For those of you who do not yet know me: I live in a small country in the heart of South America, about 500km away from the Capital (about 7 hours bus trip, and if you are really suicidal about 3 hours by car). Even though both of my parents and I were born and raised here, we are still considered foreigners and unfortunately of the rich sort. Considering my cultural roots in a very conservative cristian religious community (were I still live today), that is not so far off since my community and several others of the same background in this country are a big powerhouse in the agribusiness. So the rich part is not so far off for many members of my community, though definately not for me and my inmediate family. And as you might have guessed by the tags, for legal reasons I have to very discreet right now, so I can not really give out a lot of specific details about my current location and situation. Suffice to say that I have been reading BCTS for quite some time now until I decided to sign up in order to vote/kudo and comment.

About six years ago my then wife started taking me to court, because the easy and leisure life in riches had not panned out for her. And she is now using my gender issues - that she knew about before our wedding, and even encouraged for some time - to try and get me thrown in jail as a pervert and peadophile, and gain sole custody of my 2 daughters.

For the past five and a half years I have been a single parent for my girls, even though she moved away only four and a half years ago. Since then both girls have lived with me, first with a temporary physical custody order and then two years ago a "permanent" physical custody order handed down by the court of appeals. Since then I have been treated as the worst crimminal by her, even though she was the one who did not comply with the visitation schedule set by the court at her request, letting up to 7 months pass between visitations.

All this crazyness has caused me to start law school. Even though I am only half through the 5 year course, I have become quite the expert on family law in country. And I am now doing most all the "legwork", preparing all the briefs to be filed and doing the follow-up, with my mentor-lawyer just checking for correctnes and signing the paperwork. Thats a small country for you!

Since my ex would not aknowledge a privately negotiated visitation agreemet, I filed for a court ordered visitation schedule. Instead of responding like a responsible adult, she manipulated the judge into "ordering" a temporary visitation for allmost the complete summer break with the girls. Right from the start she started interfering with my contact with my daughters and refused to honor her obligations under this "agreement". So at the end of the visitation period I had to file for restitution. Then she beat up the older one, resulting in me making an emergency trip to the capital with my mother to rescue my daughter and bring her back home. The end result: even though the court ordered the restitution of the younger daughter, the judge then refused to carry out his own decree. Meanwhile the ex got a public defender to appeal violating a lot of procedural laws and even the national constitution. And somehow she obtain the support of some very influential ultra-feminist politicians, who are putting pressure on judicial system in order to skew the results in favor of the "poor innocent" woman and against the "rich bastard" man. To the point where the Court of Appeals has thrown out their very consistent criteria of many years and ignored the confessions of wrongdoing of the ex and the strong statement of the court psychologist about the psychological abuse my daughter suffers at the hands of her mother to award the physical custody of "kidnapping" victim to the "kidnapper", separating the sisters against current doctrine and law of not separating siblings. Since the beginning of February I have absolutely no idea where my daughter is located, and if or were she goes to school. Of course I have appealled to the Supreme Court.

Today I received a warning through my mentor-lawyer that the ex is preparing to file for allimony against me, possibly sueing for about 150-200% or more my current income. And until the end of the proceedings, I would be forced to pay that amount without the legal possibility of having the excess applyed towards future payments. And she has also repeatedly stated that she intends to also clean out my parents. Unfortunately the divorce is caught up in this whole mess of different law-suits and not going anywhere fast.

So now I have to get ready to file several more law-suits to protect my family (my daughters and my parents) and myself. That means another sleepless night of work for me. Then I also have to start a very intense lobby (unfortunately that is how the system works in this country). Top that with off with my older daughter going through her teen rebellion and the "normal" emotional flip-flopping, and you might understand how stress level just goes through the roof.

My own gender issues have been forced deep into the proverbial closet, and that is also causing me a lot of stress and even depression. But for the good of my daughters I have to make it through this crisis. Thankfully I do have a good therapist in the capital and my parents here who help me with my daughter. My dad is not very understanding of my gender issues, though my mom is trying to be understanding and emphatic. So that helps with some of the day-to-day issues.

So if you can spare a few positive thoughts and/or prayers for me and my family, that would be greatly appreciated.

Jessica Nicole