Being unemployed is hard. I have been working since I was 12. The economy right now is not the place that I want to be looking for work, and I really enjoyed working for Cumberland County. I had been there over 5 years. So now I have to try to find a job. My license got suspended, because I couldn’t afford insurance…(long story) which makes it tough to search for work. Also I’m now not sure if my 30 day stint in jail will appear on a background check if I am able to go job hunting. It’s embarrassing, and the thought of it makes me sick to my stomach.
Why does all of this have to be so hard? I bought that house when I was 22. I tried for 9 years to make that life work. I worked long hours, more than one job, I did whatever I had to do. When I finally did leave, I had to give up the house, which for the kids is fine and understandable, I had to pay all the marital debt, we only had two credit cards, but in addition to giving up the house, a little rough. I had to pay for my ex wife’s lawyer even though I didn’t have one…why is that ok? I also had to pay initially 199.00 a week in child support, that’s fair I WANT to support my kids. In addition to child support I had to provide 500.00 a month in spousal support, even though I took all the marital bills and her lawyer bills with me? That was 324.00 a week. I actually managed to pay that from November through January in 2008 and early 2009. Of course doing it, I couldn’t pay the marital bills, or my car payment, the car was finally repossessed, but I TRIED! So I filed a motion to modify because I couldn’t afford it. It took a YEAR to get into court.
The same judge who ordered me to pay the above raised EVERYTHING. The child support went up to 215.00 a week, the spousal went up an additional 60.00 a week, and now I was required to pay for both of my ex’s lawyers. The icing on the cake…he also declared that I was in contempt. There was no way I could afford to pay it. I lost it. I was so hopeless that getting up in the morning was nearly impossible, I was edgy all the time and didn’t know what to do, I had gone through all the legal channels I had, I tried an appeal..Alone to the Supreme court with no lawyer. Finally the stress, anger, resentment, and hopelessness was too much. I went on leave from work. I fell behind on everything for a few weeks, even Child support. I didn’t care, couldn’t care, and couldn’t sleep. Finally seeing that no action wasn’t solving anything either, I went back to work. Now DHS was taking 250.00 a week, 215.00+35.00 towards what was now back support. I was making gains on the back support, I didn’t have a prayer at paying my spousal support, and the 2 marital credit cards, and payments on the car that had been repo’d over a year ago. After paying the 250.00 a week, I barely had enough for Rent, and gas, and food. There was a lot of Ramen noodles. My one ‘luxury’ 10.00 a month for the gym…when I felt so resentful, so scared, so hopeless, two hours in the gym would wear me out enough that I could at least rest.
Contempt was an inevitable shadow. It hung over everything. I couldn’t change it, couldn’t hope to make enough to pay it down, but hoped that if my ex continued to get 250.00 a week every week that it would be enough, that she wouldn’t want more. The mortgage on the house was only 918.00, I was more that paying the mortgage. I bought the kids some of their school clothes in September, I bought them winter jackets, in October. Then I got the paperwork, my ex was taking me back to court for contempt. Then work hired a bunch of people and overtime dried up. So I was heading to court for contempt and had no chance to make enough money to even try to get caught up. I went to court in January expecting to go to jail. I told the judge about my stress leave, that the Federal medical leave act covered my time off, and that taking that time off cut my annual income by close to 15,000 dollars. I told the judge that I couldn’t afford food some weeks after buying gas, I told him the settlements weren’t possible. He seemed to agree told me that clearly I was having problems. I told him that my job would be negatively affected by going to jail. He said he would issue a ruling within seven days. Forty days later, he issued a warrant. He didn’t even have the courtesy to issue a date to report. Knowing that I work IN the jail system he issued a warrant of arrest.
So I went to jail for 30 days. Cumberland County Fired me. DHS took my federal and State tax return. And I got out of jail 30 days later with 40.00 in my pocket, no job, and no hope.
I’ve spent the past 3 weeks trying to get anything together, short term/long term, to pay rent, to eat, to MAYBE put enough gas in my truck to do something anything… of course with no license I can’t go anywhere and with no money I can’t get my license back.

What did I do that I deserve to lose everything? My ex still lives in the house we bought together. The house I worked two jobs, or many hours of overtime to pay for. I have given her more than 20,000 dollars in the 2 years since the divorce. I have moved 5 times, from one little apartment to another wherever I could afford to live. I’ve lost my car and had to cash out the Maine State Retirement I am obligated to maintain to buy a 17 year old truck. I own next to nothing and live hand to mouth only to STILL be falling behind. Nothing in this decision is fair or equitable. To top it off despite getting 1000.00 a month the house is STILL in Foreclosure?

So what is the answer? Why can a Judge someone TRUSTED to enforce fairness utterly ruin someone. How can he not know that what he imposes is not only unfair, but impossible? How can he allow his decisions to destroy a person’s whole existence and why is it that if a Doctor’s hand slips while he’s doing his job and someone gets hurt insurance companies clamor to fix things, but if a judge systematically takes everything from someone and sets it up so that they have no hope of being able to get back any semblance of a life that not only is it ok, but that no one can or will do anything about it.

In order to do what a judge does, he has to be qualified to look over his own decisions. He has to take responsibility that what he does is fair. So if anyone reasonable looking at this situation can see that it is impossible, to see that it is completely unfair, is it that the judge is incompetent? Is he not capable of seeing fairness, and doing the math to know that in this economy what he asked was mathematically impossible. Or did he suspect that maybe he was imposing too much and just not care, thereby making him negligent, maybe he was too lazy, or proud to try harder. Either way HE utterly destroyed my life. Who is responsible for that, why is there no penalty, and how many more lives will be ruined before someone does something about it?

Regardless of the actual events, the point is that he is still serving time on a civil contempt charge, when he simply doesn’t have the means to pay.  Our goal is to secure legal representation by the end of this week so we can start to undo the injustice of this ruling.

Pete is the most caring person I have ever met.  He loves and provides for his children above and goes above and beyond the required child support.  Please read his story.

“Our founding fathers designed our legal system with the thought in mind that it is better that the guilty go free rather than have an innocent man spend one night in jail. What happened to those values?” ~ Peter Galeno

Gretchen