Help Me Protect My Children
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My name is Deanna and I have a friend who is in desperate need of financial help as she is approaching a court date to determine the custody situation for her younger children. I have known her and some of her children now for several years through our church. I will take the funds that are raised and 100% of them will be used to pay for her legal needs that are listed at the end of her story. These fees will be due and payable very soon.
Here is her story.
"My children and I need immediate help. I am sorry to ask this when there is so much need in the world, but we have no other option at this time.
I am a law-abiding mother, raised by military parents who taught me that if I work hard, serve my community, love God and trust Christ, life would go well, but life hasn’t turned out to be that simple for my children and me.
From the the time we started our family, my former husband had been passively and subtly abusive—mocking me in front of the children, lying to them about what I had said or done so as to make himself look like the parent who was on their side and to make them think I was unreasonable, turning the children against one another so as to isolate and control them more effectively, undermining my trust in others, damaging my children’s confidence in their education and ability to learn, and even subverting the moral and Christian values I thought we agreed on and were trying to teach our children.
Several years ago, my now-ex-husband moved our family to another state almost 1500 miles away. After we moved and the children and I were isolated, his true colors began to show. He became a ticking bomb, whose fuse was short and unpredictable. Whereas before he had been passively and subtly abusive, once he had no more accountability and I had no supportive friends nearby, his emotional abuse became overt and aggressive, even to the point of his threatening the whole family with a rifle when he became angry over a small and unintentional infraction by one of our children.
A few years later, he walked out, taking our oldest son. I had no resources to fall back on, yet I persevered, finding work I could do at home to try to feed and clothe our six younger children.
The divorce left me with very little. One way that he had been controlling us was through shutting me out of financial decisions and keeping me from any knowledge about our finances, so I lacked information regarding our investments, and he was able to hide most of our assets from the divorce court. I came into the marriage with a solid and hard-earned nest egg; I left it with the clothes on my back.
Once he left, the bank foreclosed on our house because he stopped paying the mortgage, so the children and I moved into a rented farmhouse and supplemented our income by raising pigs and chickens. Things were hard, but we were getting by. Then the farmhouse was sold, and we had to move again.
Throughout these five years since he walked out, the legal battle has been almost continuous. He has traded his gun for a gavel. Even after I was granted physical and legal custody and the court praised the results achieved in homeschooling efforts and results, my ex-husband legally challenged every decision I made regarding our minor children. Most of the small amount of child support and alimony I was receiving went to pay for attorneys to defend myself and my children in court.
Also during this time, some of our younger children were molested by a relative while under their father’s care. Because their father covered for the offending relative, there was no legal record or conviction for the assaults in criminal court. This relative is not supposed to have unsupervised time with the younger children, yet my ex-husband ignores the court-ordered safety plan when they visit him and allows this person access to the children.
He has ignored and continues to ignore court orders regarding child support and alimony payments and, at one point, withheld the younger children from me for six months. However, because there were no physical bruises and the children were too scared of him to talk about his abuse, no officers of the court would listen to me or defend me or my children.
When we had to move away from the farmhouse, I decided to move back to the state where we married and raised out children so that I would have support from friends here. Before leaving, I gave proper legal notice according to my attorney, but my ex-husband is wealthy and understands how to use the courts to drain my resources. Since moving many months ago, I have had to travel back to the state where my ex-husband lives several times for court-related issues.
My ex-husband has succeeded in alienating our older children from me. One of them is a teenager. He will not speak to me now with anything less than disdain since moving in with him; this son is no longer getting the B’s and C’s in school that he used to get, but is now getting D’s and F’s with no consequences. There is almost no supervision of any of the children when they are with him. My ex doesn’t care if his children succeed, he only seems to want to hurt me, using them as weapons against me whenever possible.
My attorney had to recuse herself for lack of payment. I have been trying to represent myself for the last few months, but that is taking a toll on my health. Most importantly, this is putting me at a legal disadvantage in court. I fear I will lose custody of my younger sons because of their father’s skill at using the court to continue his control over us.
Our current needs are as follows:
Retainer for attorney: $10,000 – I can’t find an attorney who will take payments.
Sex Abuse expert witness: $1,500
Forensic Psychologist: $3,500
Reunification Therapist for my teenaged son who is temporarily with his father, even though I have legal custody: $3,000
God has placed the most amazing friends in our lives to support us, but this dire financial need is beyond them. Their ministry to us has been in other areas, such as childcare when I have to fly out of state for court, helping me with my resume, and helping me find resources for things like local food pantries.
With your help as I seek justice for my children and myself in this very unjust situation, despite everything that has happened in the last several years, I have great hope that the younger boys and I can continue to create a joyful, stable, and productive life here away from the day-to-day undermining of my ex-husband.
