Help Bring Mil and Mak Home

My husband, Mark, has kept me from finalizing our divorce and from having any contact with our young children for almost 3 years now. When I filed for divorce in June of 2020, Mark declared judicial warfare by way of extensive fraud -jurisdictional gamesmanship, multiplicity of suits- and through several maliciously ex parte requests to change conservatorship. Mark weaponized the judicial process as well as our young children to hurt me for leaving him, but he is hurting the children more than anyone else. My babies were five and seven the last time Mark allowed me to be their mother. Prior to our divorce, I sat my career aside when our eldest child was born; I was a stay-at-home mom until they started school at which time I started teaching fulltime. I was a high school English teacher and a graduate student working towards becoming an educational diagnostician, and I was extremely close with my children. Mark was not, and I have no idea how they’re doing or the circumstances they’ve been in. I do know that they have been forced to live without the nurturing and loving presence of the mother that raised them for all this time -for almost three years, my babies have been forced to wonder where I’ve been and why I abandoned them. Mark has kept them from the rest of my family as well. They grew up surrounded by my parents -their adoring grandparents- as well as a loving aunt and uncle and the cousins that were their best of friends.

I am requesting donations for attorney’s fees because I have literally done all that I can do on my own at this point. I know my babies have been strong and held hope for all this time, and I do not want them to give up on that hope, but they have been through so much. Those poor kids have been forced to apply a sense of reasoning to a senselessly tragic situation in which not even rational adults can wrap their minds around. As for me and what I have lost: there was no finding of endangerment, no due process where I could understand that I was going to lose my children or why; there was no opportunity to fight for the multitude of fundamental rights that were stolen from me. During the pendency of the divorce suit, Mark and I had joint custody of the children until they were ripped away from me on January 7, 2021 as a means of punishment when Mark filed an emergency ex parte request for writ of habeas and writ of attachment because I had taken my children to a therapy appointment the day before -which was a day that was not my day to have the children. The judge denied the writs as unnecessary as the children were back at school and in no danger whatsoever; rather, Mark used the emergency proceeding as an opportunity to ask the judge to “temporarily” suspend my possession and access rights, and Mark’s request was concealed in his writ application without me even knowing. The judge was frustrated with me based on Mark’s ex parte claims that I had a “brazen disregard for the court’s orders;” again, I never knew of the claims or had a chance to defend myself against them. The judge intended to revisit his improper means of punishment three weeks later at final trial on January 26, 2021; however, during the divorce trial, the judge improperly granted Mark’s oral request for directed verdict when Mark claimed that there was no legitimate marriage. The judge entered an order that dismissed my “claim of informal marriage,” so I had no way to know that the judge had actually dismissed the divorce case altogether. I was then misled to believe that the court still had jurisdiction to proceed over child custody issues the next day, January 27, 2021. Following that day of trial, the judge rendered memorandum orders granting Mark and I joint managing conservatorship, but the orders rendered were never signed and entered because the court did not have jurisdiction. I tried to see the children as I believed the orders rendered were legitimate, but Mark and his attorneys would not let me. Mark obtained a fraudulent temporary protective order from a court that does not even exist on February 12, 2021. There is no record of the proceeding, and Mark later admitted on record that he was not even there and that his attorneys went on his behalf, but the record shows that it is more likely that his attorneys forged the judge’s signature. Mark’s final PO was then entered on March 3, 2021. I was still unaware that the court had lost jurisdiction over the children, but Mark was well aware; and he used his PO cause to confer general jurisdiction back to the court to enter Mark’s proposed custody orders which awarded him sole conservatorship and conditioned my possession and access rights on his written and signed approval. Mark’s PO case was considered a new custody case on appeal, but the custody orders were styled and entered in the dismissed divorce case, so that I could never challenge them or even understand why.

Mark’s litigation abuse didn’t stop at subduing my right to divorce and stealing my children without due process. Mark and his attorneys ruined my life and made subsequent defamatory claims to justify what they had already done; they also tried to keep me from my records and from accessing the higher courts for review via an unconstitutional statute that treats me as though I am a “vexatious litigant” even though I have never sued anyone in my entire life. In the aftermath, I was forced to survive the unfathomable grief of senselessly losing my babies, and it was an ever-present rage that allowed me to keep moving through that crippling grief so that I could find the strength to get up and fight back. There was no CPS involvement to provide for the right to appointment of an attorney that could help me. At first, I was clueless about the issues with jurisdiction over my children; I was clueless about all of it, but I knew something was wrong. I fought back and learned to initiate my own appeals. I channeled my rage therein the appellate court as I came to fully understand the severe and malicious injustice that permeated countless of my most precious and fundamental rights. Mark and his team of attorneys did all they could to silence my calls for justice -to save themselves, their reputations, and their careers at the expense of my children’s innocence. Mark and his unethical attorneys tried repeatedly to cause the dismissal of my appeals, and when they failed, Mark sought repeated delays; he tied the appeals up for nearly two-and-a-half years. As the days of tears and screaming out loud turned into years, I was hit with the reality of complacency with a broken civil justice system whereby we the people seem to have an abundance of blind faith in a system where children are bought and sold to the highest bidder. I was stigmatized and presumed to be guilty of “doing something to deserve it” as people would often ask me what I did; the reality is that my case, while extreme and exceptional in many regards, happens all the time because the brokenness of our unregulated civil court system has yet to truly reach public consciousness. Mark was able to do whatever he wanted after he harassed my counsel -43k in the first 3 months of divorce litigation; he then canceled court-ordered mediation and insisted on proceeding to trial as I was forced to represent myself against him and his team of attorneys; he drug me through countless hearings that spanned multiple courts and jurisdictions. Simply stated, Mark has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to tie our underlying divorce case and associated ancillary cases up in knots so that I would never be able to understand the issues or address the outcomes of his malicious and fraudulent effect. Mark, however, failed to consider my strength as a mother. There were also angels along the way that gave me hope. I consistently felt the presence of the Justices of the Dallas Court of Appeals as though they were angels in my corner that would not allow such injustice to stand.

I was afforded hope and faith in justice, and with that, I found the strength to survive to this moment. My cases were consolidated, I have most of the records I need, and I have been directed to address the unjust orders back in the trial court, but I cannot go back and defend myself and my children without an attorney. I have found counsel that understands my case and is able to represent me, but I do not have the money. I have only recently found my way past this trauma to get back to working and rebuilding my life. And, giving up is not an option either because my children need me. One day, I hope that they can understand that I never abandoned them and that I have carried them in my heart in everything I have done in their absence, but for now, I just need to get back to them as soon as possible. Money should not be an obstacle where those fundamental rights are concerned, but unfortunately, we have yet to break that barrier. I am not one to ask for help, but I have no other choice. I need a miracle at this point, and I am asking for your help in anyway possible even if it is in the form of prayers, or information as to where else I can go for help, or to share my story and pass my request for help along. Thanks in advance for any and all consideration and assistance with my miracle.