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A case study of conflict of interest In New York – divorce custody and business evaluators

Wikipedia definition of conflict of interest - A conflict of interest (COI) occurs when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other. Well this could never be truer than what exists in New York custody evaluators and business evaluators. If you are pro se and you are facing one of these clowns you are doomed because custody evaluators are bought and sold and as an outsider you will be destroyed in evaluations. New York has laid fertile ground for conflicts of interest for both custody and business evaluators and it is time to end this.

First of all, there are no state law requirements for who these people are. I challenge you to find a single law or regulation penned by the great state of New York that explains how someone actually becomes a custody evaluator or a business evaluator. While there are certainly vague guidelines of how to evaluate custody anyone can be one of these jobs with the most basic of education. The custody evaluator I was assigned was chosen by my lawyer as I had one when they were trying to take my kids away. It bankrupted me but it worked as I kept access to my children but it was mortifying to have my sanity evaluated in a karate studio as my evaluator was more of a sensei than he was an evaluator. While we took extensive breaks in my custody evaluation so that the evaluator could travel to Japan and learn more sensei magic, attention to psychological detail paled in comparison to his interest in martial arts, hence the martial arts custody evaluation office. I remember the feeling of driving up to a karate studio for the most important psychological evaluation of my life and thinking what the f? But what I experienced isn't atypical as there are no guidelines for who these people are.

So there are no standards for who will evaluate your mental health or your finances but this is only the beginning of joke because the real punch line is in how they are assigned to cases. Regardless of garbage you may find on the Internet these people are chosen by the litigants attorneys and maybe the judge. In my case it was three old buddies, my lawyer, the other and the Judge. Worked together for at least 10 years. So when it came time to choose evaluators they went deep in the rolodex and picked some dear old friends whom they both felt confident they could influence. The strategy worked so long as I could keep paying but once I ran out of money it fell to crap. As Pro Se the forensic evaluator who was all buddy buddy when I had an attorney quickly teamed up with my adversary when he realized I was broke. Which leads to one of the other major conflicts of interest, this one is so glaring that it demands its own line:

Court appointed neutral evaluators can switch sides at any time all depending upon who will pay them. This is really unimaginable because each evaluator knows that they better watch their steps and side with the richer party because that's where the biz will come from. The $15,000 stater evaluation is nothing compared to whats to come. My evaluator kindly advised me in writing that he was damn expensive when it came to litigation. While he demanded pre-payment of a paltry $250/hour his litigation rate increased to nearly $400 an hour, again with pre-payment only. As I sat in the sensei's studio for about 8 hours taking standardized mental tests, which incidentally yielded nothing, I remember thinking what a great job this was. I just paid about $5,000 to have 2 of these tests administered and analyzed. The trouble was that they were never really analyzed in the end as I learned later, only administered. With a lawyer I was able to defend against this clown because my lawyer had juice and got about $60,000 from me, which was all of my 401k, a college fund and borrowed money. But once I lost the lawyer I saw how these guys switch sides. The business evaluator quickly went on the payroll of my adversary and became a 'witness' during my trial. In the hallway my adversary said quite loudly and clearly that he wasn't going to let me ask any questions and the forensic evaluator, Jerry DeFeo, earned his money that day. Dutifully refusing to answer any questions I posed and at many points simply laughing at my inability to properly construct a trial question. How it was that a neutral evaluator could switch to the side that can afford to pay is beyond comprehension.

If an evaluator is appointed as neutral, yet the Judge is not bound at all to listen to what they say, and they can easily switch sides depending on who's paying them how is that neutral? Judges are not bound by these clowns, they can say whatever they want to and the judge can or can't listen. Neutral suggests that they are working for the Judge but this is absolute lie. Judges can ignore them and the evaluators are not the judges neutral eyes and ears, evaluators are simply tools of the litigants to be manipulated as needed and as afforded.

The final kicker is that these clowns don't write full reports unless you cough up another $25,000 - $50,000. For $15,000 you get the 1 page summary, you want the detail, cough up at least $25,000, plus fees for your attorneys. My business evaluator wrote a letter and had a conference with the attorneys - that was his deliverable. I wanted more but that was going to cost me. I'm assuming that my attorney paid off my custody evaluator nicely because the wishy-washy pseudo-report he wrote boiled down to one sentence that required no evaluation - In adolescence it is best for children to be with the same-sex parent, though the other parent needs to be very close by and actively engaged in the life of the children. So what cost me about $65,000 was certainly worth it but when I couldn't pay the hammer fell.

So let's recap the conflict of interests in forensics. 1) There are no official qualifications to be a custody evaluator or a forensic evaluator, anyone can be one. 2) Neutral evaluators are chosen by the litigants attorneys, not any type of random system. 3) Neutral custody evaluators or business evaluators can switch from neutral to prosecution or defense witness at any time, just pay them and you got em, pre-pay by the way or they won't play until the check clears. Mr. DeFeo was pretty clear to me, pre-pay or no play. 4) The reports of evaluators can be ignored by judges and the evaluators know it, what matters is what comes after the evaluation, specifically, who's paying.