Without a lawyer Ms Motola screamed at me about fictitious bracelets I had never purchased at Fortunoff's as example of imaginary asset dissipation. Since I hadn't done this I asked her why she was mentioning things I had never done but she only got angrier. She threatened me with jail twice and did all she could to scare and intimidate me.

I have to say she did scare me ams for good reason it turned out. Though the court appointed accounting neutral had completed his financial evaluation of me without issue and even commented in writing on my cooperation, once I couldn't afford an attorney any longer and with collusive bullies like Ms Motola deciding my fate, I was precluded from presenting evidence I had already provided the court. Ms Motola had an old friend with a favor in Mr Rosen and as pro se, insider friendships and favors prevailed over due process and facts. The way to change divorce in New York is to open the back rooms of Westchester divorce courts where a culture of dishonesty, kept alive by insiders like Motola, lives to this day and remove the corruption that grow from boundless billings dolled out by unregulated elected judges and their staffs.

It strikes me as absurd that divorce attorney Lee Rubinstein asserts in this article that there are due process protections for divorce proceedings in New York that guarantee a 'a day in court'. Mr Rubinstein, you are wrong - there are no constitutional due process protections in divorce in NY. Besides, the people who need constitutional protections are litigants from attorneys like Rubinstein who will bill unscrupulously to litigate such nonsense along with the Judges who order fees for this scam. Due process as outlined in the 14th amendment doesn't exist for unrepresented and under represented litigants forced into collusive trials who lose everything without a jury or recourse against the secretive, elected Judges who order massive handout payments for their friends and colleagues in the divorce industry.

As I reported in this blog over a year ago the Divorce Reform Bill of 2010 was a disaster from day one. They type of reform we need is as follows:

1) proactive ethics enforcement of attorneys. Attorneys who lie in court, inflate billings, mislead clients, bill unscrupulously leaving a family to poverty, extend and complicate cases and exploit close judge-attorney relationships must be harshly disciplined.

2). Judges must begin to verify the source of divorce lawyer payments. Attorneys must be required to report payments to the court along with the source. The Supreme Court has to stop being a partner in money laundering and tax evasion. If a 'broke' client can pay $100,000 in secret to a lawyer there must be severe penalty for both lawyer and litigant.

This is the most important reform. If judges make litigants document attorneys fees as banks do mortgage payments a lot of the problems will stop as the money will dry up. Attack the illegal money flying around the Divorce Industry.

3) End the conflicts of interest in the experts system that allows judges to appoint the same experts time and time again in cases. Why does an incompetent accountant willing to bend the rules like Jerry DeFeo of Westchester get hundreds of thousands of court ordered fees a year when there are many qualified accountants with fewer inside connections than DeFeo? Why can a court appointed neutral evaluator be permitted to represent either litigant as expert witness with a doubling of fees once their impartial report is done? Wheres the impartiality when the impartial is for sale to either side.

4) trash the attorney ethics system. new York and Connecticut are the last two states to solely fund attorney discipline via tax money yet these hearings are secretive and fail to discipline in over 99.5% of cases that they see

Sophia Hollander did a good thing to report on the failure of divorce reform. How about some investigative journalism around my accusations of mass civil rights violations of pro se and the broken regulatory systems of the divorce industry? We need publications like the Wall Street Journal to take notice of this terrible partnership of New York Politics and the subversive Divorce Industry of New York.

Here's where the RICO investigation into New York divorce must begin.

Think about it and you'll see where I'm coming from. Think of an electrician or a plumber for starters, they can walk into a 2 million dollar home and send a 200 dollar bill to clean a sink. If the sink backs up again they generally come back for free to re fix and if there is new work they will charge. Think of a lawyer to sell this 2 mil house, he may bill about 3 to 5 k for the closing as he has competitors that will do the transaction for a flat rate. Now think of the architect, engineer and other people who built the 2 mil house. They charged their standard fees and left. If there were overages on their estimates the costs are usually negotiated and a responsive court will address problems and take the licenses of ripoff artists. If he quits mid stream his name is still on the permits and he makes problems for himself as well as his customer. Now think of the thief who surreptitiously sneaks into the house and steals 25,000 of jewelry and a few electronics. He is caught and sent to jail for years.

