- My husband left last year after 13 years of marriage. I have taken care of everything including our two children since his departure. He calls them about once every two weeks. Five months after he left I filed for divorce. The judge let me serve him by email when he would not provide an address. I asked for child support and brought last years tax return as proof of his income. The judge ordered support paid through DOR so I have been receiving support.
Bottom line I want this done so I can move on but he refuses to participate. He won’t file a financial statement and won’t produce documents. We have a pre trial conference in late July. How can I make him pay attention to this so I can get my freedom back?
2. You cannot make him participate in the process. You can arm yourself to go to the pre-trial conference in a few weeks and walk out with a divorce.
First you should prepare a subpoena to the “Keeper of Records” for his employer asking for all of his payroll records for this year, all benefits he is entitled to, cost and availability of family health insurance, life insurance and retirement benefits. Instruct them to deliver the documents to the court house by 9:00 AM the morning of your pre-trial conference. Send the subpoena to a constable for service.
Next you should prepare the pre trial memorandum. Follow the outline in the pre trial order so you cover everything the judge is looking for. Bring that along with an updated financial statement with you to court. Also you should download a child support guidelines app on your smart phone. They are short money and far easier than trying to do the math on the worksheet in the courthouse.
When you get to the court the morning of the hearing, ask the clerk to let you look at the responsive documents. Use the payroll information to run the child support calculations (the guidelines changed again and the new guidelines took effect June 15th) copy the numbers from the app onto the paper.
Also bring a proposed judgment. Ask for all of the things you want including sole legal and physical custody of your children. You want legal and physical custody to ensure your right to make all of the decisions for the kids, including dictating when he sees them assuming he strolls back into their lives at some point.
Ask for guidelines child support, health insurance for you and the children, that he pay half of the children’s uninsured medical expenses and half of all extra-curricular activity costs including registration fees and equipment. Also ask that he be ordered to maintain a life insurance policy of $1 million dollars with you as named beneficiary until your youngest child is emancipated.
Finally, make it easy for the judge to give you what you want, bring a copy on a flash drive.
