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The Joke of Appeal in New York Divorce Court

By far the most surreal aspect of having your life wrecked by the New York State Supreme Court is how surprisingly little you can do about it. Assume that you are strapped with payments that far exceed your current income and that you are falling in debt about $5,000 - $10,000 each month. Trying to challenge a child support award in New York Family Court will only send you back to the same judge in Supreme Court that wrecked your life in the first place, and he probably aint gonna be so happy to see your butt again. It seems that you have to wait a year until you're mega-behind before a new court will look at your judgment. So then you can appeal.

Interestingly I learned that the bias against pro se that exists in Supreme Court seems to carry over into the Court of Appeals. After my immediate exposure to how closed the court would be to me as pro I dropped my appeal and ran out of there before my loud mouth would get me in trouble. So here's what I learned, and if you ask me, it's quite unbelievable. The Civil Appeals Management Program of the 2nd department appellate court in Brooklyn has an official policy to not include pro se litigants in conferences. In my particular case I had a lawyer file the notice of appeal but now I can't pay anymore so I'm on my own. So a CAMP administrator set up a conference with my lawyer and the other lawyer and all seemed good. Well, the second they find out I was pro se they canceled the conference because the official policy, as reiterated by two sources in the court, is to not meet with pro se litigants. No, a conference won't be scheduled where the court could actually help in a reasonable manner. No, if you can't afford representation, you must be bound to the most onerous process imaginable for a non-lawyer of putting together an appeal while attorneys, they guys would could actually do the appeal, get to to go nice conferences with a court rep to help sort things out. If that is not the very essence of paid access to the court then I beg for a clarification from someone smarter than I.

It's truly amazing that in the USA we send defenseless citizens into lawless courts with no representation and no due process where they lose their liberty, property, children and all too often, their mental health. The New York Supreme court matrimony system is utterly impossible for a common person to navigate as it is fraught with conflicts of interest and arcane processes that are invoked and ignored randomly by attorneys and judges. So one who proceeds alone in this environment is doomed to fail, regardless of their acumen. When you can make the rules up as you go along, there is no logic that will prevail. The court won't make any attempts to hide their contempt of pro se nor will they lend even the slightest assistance. Pro se makes everyone's job harder, and let's face it, what matters is not you or your kids lives, it's the workday of attorneys and judges that are the real priority. Those pesky pro se people, who don't even have the decency to shake down all their friends and family to pay for a lawyer, why they just make a judges day really suck. That's the reality.

Even more puzzling about the remedy of appeal is how an appeal can be rendered in the circuses that go on in the Supreme Court against pro se. Much of my trial seemed to be theater for the ex's family, who paid and came to watch for four full days. From two others that I have observed it was largely the same. The sad part is that we aren't talking about parking tickets here. We aren't talking about some little annoyance, we are talking about a court that has the power to completely wreck your life if you can't afford representation. There is no escape hatch if you are against a combative and financed adversary as financing will always prevail over common sense in the Supreme Court matrimony part. It's hard for many of us to admit but there are also many times that mental illness is playing a heavy roll in the bad decisions being made. It's nasty to talk about, but there is no doubt that the court system feeds off of mentally unstable people with access to money. Stable people work it out, others can't, it's impossible for them.

The inescability for most people is the sad part. Every turn to rid yourself of the court's burden can be a further shakedown. Since you will be forced to finance you own ascent it may take a very long time to get back on your feet, and most do, but it's a long road. Buying a lawyer to help you out of the fiasco may or may not help you and buying another after the first fails, which they mostly do, will only cost you more. Then there will be others with their hands out along the way, like the forensics, etc.

The only solution is to live your life and enjoy. Work hard, make money, get out of it and go back to your life. And stay out of jail if at all possible.