Now think of the divorce lawyer. He doesn't sneak into the house, in fact he never enters it most likely yet he can show up to the closing and take all the proceedings with a friendly judges order. After his bill there is no one to complain to if it is outrageous. Statistics clearly prove that less than 1% of billing issues are solved in favor of the client. If he does bad work the only remedy is to pay him more until you can no longer pay. If you can't pay the lawyer has the state sanctioned right to quit and leave you defenseless. The lawyer can tell you the cost is $10,000 and charge you $1mil, no one will stop him and the court will back up nearly any fee request with the support of NY State Law.

So would you rather be the thief in the house stealing small items or the thief who steals the whole house? Would you rather be the contractor handing over an inflated bill knowing that there is an independent court that can revoke your livelihood or would you rather be the lawyer taking your clients and their children's home, savings and future with the court as your muscle to collect your bills?

I could keep going on but I think you get the point. Being a divorce lawyer in westchester country ,especially, is one of the only places you could can obtain a license to steal. Think of all the effort Bernie Madoff had to go through to run the sec and build a firm and compare to the minimal effort it takes to be a thief as a divorce lawyer.

The divorce rules are too complicated for individuals and with no civil rights protections of due process in new York courts and no monitors for pro se, even when their children are being taken from parents without lawyers, pro SE fail 100 percent of the time new York supreme court.

So in short, if you want to be a thief without the risk become a divorce lawyer and charge $350 an hour per paid. You may not become a billionaire but you'll make risk free living in a world with guaranteed fees and all you can eat billing. Take the house, the car, the life insurance, the comment savings, the children's savings, parents money, illegal money, etc. it's all fair game and all protected by new York state.

Go get that law degree and let the stealing begin!

The middle class are the perfect targets for this fraud because there are no free legal resources for people with income and most won't have them time or money to continue the fight after a devastating decisions. Of course children can't defend themselves and certainly court-assigned lawyers who are the supposed custodians for the children don't have the training as lawyers to advocate for children. A prime target family for the Divorce Industry has about $100k to $500k in savings, a few hundred thousand of equity in real estate and a few children. That's enough for each lawyer to take $150,000 or more, $25k for a legal guardian, $25k for a financial evaluator and possibly $25k or $50k for a custody evaluator. This bill of nearly $400,000 is a pretty typical price tag for a victim family walking blindly into two well-respected divorce lawyers in Westchester using the typical insider 'experts' aligned with a typical Judge who primarily has the interests of the Divorce Industry in mind that blatantly ignore the ethics standards they are chartered to enforce.

Of course 400k is only the price of admission, the punishments the courts extol are life long and often lead to financial ruin, public assistance, loss of children, depletion of savings and loss of financial independance. Why New York openly advocates for parents to deplete retirement and college savings to pay unscrupulous divorce professionals is a question that touches the core of the corruption problem.

The central question to me is "Why is New York a partner with this filthy industry?". Why does this industry have special regulatory bodies that are secretive and made up of local peers? Why does this industry have as recently as 2010 strong NY legislation that guarantees the payment of divorce lawyers? Why are elected Judges not supervised on the divorce bench when they are handing out hundreds of thousands of court ordered fees each and every week? Why are middle class families being thrown to the wolves by the New York State Legislature (See Suzi Oppenheimers failure of a bill - Divorce Reform Act of 2010).

The room for fraud in such an environment is vast and New York is negligent in its supervision of this industry. Via New York's willfull negligence supervising this rogue industry irreprable harm has been done to hundreds of thousands of children and many billions of wealth has been siphoned illegally by this predatory industry. Rather than supervising this lecherous industry New York is a partner than enables the fraud. New York tax payer money funds the muscle to enforce rulings, provides free office space, court rooms and court staff to facilitate mass billings and tax payers fund opaque and ineffective ethics enforcement bodies.

