Judge Mathew Harter is a fine example of someone that would
listen to case only if it was prepared by an attorney, do not go
before him without one.
Since attorneys are often taking cases for women for little or no
money, especially against men who file their own papers and then
profitting by it, it contributes heavily to the idea that women win
and men do not. Of course, this is sexist and illegal, but a bit
difficult to prove, thus they get away with it. Besides, each
attorney is in cahoots with the other on the matter so it is unlikely
to have much done about it anytime soon.
One of the reasons why they get away with this so much is the idealogy
that men are big and strong and women need to be protected from these
big mean men. Therefore when an injustice is done against a poor
defeneseless woman, it is an atrocity. If it is done against a big
burly man, no matter how unjust, it is decided that he should just
suck it up, it is one of the things of life.
Another problem with the courts is a very strong and controversial
bias on child support. For the above mentioned reasons, women are
often granted custody of the children and men have to pay. I believe
statistics show around 99% of past-due child support individuals are
men, that would likely mean that 99% of child support receivers are
women. The bias of child support is that there is no excuse, no
matter what. Any judge that violates this policy would incur a severe
political penalty. Pay the support, and pay the attorney's fees that
asked for it, period. Knowing this, nearly all attorneys would take a
'child support' case for free, while a male would have to pay up front
for attorney representation.
This is a very serious issue in that women are in fact encouraged to
divorce, after all they have little or nothing to lose and much to
gain. It is destroying many lives, especially those of children.
Back to my story.... My wife, for the reasons mentioned above, was
able to get an attorney that took her case for little or no money. I,
on the other hand, ended up paying through the nose. I was able to
get a good job at one point and feed the monster, but it cost me
enormously. In the end, I paid over $35,000.00 out of pocket, and
owed another $20,000.00 which they are still trying to get me for. At
the end of the fight, she had primary custody. Of the expenses that I
incurred, she was only asked to pay $10,000.00 in which she could make
payments on. It is a very real situation however that had I not had
an attorney at all, that I would have ended up paying that amount,
also for the reaons mentioned above.
The story doesn't end there however. The divorce was a very long and
lengthy process and it is not only attorneys that have their hands in
the gravy. The court makes use of child custody evaluators to get
around the politics of who gets who. After all, trained psychologists
should have a better say, shouldn't they?
My child custody evaluator was Dr. Lenkeit. He handled the case very
much the same way that they attorneys handle it. In fact, he took
short cuts. He did not interview witnesses, he did not conduct a home
evaluation, in fact he didn't do much of anything except give us some
tests and talk to us. All of this was against APA standards.
When his report finally came out, it had so many problems with it that
I couldn't even begin to decide where to start. It was made more on
the idea of 'who told the best story' rather than through evaluations
and conjecture. It made many assumptions that certain facts were true
before they even had been to court to prove. It was not Dr. Lenkeit's
job to judge the facts of the case, that was the court's job, it was
his job to provide an analysis aside from the unproven facts, based on
who that child best bonded with and the effects of the divorce and et
cetra.
Seeing the results, I hired 'Child Custody Consultants' in South
Carolina to provide an analysis of the report. These people were
extremely good at their jobs and provided a very helpful and
respectful neutral analysis of the report. It revealed so many things
that were wrong with what Dr. Lenkeit had done that had I had a good
attorney, I am certain that we could have easily had the whole thing
thrown out. In the end, Dr. Lenkeit had to answer to the APA for his
prejudice.
When Dr. Lenkeit learned that his report was about to be evaluated by
a professional, I actually had the luxury of seeing his face the
moment the news hit him. I was very stressed at the time and couldn't
enjoy it as much as I should have, but it is a memory that I remember
quite well.
At the hearing, Dr. Lenkeit was laughing and conversing and having a
good time. When he heard the news, his face went white and he had a
very serious expression. He asked my attorney if he knew what the
preliminary report said and my attorney said, "yes" and left it at
that. I specifically remember his gaze looking into my eyes in fear
to see if he could read what my eyes might tell him about the report.
I also remember being surprised by his gaze and am sure he saw nothing
in my eyes that could tell him anything, probably due to my surprise.
Dr. Lenkeit was scared.
Dr. Lenkeit cut communication with me and my attorney. He never
returned any calls and he ignored at least two court orders for him to
hand over all documents, notes, papers, and test results so that they
could be thoroughly examined. He did this for 9 months and only
handed the papers over with threat of arrest. The damage he did to my
hearing, not only from his report but his refusal to cooperate, was
immense.
What did I learn? First of all, I learned that having a
psychologist's report reviewed is unheard of in Nevada. I may have
even been the first, it was certainly unknown to Dr. Lenkeit that the
possiblity existed. Therefore, if you have a child custody evaluation
done, have your attorney get with them immediately and inform them
that you will have an analysis done of the report and that they will
need their notes. This will keep them honest and make the report
proper to begin with. In fact, if they think YOU will have the
analysis done and the other party will not, it is likely he may sway
his opinion toward you just to avoid the whole thing all together.
Having the report thrown out and redone is quite costly.