Tammy Martellotto's Legal Expenses

From Tammy: Update—I’ve now been fighting this part of the battle for two years and have run out of ways to pay my attorneys.  This battle has been dragged out two years now and delayed over and over again due to tactics by my abuser, burying me deeper and deeper in attorney and court fees and repeated difficult underhanded behaviors and threats.  After 23 years of a horribly abusive marriage, a long stay in a trauma treatment facility to help me fight for my life and begin to understand reality, and coming home to escalation I couldn’t fathom, I finally had to call the police and found myself sitting at the courthouse begging for protection.  In March, 2017, I was granted protective order injunctions and a criminal trespass warning for the kids and me, but I had no idea it would begin a battle I cannot, thus far, get us out of because of the crazy tactics of this man who was once my husband.  He has made false allegations, dragged me into (false) contempt hearings, filed complaints against our trusted counselors causing them to have to terminate us as clients and to have to retain attorneys themselves, dragged me into hours long deposition, caused us to lose therapists/visitation supervisors/guardians ad litem as soon as they figure out the truth, violated the injunctions and continues threatening me among many other things.  I’m working several part time jobs, taking care of my children, and navigating a brutal process I never imagined.  After being out of the work force taking care of my kids, I’ve gotten as many credit cards as my credit has allowed in addition to working as much as possible and I’m maxed out and in a deep hole of debt I have no idea how I will climb out of.  We are now facing another hearing and another final trial date and I PRAY it becomes final this time.  I have to come up with more money for attorney and court fees and have no idea how at this point.  This has taken a huge emotional and physical and financial toll… Asking for help isn’t easy for anyone and I struggle with that greatly;  I am at a point where I have no options left and am feeling desperate.  I would be grateful for any possible help.  While I don’t know how I would ever pay it back, I can promise to pay it forward  for as long as I’m breathing.  For most of my life I was told and thought what I was living in was “normal” and I thought I was simply too weak to handle normal.  I now know what I was living in was horribly and outrageously abusive and no one should have to live in that.  My dream is to go back to school to become a therapist, myself, and it is my mission to help survivors of sexual and other abuses find freedom and learn what truly “normal” is.  It is now also my mission to change whatever small pieces of this system I can so that these abusers cannot so successfully put victims through this kind of hell.  First I have to get my kids and me through this awful battle and I will continue to fight with everything I have and I desperately need some help.  Thank you for any help at all…anything would help.