It's time for RICO investigations into the New York Divorce Industry. Taxpayers should not be funding this and New York should not be partner with such a corrupt industry that destroys families.

The SCU is benign and helpful to families when support and maintenance obligations are current but if you fall behind whether you are willfully behind, sick, unemployed, in between jobs or having a bad phase with money New York could care less about the reasons. There are no provisions in the laws for reasons. Once you are in the support collections unit of NY nothing matters but the bottom line, if you can't pay you will suffer big with an arsenal of strong-arm tactics and no method to stop the enforcement.

Arrears can be difficult to pay back while staying compliant with high monthly support obligations for most working parents. Even parents who are working hard to stay current with support orders will suffer aggressive SCU tactics to collect money that may not exist. The SCU has very few legal limits to their enforcement tactics and the only way to resolve matters is via child support magistrates who are difficult to see and uninterested in details or un-empowered and thinly staffed local offices that primarily serve low income families. Dealing with the SCU can be a very long term punishment for circumstances often outside of ones control that led to arrears such as unemployment, securities devaluation, business failure, etc. New York has no statute of limitations on divorce debt enforcement so problems with the SCU can be long term.

Child Support wage garnishments can lead to a debt spiral that often times leads to the loss of financial independence. When a family is robbed of their financial independence the cost to taxpayers and is immense and creates a drag on local economies. Once the debt spiral of wage garnishment begins victims have no legal protections from the array of enforcement tactics that they will suffer from the scu, other government agencies like the IRS or NY State tax or private creditors like banks. Bankruptcy code doesn't work, appeals are impossibly expensive and complicated, ethics enforcement doesn't exist. There is nowhere to turn for help or protection dealing with the array of problems that arise from garnishment including, but not limited to lateness of rent, taxes, mortgage, car, credit cards, destruction of credit record, etc., etc.. Unless one can double or triple their income these problems will compound until obligations emancipate - even if you are currently in compliance with the support orders.

While I've discussed in other blog posts the SCU's ability to garnish, levy, revoke drivers license, passport and professional licenses and intercept tax refunds I've learned of yet a new surprising power of the scu.

The scu was able to find out about a minor car accident I was in and they sent the other parties insurance company a garnishment notice replete with the details of my debts. Thankfully I'm making no claim and won't be receiving money but I'm simply amazed that NY State has access to such vast amounts of information to collect a debt that was unconstitutionally applied without due process protections.

What is the value of the Constitution when one can suffer such harsh punishments in a court including loss of children and financial independence without a jury or due process protections? How can a state government go to such lengths to enforce the rulings of kangaroo courts?

The RICOish aspect of NY Divorce is that once a motion is started there is no escape hatch. The billings will bankrupt you and if you go it alone you will be trapped in a system with no civil rights protections, no jury and tremendous bias to insiders.

My advice to all is file grievances and disciplinary actions against attorneys who overbill and judges who ignore evidence and bankrupt families. After the grievances fail raise the issue to your US Congressional Representative for referral to the Attorney General or FBI for RICO violations.

The New York State Law Revision Commission is reviewing aspects of the bill and let's hope that they overturn the entire bill. A bill that creates a new fault of 'no-fault' and simultaneously legislates alimony for life as a possible outcome of litigation is more fuel to the legal industry, who also have their bills guaranteed up-front in this bill.

This bill was a gift to the Divorce Industry and rip-off to the citizens of New York who fund the crimes of the Divorce Industry. The New York taxpayer funds this whole mess with state funded court rooms, judges, court support staff, settlement meeting rooms, free conference rooms, waiting areas for attorney networking, secret discipline committees and appeals courts.

In the end this whole fraud is about the money and it's time for outside regulation of the insular, politically protected NY Divorce Industry to examine the influence of money in this Industry.

The evaluation is one of the most blatant ripoff schemes I experienced in my divorce debacle. First of all, there were batteries of personality tests that were primarily multiple choice questions followed by short interviews and question answer sessions. At $250 hour these consumed well over $4,000 from the start. After the personality tests came the part that all angry parents pay for - a stage to tell your side of the story to someone who cares more about his class schedule than anything your saying. Luckily we also pay $250 an hour to write it all down so just in case he wasn't listening or reading anything provided, he was able to copy what we wrote that we spent $750 filling out in another session. Ultimately the final report primarily contained quotes from the reports we'd both written so listening wasn't really required in the first place.

