What He Shouted At Our Daughter In Court
“Twice. Once at Easter, when he told me his lawyer said fighting for primary would look good on paper regardless of the outcome, because it would slow down how fast his payments climbed while everything got sorted through the court. And again two weeks ago, when he asked if I’d be willing to say, if anyone asked, that I watch Ava most weekday afternoons at his place. I don’t watch Ava most weekday afternoons at his place. I’ve had her exactly four times since Christmas, and every one of those times he texted me that same morning asking if I could cover for him because something had come up at work.”
“Objection,” Kline tried again, weaker this time. “Hearsay as to a request to fabricate testimony.”
“She’s testifying to a statement made directly to her by the respondent,” Judge Harmon said. “That’s not hearsay, counselor, that’s a party admission, and you know it. Overruled. Continue.”
Lori looked, for the first time since she’d sat down, not at Brandon and not at the judge, but at Ava, still curled against my side in the gallery. “I love my son,” she said, quieter now. “I will always love my son. But I am not going to lie under oath to help him win time with a little girl he just called a brat in front of a room full of people, including me.”
The gallery had gone so still I could hear the ceiling vents cycling on.
Kline was on his feet. “Your Honor, this is a mother testifying against her own son under obvious emotional duress, I’d move to strike the entirety of it.”
“Overruled,” Judge Harmon said, not even looking up from her notes. “She swore an oath like everyone else in this room, counselor. Sit down.”
I watched something happen to Brandon’s face that I had truly never seen in sixteen years of marriage. Not anger. Not that practiced, lazy contempt. Something closer to a man watching the last floorboard give way under him, in slow motion, with nothing left to grab.
Judge Harmon didn’t rule immediately. She took a recess of her own, this one closer to forty minutes, and when she came back, she had Brandon’s full attention whether he wanted to give it or not.
“I want to be precise about what I’m ruling on,” she began, “because I don’t want this decision reduced, later, to a single sentence said in anger, as understandable as it would be for everyone in this room to focus on that sentence.”
She looked at Brandon directly.
“Mr. Clint, you failed to disclose a material change in income to this court, as required. That failure appears, based on the testimony just given, to have been strategic rather than an oversight. You then made a statement in open court, in front of your seven year old daughter, that this court will not pretend it didn’t hear. And your own mother, under oath, described a stated intention to pursue custody for financial advantage rather than out of your daughter’s interest. Individually, any one of those facts might be explainable. Together, they tell me exactly what I need to know about the true purpose of this filing.”