Leaving the Unleavalbe

10 years ago I left the unleavable....a controlling, abusive, Moroccan Muslim living in the state of NY. At the time (2006) NY was a fault state. This meant that a person must have a reason to get divorced. Since we had been married for almost 10 years, a single report of abuse was not enough to get a divorce in the state of NY. According to the NY state law..."multiple accounts of abuse were needed before a divorce could legally be granted". Crazy! Luckily this law is no longer in place. So, even though my ex was having an affair with his secretary, hitting our children and locking them up in the dark and was physically abusive to me (only once), I was denied my divorce because my lawyer did not prove that multiple acts of abuse against me (not the children) had been recorded with the police, by law, one was simply not enough. This allowed my ex to transfer all of our savings into different accounts, foreclose our house and make all of our family funds inaccessible to our three children and myself. He then proceeded to take us to court with endless frivolous lawsuits.....he lost every frivolous lawsuit! I, however, was granted sole custody of the children and granted the right to move to Oregon where I could move in with my parents and have my family help me raise our children (we were penniless,150% of my income went to our lawyers).

My ex refuses to pay child support and refuses to pay the over $180,000 he owes in legal fee judgments that we were granted after he lost every court case that he pursued against my family and myself.

Today, 10 years later, I still have unpaid legal fees and all 6 of us still live in my parent 3 bedroom house. Now, my oldest son is ready to go to college. I now have an excellent job that pays well so we do not qualify for much assistance with college tuition despite having a debt. I have been saving up some money for a house so my parents can have the retirement they deserve, yet still am unable to pay for a home and college and pay for life.

If you decide to donate to our cause, you are allowing 3 amazing children to go to college and have a home, a home they should have gotten if their father had simply divided our assets and paid child support and not frivolously sued me and my family for over 8 years.

The legal system allowed me to have sole custody of our children and move our children 3500 miles away from their abusive father yet the legal system fails at collecting child support (at least in OR and FL- NY was very good at collecting child support). The courts also greatly fail to collect legal fee judgments- these judgments are worthless because they cost more money to collect than they are worth. The courts also allow frivolous lawsuits to continue forever by the same person. It seems that a simple law that states, if you owe someone legal fees due to frivolous lawsuits that you can not take that person to court again until the legal fees are paid in full. This seems so simple. Or, if you want to sue someone for the 20th time.... you must pay for the lawyers for both side. If you win, you can collect the legal fees back from the other party.If you loose, which you will if it is frivolous, the innocent party is not out $180,000 that is uncollectable. I think this is a simple solution and would not only protect the innocent but it would also help prevent endless, costly and timely lawsuits from wasting the courts time and would allow actual cases to be resolved in a more timely fashion.

The law does not protect the abused. It allows the abusive to continue to abuse their victims legally and financially forever.

I left the unleavable.

My ex threatened me that if I left him, he would destroy me financially and he also promised me he would take the kids where I would never see them again (an Islamic country- there have been no successful return of any children abducted to Morocco). He failed at his promise to take the children away from me forever, yet he has succeeded at financially bankrupting our family. Please help.

Funds will be used for my children's college education and for our home. Any leftover funds will go to support abused women and support all efforts to pass a law that would require abusive men to pay all unpaid legal fee judgments before they are allowed to take their abused spouse to court. I will call it the Martin Law....Stop abusive men/women from using the court system to continue to abuse and control their victims.

Thank you

Teresa