After the personality tests and interviews comes the truly horrific part, bringing your children in the fighting studio for their evaluation. Judging from Abrams web sit that shows him kicking serious ass, everyone waa in guard. Needless to say young kids were scared to death of the weaponry and general demeanor of a martial arts studio in the most terrifying day of their lives, but no doubt that the small room in the studio for the forensics pays the rent for the studio so it's a good move for Abrams. I'm assuming but nit positive that there is some standard of decor for therapeutic psychology offices and that fighting weapons a aren't recommended props. However, a free karate studio financed from the generosity of the Judges who appoint Abrams and order his fees isn't a bad benefit for hanging around the courthouse and lawyers to solicit appointments.

Needless to say the children were petrified but after scaring the shit out of the kids, the Sensei in Abrams softened the mood by performing a real live Japanese Tea Ceremony, on my nickel, that I was scornfully allowed to watch. Hmmm. Japanese tea ceremony in a martial arts studio with a custody evaluator that can lock me out of my kids lives that I'm paying $250 an hour for sounds like the plot of a pretty strange movie, perhaps with Harvey Keitel as the evaluator.

At some point in the process I became pretty broke and when Abrams demanded another $4,000 to finish and I couldn't come up with the money the process languished. Abrams had to interrupt the process for a month long karate refresher in Japan as well, but eventually we synched our vacation schedules and I borrowed money and the process continued to it's culmination. The grand culmination is a one page report that litigants (parents) can read only in the presence of the lawyers office. When you read the wizardry you can't take notes or photographs so you basically get a few minutes to read this doc, which btw also costs $250 an hour or more while your lawyer stares over your shoulder.

The real kicker came in court however, when the Judge informed us that the report that we just paid $14,000 for, which we so negligently delayed by not having money, was meaningless. The court ordered report was simply a recommendation and the Judge could do whatever he wanted.

As alarming as the location and content of the report was the obvious stuff that Abrams ignored. He never spoke to either of our therapists or the children's, he never spoke to the schools, he never visited the homes, he never did anything that would involve actual effort outside of the martial arts studio. Imagine being tasked to decide the fate of children and not even bothering to check the details of real life, and not what comes out of such a strange setting.

I've heard equal and worse horror stories and I've known families whose lives were truly destroyed by these charlatans so my situation, while comical in hindsight, was not so bad. There is no peer review for the forensics work nor is there any standard for them to perform their duties. They perform a secret evaluation with massive court ordered feeds in any matter they see fit in a forum where their work can be completely ignored. Any faults are the responsibility of the litigants to pay for to correct so it's a win win for bad, average, terrible or negligent work.

Moral of the story, settle your custody without these bozo the clowns in involved in your life.

Rosen's reputation is well known in the annals of NY Divorce - and yes, the pun is intended. A quick Internet search will see how poorly Rosen has done as an appeals lawyer. Reading his poorly written and researched legal filings is like reading the writings of a junior high school student and seeing the massive amount of appeals Rosen loses, which is public info, it's clear that he's not an effective advocate - though he's an effusive biller. However, losing cases isn't a metric of a bad lawyer, the true record that describes Martin Rosen is the way he manipulates the system and exploits his extensive experience in the court system to manipulate complacent and open handed Judges and Court employees in Westchester Supreme Court house to look the other way away from his incompetency and unethical behavior.

