Divorce Support Forums: Is there anyone on my side?

Here are my questions:
• Should I get another lawyer?
• Are parenting evaluator’s decisions final?
• If I view the parenting evaluator as being partial to my ex, what can I do about it?
• Where can I go for help to learn what I need to, to represent myself legally?
• The judge ruled that a parenting evaluation was required to determine parenting time, but I feel that the evaluator is not impartial, has only listened to my ex’s side of the story, and has already ruled against me admitting that she did so without any evidence. What can I do to protect my relationship with my ex?
• If the judge ordered my ex to sell the house “as soon as possible” and she still doesn’t even have it listed 4 months later, what can I do?
• If the judge ordered me to pay my ex $500/month for temporary spousal support to help pay for housing expenses, but my ex stopped paying the mortgages destroying both our credit ratings in the mean time, can I stop paying her the $500/month? Should I file a motion for this? How do I do that?
• Is there anyone that is on my side?

Here is my situation:
I married her 10 years ago because I thought I needed to be married and I was willing to over look some of the obvious gaps in our relationship. For instance, she needed to spend every second with me of every day and be in complete control of everything we did or I did. Even if I got up from the couch to use the bathroom she would say, "where are you going" and I would tell her and she would say "hurry up, you take to long in the bathroom!" Now she wouldn't be waiting for me, and we had 3 bathrooms, and all we were doing is watching TV, but yet she had to account for my every move and every minute. We were never friends, never enjoyed doing things together, never took an interest in the other's interests, always pushed to get our way, but ultimately I was always the one to give in and after a while that became the pattern.

I saw a similar pattern to my grandparents. My Grandmother bossed her husband around to the point that he hid in the garage and drank himself to death. What is worse is that he used his son as a delivery boy to get him more liquor and made him sit with him when he was drinking. He was basically afraid of his wife. Needless to say, his son became an alcoholic.

Not wanting to perpetuate that with my daughter, I left my wife. Because she would not let me go willingly, I had an affair so that she would not want me. I made up my mind to tell her about the affair and end it when I received advice from many people that it was mean for me to do that so I didn't. When I finally could not take any more, I left.

Because of the controlling nature of my ex, she dug through my wallet one day that I was visiting my daughter, and found the [censored] to my personal email. She accessed my email and found some letters from several months back between me and the woman I had a brief affair with. At that point all hell broke loose. I had been out of the house for 4 months when she accessed my email. My lawyer told me that what she did was illegal and we filed a motion for her to cease and desist. She claims to have stopped but I get the impression that she has since figured out the [censored] to my new email account and continues to monitor it.

As soon as she found out about the affair, she pushed to prevent me from having over night visits with my daughter. It is true that after I left her and moved out, I dated a woman, but not seriously and never exposing my daughter to that relationship. My ex and her lawyer made all kinds of veiled threats that they were going to "expose" terrible skeletons in my closet unless I went to sexual/psychological treatment for sexual addiction. My lawyer didn't need to advise me not to give in, because I could see that this was my ex being angry and lashing out. These veiled threats went on for nearly 9 months, even after I asked my lawyer to demand evidence be produced. Finally my ex's lawyer responded in court that they were going to challenge my parenting time/custody because of the evidence they had. Which amounted to my access and viewing of dating personal websites. Apparently they believed that these sites were somehow inherently dangerous to my daughter although I did not access them with present, nor did any of the women that responded to me (a very few women I might add because lets face it, who is interested in a bald, fat, glasses wearing, not yet divorced man) have access to or meet my daughter.

In court they demanded that I complete sexual addiction treatment before they would allow me over night parenting time with my daughter. The judge ruled that a custody evaluator needed to evaluate the situation. The evaluator said she would interview me, then my ex, and then follow up with me and make a temporary decision. Instead, she interviewed me, then my wife, and made a decision that I should not have overnights with my daughter because of potential web site use and boundary issues which she did not articulate.

Furious, I asked my lawyer to demand what behaviors were suspect and why the evaluator didn't follow her own due process but took my ex's accusations as fact without even allowing me to respond. This is when I found out how truly ineffective my lawyer was. Up to this point she would only respond to me if we were going to court that week. One time she called me at 5pm on a Friday night to tell me I had to sign papers by 6pm if we were going to be able to make our court date, however she didn't talk to me, she just left a voice mail!