Thank you for reading this far and for any help you can give.
Here is her story.
"My children and I need immediate help. I am sorry to ask this when there is so much need in the world, but we have no other option at this time.
I am a law-abiding mother, raised by military parents who taught me that if I work hard, serve my community, love God and trust Christ, life would go well, but life hasn’t turned out to be that simple for my children and me.
From the the time we started our family, my former husband had been passively and subtly abusive—mocking me in front of the children, lying to them about what I had said or done so as to make himself look like the parent who was on their side and to make them think I was unreasonable, turning the children against one another so as to isolate and control them more effectively, undermining my trust in others, damaging my children’s confidence in their education and ability to learn, and even subverting the moral and Christian values I thought we agreed on and were trying to teach our children.
Several years ago, my now-ex-husband moved our family to another state almost 1500 miles away. After we moved and the children and I were isolated, his true colors began to show. He became a ticking bomb, whose fuse was short and unpredictable. Whereas before he had been passively and subtly abusive, once he had no more accountability and I had no supportive friends nearby, his emotional abuse became overt and aggressive, even to the point of his threatening the whole family with a rifle when he became angry over a small and unintentional infraction by one of our children.
A few years later, he walked out, taking our oldest son. I had no resources to fall back on, yet I persevered, finding work I could do at home to try to feed and clothe our six younger children.
The divorce left me with very little. One way that he had been controlling us was through shutting me out of financial decisions and keeping me from any knowledge about our finances, so I lacked information regarding our investments, and he was able to hide most of our assets from the divorce court. I came into the marriage with a solid and hard-earned nest egg; I left it with the clothes on my back.
Once he left, the bank foreclosed on our house because he stopped paying the mortgage, so the children and I moved into a rented farmhouse and supplemented our income by raising pigs and chickens. Things were hard, but we were getting by. Then the farmhouse was sold, and we had to move again.
Throughout these five years since he walked out, the legal battle has been almost continuous. He has traded his gun for a gavel. Even after I was granted physical and legal custody and the court praised the results achieved in homeschooling efforts and results, my ex-husband legally challenged every decision I made regarding our minor children. Most of the small amount of child support and alimony I was receiving went to pay for attorneys to defend myself and my children in court.
Also during this time, some of our younger children were molested by a relative while under their father’s care. Because their father covered for the offending relative, there was no legal record or conviction for the assaults in criminal court. This relative is not supposed to have unsupervised time with the younger children, yet my ex-husband ignores the court-ordered safety plan when they visit him and allows this person access to the children.
He has ignored and continues to ignore court orders regarding child support and alimony payments and, at one point, withheld the younger children from me for six months. However, because there were no physical bruises and the children were too scared of him to talk about his abuse, no officers of the court would listen to me or defend me or my children.
When we had to move away from the farmhouse, I decided to move back to the state where we married and raised out children so that I would have support from friends here. Before leaving, I gave proper legal notice according to my attorney, but my ex-husband is wealthy and understands how to use the courts to drain my resources. Since moving many months ago, I have had to travel back to the state where my ex-husband lives several times for court-related issues.
My ex-husband has succeeded in alienating our older children from me. One of them is a teenager. He will not speak to me now with anything less than disdain since moving in with him; this son is no longer getting the B’s and C’s in school that he used to get, but is now getting D’s and F’s with no consequences. There is almost no supervision of any of the children when they are with him. My ex doesn’t care if his children succeed, he only seems to want to hurt me, using them as weapons against me whenever possible.
My attorney had to recuse herself for lack of payment. I have been trying to represent myself for the last few months, but that is taking a toll on my health. Most importantly, this is putting me at a legal disadvantage in court. I fear I will lose custody of my younger sons because of their father’s skill at using the court to continue his control over us.
Our current needs are as follows:
Retainer for attorney: $10,000 – I can’t find an attorney who will take payments.
Sex Abuse expert witness: $1,500
Forensic Psychologist: $3,500
Reunification Therapist for my teenaged son who is temporarily with his father, even though I have legal custody: $3,000
God has placed the most amazing friends in our lives to support us, but this dire financial need is beyond them. Their ministry to us has been in other areas, such as childcare when I have to fly out of state for court, helping me with my resume, and helping me find resources for things like local food pantries.
With your help as I seek justice for my children and myself in this very unjust situation, despite everything that has happened in the last several years, I have great hope that the younger boys and I can continue to create a joyful, stable, and productive life here away from the day-to-day undermining of my ex-husband.
Thank you for reading this far and for any help you can give.
Organiser and beneficiary
Deanna Buchanan
Organiser
Bondurant, IA
T B
Beneficiary
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