Mother's Answer to Petition.

After Stacy obtained an attorney, they submitted the Answer to petition responding to each of the items in the petition. Which is in sum basically saying "I don't know" & "whatever it is it is not true".

Then it is followed with the "Counter Petition" which is where she lists the things she wants out of me, which can be summed up as "the kids are mine and I want more money." I knew from my own experience with my attorney in drafting the petition the content is driven by the input from the client through an detailed interview. It is sad that all she could come up with was that she needed money from me because I now make more money. When in fact, I am the one asking the State to decide on what is fair through my petition. Because I wanted her to stop continuing to think I am a gravy train and leeching for money at every opportunity.

Also I have always carried the kids on my health insurance whenever it was available to me through employment. Stacy has never had steady employment that came with benefits and had never been insured other that while she was on Welfare and had Medicaid in Washington State. The topic of health insurance had always been a non issue for me that I want to make sure my kids' is covered. I thought it strange that Mr. Fox her attorney would devote so much paper to that point.

Her request for a visitation that "more closely fit the school schedule" is absolutely lame and I can just imagine Mr. Fox wrestling it in so that his petition will at least sound decent. In hindsight it is ironic because now I know that Mr. Fox's idea of a "very detailed visitation schedule" had considerably less verbiage than anything else I have seen. The "final order" he drafted was only a mere few pages and left most of it "to be determined by the mother". It had even less detail than the WA state order which was drafted up by a clerk from a canned form without either of the parties actually showing up to court to have any input into it.

But I guess you have to give Mr. Fox credit for taking what is essentially a pro-bono case. Stacy paid him a retainer of merely couple hundred dollars by endorsing the child support checks I wrote to her for the month of April ("I always spend the money you give me on the kids, Dave" her words..). I am sure he knew he won't get any further payment from her yet dutifully finished out the trial for her. Even flew in from Texas to where he relocated to for the trial. I over heard him saying this was his final trial/case in Florida and he was happy to have represented her as she hugged him good bye after the trial.