An interesting POV, but in this case the various judges had a certain level of consistency in how they were treating visitation from FD with the children.
Visitation evolved to the point where it was supervised and highly limited. Initially phone calls were permitted and then this evolved to calls on a speaker phone only and then phone calls were eliminated after an incident with one of the children.
THEN a new judge enters the scene and seems to reverse all this and permit FD to take the children unsupervised as far as I can tell for the 2 days over Memorial Day weekend. It took JD nearly 2 years of hard slogging in court to get the visitation issue buttoned up and then enter Judge Heller and everything changed. My bet is that JD was not only fearful for her safety but hugely angry about what had happened.
My question is why did the Judge reverse nearly 2 years of rulings on visitation? She made a vague statement about the importance of children seeing their father etc. But frankly such statements in light of what the court knew and we are beginning to learn about FD are irrelevant IMO. It is also baffling to me that the one weekend where he was finally able to take the children unsupervised it now looks like he and his mistress did away with JD? This leads me to question what, if any commitment he had to the children? I'm still trying to understand what kicked off the events at JD house. Was this premeditated around the fact that he would have the children for 2 days or was this an explosion of anger that resulted after some argument/discussion with JD etc.?
Do you have a cite for this? I see one judge, judge Donna Heller and no change to the unsupervised contact, although he received much more time. But none of his contact was overnight, unless I have missed something:
"Judge Donna Heller changed what had been extremely limited access to the children for Fotis Dulos, allowing him every-other-weekend visits to the home in Farmington where they grew up. The judge changed the schedule even though she previously had called Fotis Dulos “a liar who willingly ignored court orders” by allowing his girlfriend access to his five children, despite a court order explicitly ordering him not to do that.
After several contentious months of hearings, and
with reports from therapists and a guardian ad litem, Heller ruled Fotis Dulos could have supervised visitation rights with his children that included having the kids every other weekend, starting at the end of March. He was allowed to spend seven hours with the children in Fairfield County on Saturdays and six hours with them in Hartford County on Sundays, including at his Farmington home.
“The court finds it is in the children’s best interests that they have regular supervised parenting time with the defendant every other weekend,” Heller said.
The judge even accommodated the Easter holiday weekend switching weekends so that the children would spend it with their father and his family. Dulos is a Greek citizen. The judge did place numerous restrictions on the visits from no discussion of the pending court case to no one-on-one conversations with any of the children unless a court-authorized supervisor was present. He also was barred from talking to his children in Greek to try and circumvent the supervisor’s presence."
Police: Blood-stained clothing of missing New Canaan mother Jennifer Dulos found in Hartford trash cans, records show husband’s phone was in the area night she disappeared
Emphasis by me.
"The five Dulos children were set to have
supervised visits with their dad over Memorial Day Weekend,
according to a relaxed visitation schedule obtained by The Courant."
Sponges and clothing stained with blood of missing Connecticut mom revealed as estranged hubby and his girlfriend appear in court
Emphasis by me.
Supervised visitation is highly restrictive so if that's "relaxed" from what it was, it is still super restrictive in the world of family law, which is what I practice. And the judge seems to have relied on recommendations form therapists and the childrens' GAL, which is appropriate.
If there's other info, let me know.
I explained the issue judges have in cases like this in more detail on the previous thread:
My clients feel the same way at times. But from the judge's perspective they have endless, non-stop cases where people make up the most outlandish things about one another and/or are caught lying or violating orders.
But they don't end in murder.
In pretty much every state the standard is the best interests of the children and most states believe that frequent and continuous access to both parents is best.
So the end goal is always time with a parent even if that parent is troubled.
Here, this guy was granted supervised visitation. That's highly restrictive in the world of family law. Someone has to essentially babysit him and follow him during all his time with the kids.
And he was not granted overnights.
Eventually those restrictions would probably be lifted though if he demonstrated that he was calming down or had taken an anger management course or something.
It's frustrating because sometimes these parents really damage the kids. But the parental relationship and parental rights are sacrosanct.
That's why in the dependency court system reunification is the end goal even in cases like little Maleah Davis, who kept showing up at the hospital with suspicious "injuries" and we all know how that turned out.
But the fact is that in 99.9999% of family law cases, no one ends up dead.
Of course that doesn't factor in the emotional damage to kids from an angry, crazy parent but I guess they figure the emotional damage from not seeing a parent would be worse.
I will say that in the majority of cases parents acting out after separation and during the pendency of the case seem to calm down once the divorce action has concluded. And judges know that.
It's a hard thing to deal with for these judges who have nothing but crazy cases - one after another - and no real way to fix the parents. And no real way to tell which one will actually become that nightmare realized with a dead spouse or dead or physically damaged or kidnapped kids.
Silver Alert - CT- Jennifer Dulos, 50, New Canaan, 24 May 2019
Also, again, no family law court orders would have prevented her murder.