It didn't take long to realize that after a year of representing me, my lawyer was more interested in ending the case then looking after my best interests. I would send her email after email, and leave voice mail after voice mail, and she would never respond. In fact, I posted a blog on myspace that my lawyer used in one of our few communications as me giving her direction about my case, despite the voicemails and emails giving her clear direction to the contrary!!!

After trying to work out the terms of our relationship, my lawyer withdrew from the case saying I was uncooperative with my own defense. The reasons she cited were actually inconsistent with the facts but rather then fight it out with her, I let her go and she turned over my files.

One of the issues I had with my lawyer was that she maintained for months that I should not participate in any evaluation unless reasonable evidence could support it, and she said that the evidence provided was not even reasonable, but when she realized this case could drag on, she turned her opinion and began arguing against me. She even had meetings without my knowledge, with the other lawyer and the parenting evaluator! One of which she recorded where she was trying to convince the other side that she was trying to get me to participate! What was really apparent on that recording is that she was working against me and not for me, and there appeared to be no real good motive other then she wanted to be done.

On with the long story...

So the parenting evaluator said initially that I needed a sexual and psychological evaluation because of my internet habits, but my ex only needed psychological. Odd when it was my ex that continued to view those sites long after I was told it was "questionable" to view them. In fact, she continued to print out information from those sites as evidence spending countless hours on the internet doing this during the daycare day (she is a daycare provider) when she should have been watching children including mine! It should be noted that once I was finally told what sites they thought were questionable, I did not access them ever again. This was 4 months ago.

Then seeing the error of her ways, the parenting evaluator decided that we both needed the same evaluation, (I wonder what changed her mind?) and ordered that we go to a specific councilor, where my wife was going already for counseling! I called the councilor and he said he no longer did this kind of work and he was not in my health care plan so it would be very expensive. I reported back to the parenting evaluator and asked if I could pick someone in my healthcare network, and she said I could if I could convince my ex to use the same guy. You can imagine how that conversation with my ex. Needless to say she refused. Then the parenting evaluator said she called the councilor and he said that I lied that he never told me he didn't do this kind of counseling! He was quite clear with me, I don't know why his story changed?

So dutifully I called him back and he referred me to another counselor stating that I would get counseling from a partner of his, and he would provide counseling to my ex!

Here is where I am at today:
• I see my daughter 3 hours 2 weekdays a week, and then one weekend day from 9am until 8pm. I am not allowed overnight parenting time.
• I pay 25% of my salary for child support.
• I pay my ex $500/month for temporary spousal support.
• My ex was ordered in January to put the house up for sale, but has yet to have that done and its May.
• My ex lives in the home and the court ordered that she make all payments and upkeep, she has since stopped paying the mortgage and it is in preforclosure. Credit ratings for both of us are so bad we can't open a credit card or get a loan, and even my existing cards are lowering my available limit.
• I have a new girlfriend, who was just a friend for the first 7 months I left my wife, then we became more intimate but we never act inappropriately in front of my daughter. She is also a youth program leader for her church, Sunday school teacher, and other youth activity leaderships roles. She has become good friends with my 2 year old daughter and she spends about half of the time with my daughter that I do.
• My ex and I can not speak about many topics without her yelling at me, insulting me, or just acting out in front of my daughter. When she does this I warn her that I will leave if she continues, she continues, and a I leave. Once in a while we can talk about our daughter without hostilities but seldom.
• My ex pries into my business at every instance. I have tried to give her insight into my relationship with my girlfriend and who she is but she becomes enraged and hostile when I do. Then when I don’t tell her, she gets enraged that I don’t tell her anything. She has even gone so far as to do extensive research into my girlfriend, learning where she lives, her car, license plate, work place, phone numbers, etc… She often is spying on us when I have my daughter for parenting time but denies this.
• I have no lawyer, and in order to get a new one I would have to pay out a huge amount for a retainer. I don’t believe my former lawyer served me well, and spend little time communicating my needs to the other side and more communicating her opinion to the other side. Because very little progress has been made in the 13 months since I filed for divorce, I don’t anticipate getting a new one because of expense and that I can articulate better my position myself. It may cost me in court, but I wont pay for what I am not getting at least.