Please Help Michael Keep His Visitation

Hi, my name is Shannon and I am fundraising for my dear friend Michael Hearn.

In 2018 Michael’s marriage ended. He filed for divorce due to irreconcilable differences. Prior to this, they were married for 11 years. They had 2 girls who are now 14 and 11. During their marriage she was active-duty military, and he was the primary caretaker of their girls until the divorce. Once the divorce was settled, he was awarded 50/50 custody. She went from deploying and being on assignments to an undeployable unit to maintain primary custody of the girls.

Since the first divorce settlement they have gone back to court twice for custody resulting in the 50/50 custody being restricted to two full days a month and a weekly dinner. He has another court date for Tuesday, November 7th, 2023, to determine further custody. Currently he only sees them on Tuesday evenings for dinner and every other Saturday when she allows it. We do not know why she is seeking to minimize this time further. He has not missed a child support payment. He is a model citizen with a clean record. He went from being the primary parent for the majority of their children’s lives to only seeing them 28 hours a month.

Michael has fought to remain in their lives and is still fighting for more time. This GoFundMe is going first to legal fees to fight to keep what custody he still has and would be greatly beneficial to the upcoming court date on November 7th before going to any of the other financial burdens he is facing. Children benefit greatly from having both parents in their lives regardless of the relationship status of their parents. He is fighting to be in his daughter’s lives because it is important for them to know their father will do whatever it takes to be there for them. The relationship with their father is just as important as the relationship with their mother.

Michael is a loving father who has been through a lot of hardships in the past few years. He was a stay-at-home dad for 11 years, but he lost his home, his marriage, and his job in 2018. He filed for divorce due to irreconcilable differences, and the judge kicked him out of the house. He became homeless and jobless, living out of his car at a rest stop. He moved in with his brother, but he had to drive 5 hours every other weekend to see his kids. He was told by the court that he had to move back to the county where they lived by December of 2020, or he would lose all visitation rights.

He worked hard to save enough money to move and find a place to live. He got a seasonal job doing taxes, but the covid lockdown made it hard for him to find full-time work. He sold his belongings and ran up credit card debt to survive. He finally got a full-time job in 2021, but he had to move again because his apartment had no air conditioning and because of this his kids couldn’t visit him. He also got sick with covid four times, which drastically affected his health.

He has been working overtime to pay his bills and his debt, but his company stopped offering overtime in March 2023. He has nothing left to sell and no extra income. He can barely afford food and rent, let alone a lawyer to fight for his kids. His car is 15 years old and dying, and he needs it to see his kids and go to work. He can’t claim any covid relief because he can’t claim his kids on his taxes, or in order to receive any relief. He can't afford to see a psychiatrist and get his prescriptions refilled. He is depressed, exhausted, and desperate.

He needs your help. He needs money to pay for a lawyer, to maintain his car, and to afford a psychiatrist. He needs money to keep his kids in his life. He doesn’t have a safety net or anyone else to turn to. He doesn’t know how much to ask for, but he knows that every dollar counts. He knows that GoFundMe will take a cut and that he will have to pay taxes on the donations, so he needs more than he thinks.

Please donate whatever you can and share this page with your friends and family. Michael is a good man who loves his kids more than anything. He deserves a chance to be happy and healthy. He deserves a chance to keep his current custody arrangement, which is already much less than it should be.

Thank you for your kindness and generosity.