Meanwhile, Cece withheld my younger son, Bryan, from me for three years, refusing to allow him to visit. I took her to court in Brazoria County, Texas. The court placed a $1,500 bond on both of us and ruled that if either of us refused to let the children visit the other parent, that parent would forfeit the bond. It was the court’s way of trying to force both of us to honor visitation.
Cece tried to get the $12,000 Illinois judgment enforced through the courts in Brazoria County, but the judges there knew what she was doing, because I paid my child support through their system, and they had the records. They refused to enforce it. Eventually, after she and her husband moved to San Antonio, they filed again to get the judgment paid. This time, the court in Bexar County agreed that I should pay it because it was a legal judgment, even though it had been fraudulently obtained in Illinois.
Later, Cece filed to get my $1,500 bond, arguing that I was “in arrears” on my child support because I was still paying on that Illinois judgment. I had to go to court in San Antonio again. This time, I decided to represent myself.
We went into the courtroom. The judge did not know either of us, so he opened the file in front of him, looked at me, and said, “It shows here that you are in arrears in your child support.” I stood up on wobbly legs and told him I was not in arrears, that I had made every one of my child support payments through the Child Support System in Brazoria County. I explained that when they moved the boys out of Texas, we had agreed to cut the child support in half so that I could have money to visit my sons, and I had kept that agreement.
The judge turned to Cece and asked if that was true. She replied that it was true, but that we had never gotten a ruling from the courts to cut the child support in half. The judge asked, “Did you cash the checks for five years?” She said yes. He said, “Then you had an agreement.”
He looked back at me and said he would like to give me all the bond, but since I was still paying on the judgment from Illinois, he would allow her only half. He had figured out what had taken place in Illinois and that the judgment was fraudulently obtained, but his hands were tied by the fact that it was still a legal judgment on the books.