Rosen, like other money grabbing denizens of the hallways of the 9th floor of the Westchester courthouse such as Guttridge,Miller, Most, etc., has a free ride to behave however he likes while billing a minimum of $350 an hour. A litigant stuck in a fleecing by a NY Divorce lawyer in contested divorce is stuck until they lose their kids, possessions, future earnings and family assets. There's nothing Rosen and his friends won't take after they have you in their grips and they'll stop at nothing because no one will or has the authority to stop them. So an unethical person like Marty Rosen will lie, manipulate the system, prolong cases and submit false documents to the court until there's no more money to take. Why? Because middle-class divorcees are easy targets, no one has the authority to stop crooked Lawyers in NY and no one in a position of power in NY is aware or interested in this fraudulent system. Furthermore the Industry is beyond the authority of any law enforcement body so the Supreme Court System of NY, free of the most basic protections of the US Constitution more closely resembles the courts of a Socialist country than a constitutional democratic system.

So back to Rosen. If I just call him bad names I'm committing libel but when what I say is true, it isn't. In my dealings with Rosen he went to great lengths to hide cash money he was receiving from a wealthy family member. He submitted false statements of networth during the trial where he intentionally excluded massive payments to himself. This isn't a crime in New York so while it's morally reprehensible to submit false documents it's part of the culture of dishonesty that is rife and openly on display in NY Divorce Court. Judges don't care, administrative judges don't care, appeals judges may or may not care but it costs over $100,000 and years of time for them to see the shoddy work so it's usually buried forever. Certainly the NY State funded attorney discipline system sanctions lying and unethical behavior based on their abysmal prosecution statistics of less than .05% prosecutions of attorneys. The NY Attorney Discipline System represents one of the worst records of any prosecuting body of any government in any country, prosecuting less than .05% of cases it sees, yet it' viewed as effective and is solely funded by less than 10mil of taxpayer funds. Scum like Rosen are well aware that friendly judges and their legal secretaries are in his control and that he has more of a chance of being hit by a train than being prosecuted by his friends in the Attorney Discipline system so manipulation is easy in the back rooms of the court. That's what your paying creeps like Rosen for - access.

Rosen flat out lied about multiple material facts in trial and with a complicit and friendly Judge he never suffered any sanctions. Lying in court by attorneys is standard practice in NY Matrimonial courts so again, while this is reprehensible, there are no penalties or discipline system for Rosen or other dishonest lawyers like him nor are there objective monitors of the system to ensure that pro SE aren't being railroaded by manipulators in kangaroo courts

A reputable Judge who volunteers for the CAMP program in NYC described Rosen as a 'blustery hot head' in a conference I had with thim, but this is a gross understatement. I remember sitting in Rosen's office where behind closed doors, as his portly body shook and spittle flew, he screamed at me for over an hour to accept a ridiculous financial proposal. I came to mundanely sign a completed custody agreement but he wanted theater for his client, and she got it, and I got the laugh! His screaming and threats were disgusting me until I realized that the actor was simply entertaining my ex who had paid $700 or more for me to watch the fool scream. She got her monies worth and Rosen got a nice vacation home from it but it was like being stuck in a bad Harvey Keitel movie.

Rosen refused to hold settlement conferences and slammed the phone down on me multiple times as I tried to settle as pro se. Rosen wasted 4 days of tax payer money in the Supreme Court in the biggest sham trial one could imagine in a democracy but he was getting paid, so he didn't care. With so many budgetary problems in NY State a complicit Judge allowed Rosen's billing orgy to consume 4 court days and tens or hundreds of thousands of ancillary court costs against a pro se litigant who had a negative net worth and no assets for a trial on finances.

The pinnacle of Rosen's unethical behavior was how he rewrote the judges decision into a judgement, adding in an extra 80,000 for his client. It took me a year and 3 motions for the collusive judge to admit that Rosen flat out lied in his manipulation of the judges decision but finally I won that issue. But meanwhile Rosen's unethical behavior and lies to the Judge were rewarding for him, netting over 10,000 in legal fees.

Rosen and scum like him will continue to destroy families, wreck the homes of children and use the court system as a strong arm to collect massive billings until New York gets serious about court reform. There's no hope of that so I can confidently say that Rosen will continue ripping off innocent victims until he retires, which has to be coming any day, into his multiple vacation homes and lives it up on the college funds, retirement accounts and family funds he pilfered legally over the last 40 years of his home wrecking career.

Any stories about how Marty Rosen ripped your family off? Love to hear em!