I am a JD (Juris Doctor, law degree) candidate at Indiana University Maurer School of Law. I started there this August. It has been an amazing experience. My main “doctrinal” courses (required, no electives in “1L” year) are Civil Procedure, Torts, and Contracts, and I have great professors for each and enjoy class very much. There is a lot of reading, mostly cases (and Legal Eagle’s advice for briefing cases was spot on). Cold calls are not that bad, so long as one is prepared. Outside of doctrinal courses, I have a legal writing course, which has been challenging and useful, and a legal professions course, which has been… present (perhaps more useful for those who have never worked professionally). The 2024 class is amazing; I know way more people than I ever did in undergrad, and they come from diverse locations, backgrounds, and undergraduate studies, and I expect them to make the curve very difficult.
Mostly I don’t expect law school to benefit personally in my struggle to get justice for my son and I, to bring David home, to avoid being robbed by inexplicably angry “stbx” (soon-to-be-ex) wife, although the way it’s been dragging out, maybe I’ll have graduated before it’s over. Since they’re trying to get me into court in a foreign forum without basis (although they’ve attempted a long list of sneaky tricks, lies, omissions, and misrepresentations), the case is before the state supreme court. I only have two concerns: that the lies and misrepresentations are so deep that we lose on confusion, or, political shenanigans, including making new law/overturning precedents. But the opinions out of the court appear to be fair, so I have hope. If:
- the facts are presented accurately–they are trying to sneak in some things as “facts” that are actually conclusions of law, and
- existing common law (case law) is followed, and not overturned nor new law created,
then we prevail without any difficulty. Big picture, it’s wrong to haul someone into a foreign state and rob them; it goes against 14th amendment due process rights; and at every lower level of detail they have no case. Public policy is against it: someone ought not be able to run off with a child and plundered money and drag the person they harmed and broke their vows to into any random state court of their choosing. It’s still a long fight, but will at least for the most part (possibly excepting custody) be close to home rather than the added injustice of being haled into a foreign court which has a lot of corruption hovering around it, perhaps more than is typical for family courts. For example, judges bringing armed bailiffs to parties’ houses to loot property; in fact the family court judge in my case was admonished for it by the high court.
Purpose and Goal
But the larger picture is that I want to be able to help others finding themselves in this situation. While I admire what Melissa Isaak is doing fighting for fathers and men’s rights in family law and other areas in Alabama, fathers are not the only victims of abuses like David and I have gone through–unjust separation, withholding, kidnapping, perhaps narcissism, parental alienation, and so forth–and so I wouldn’t restrict my clients to fathers only. It may work out that way if they happen to experience this abuse the most, though. I want to fight to help reunite separated parents and children, and contribute in any way I can to justice for those parents and children in the more general sense, i.e., passing presumption of 50/50 custody that has been so wonderful in states where it is in effect, or helping make good case law that makes plunder and kidnapping difficult. Running off and withholding a child from a fit parent ought not to be possible, and if done it ought not to take years to undo (justice delayed is justice denied), and certainly ought not to give the kidnapper cash and prizes at the expense of the hardworking victim!
