jbeck
Regular Member
I am requesting assistance in a possible lawsuit. My fiance has been engaged in a nasty custody hearing for two years with his ex-wife in Montana. There are many reasons mostly all centering around the various forms of child abuse. My father stated once that she was the worst mother he had ever heard of (a practicing attorney in GA for 15 years). Nevertheless the judge passed a final ruling in February not only stating that my fiance not receive custody, but actually reduced his visiatation time. He lists in his findings of fact the issue that we carry and even worse openly carry "for almost every waking moment". Additionally, once while being harassed by his ex-wife, we had the audacity to tell the cops she called on us that we were not going to disarm ourselves on our own property. Which of course is our legal right, but was also used against him. We are licensed in the state of GA to do so. My fiance, a non-active marine with no criminal history, a business owner, and a contributing/upstanding member of our community was penalized for this and given 3 weeks visitation per year. Ironically the judge even told our attorney that he purposefully did so "off the record" of course. Further, they penalized him for allowing his 8 year old daughter to shoot some of the smaller weapons even though we had photographic evidence that he was physically holding the guns with his arms wrapped around his daughter and she was only pulling the trigger. We live on 7 acres in the country where it is legal to shoot on your property and have further made the area safe with a 7 foot tall 5 foot thick backstop to the target range made out of logs and 3 packed loads of dirt. Needless to say we were shocked and enraged to see our 2nd amendment rights held against us. Especially since we were under the impression Montana was more open minded towards gun control than GA. We have already appealed the decision. The appellate judge simply took 5 minutes out of her busy schedule and rubber stamped the ruling previously made. We are not sure how to proceed. The town is not large, and unfortunately there are not many judges and lawyers to choose from. Nobody seems willing to fight this issue being as his attorney and his ex-wife's attorney fish together, and our attorney and the District Court Judge go hunting together. We know there is the option of a Supreme Court hearing but are unsure the process in a civil case on how to get there. Plus we would need counsel willing to do so. We want to know if there is any way to appeal this in a GA court where our state laws would not be used against us as a judge here would be more familiar with them. If not, is there a lawyer in Montana that would be willing to take the appeals case or lawsuit for infringement of rights and not be scared to piss people off. We have already sunk 12,000 into this only to lose more time with his daughter each time we go to court. We would be happy to change counsel and spend our money more wisely if we could.