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What’s it like to be pro se in NY Supreme Court?

Here is an open letter written in total frustration hoping for some sympathy. Of course it doesn't come but in the most frustrating experience it seems to be all I can do.

I am in the midst of being financially ruined in matrimony court and my civil rights are being violated because I can’t afford representation. I am pro se and I have had every obstacle imaginable placed in my way during my representation. Opposing counsel was allowed to deliver discovery documents on second day of trial – after written requests to judge and opposing counsel for documents, opposing counsel is allowed to submit letters treated as motions while I am banned from writing letters to the judge. In light of this, I still send response letters, yet my letters are ignored and reprimanded by the court. I have been precluded about speaking about 2008 and 2009 financial years as the court picks and chooses the best of 2008 and 2009 to hold me accountable for. I delivered thousands of pages of discovery documents and was found in contempt, however, not the judge or the opposing counsel can name a document that I didn’t provide. Opposing counsel has blatantly lied in court and there is no recourse, no investigations, nothing, yet I am held to some incredible ethical standard. I have asked multiple times for a written preclusion motion yet my requests are ignored so I am being denied my basic rights of due process.
The majority of my preclusion hearings took place in the back office of the court where I was screamed at and ridiculed by judge’s staff. It was the most humiliating experience of my life – by a mile. It was like walking into a Socialist country, I truly thought I had left the US.

The ruling of the court stripped me of 100% of my assets and left me with a failing business that I was barred from speaking about in trial. My child support payments exceed my current income and I haven’t a prayer to make my equitable distribution payments at the current pace of things. The ruling was based on 2007 numbers, combined with the best of 2008, yet I was precluded from speaking about 2008 and 2009.

There was a decision rendered in December that had objectionable pieces but did not merit the time for appeal. However, now I have one week to respond to a judgment based on a revised decision that was issued last week. However, the two decisions are wildly different and reflect all of the concerns raised by opposing counsel – submitted via letter, while all my responses – submitted via letter – resulted in angry phone call from the court to no longer send the same letters that opposing counsel sent. The statements in the decision are so incredibly at odds with the testimony that it defies any sense of logic. It’s not even as if they read the testimony. No one has printed the transcript and I don’t have the $2500 to do so to properly respond.

I have no recourse for justice. I will file the proper responses and do my business but in the meantime the court is ruining me while denying me my civil right to defend myself. As a citizen trying to navigate this process it is impossible. There is such immense bias towards the attorneys that it is impossible to defend myself. The process is arcane and arbitrary and seems to follow no standards of conduct or accountability on behalf of any of the constituents.

The trouble is that this is not a parking ticket or a DUI, this is about my complete financial ruin. This is about a process that strips me of greater than 100% of my assets, assigns child support based on non-existent income and denies my every right of defense. I am lucky because while the court has decided to ruin me financially they have stripped my friends of their children and their assets and I am not in this situation.
I am being forced to pay numbers that would defy any objective legal test and I am banned from supplying evidence to the contrary. It is the most Kafkaesque experience of my life and beyond my imagination.