• 21
  • February
    2012

A recent story in the New York Post, written by Kieran Crowley and Pedro Oliveira Jr., highlights just how difficult child custody and visitation cases can get.

Though he is not representing any of the parties in the case, Long Island divorce attorney Bryan Salamone said that a mother who plans on not following a family law judge's order could face contempt and a host of repercussions.

But this particular mother seems willing to suffer the consequences for her children.

54-year-old Amy Margolis is refusing to send her kids - a 15-year-old daughter and a 13-year-old son - to her spouse for visitation, as the family law judge has ordered.

As Crowley and Oliveira Jr. report, Margolis refuses to send her kids because of a "knock-down fight" that happened between her spouse and her spouse's fiancée.

The kids witnessed this fight.

In a letter to the Nassau County judge, her 15-year-old daughter wrote, "She [the fiancée] got up and said he pushed her onto the floor." The daughter also wrote that about "claw marks" on her father's neck.

Suffice it to say that evidence of domestic violence in the home can impact the outcome of child custody and visitation proceedings.

"They should not be thrust back into a situation that violent and verbally abusive without some sort of remedy," Margolis said, referring to her children. "It they're going to take away my right to protect my children, I'm going to fight back."

But, as Salamone says, fighting back could come with a host of consequences for Margolis, including losing child visitation herself and even possible time behind bars.

As for the husband, he says, "You've got to be kidding me. The woman is on her sixth attorney and has been pursuing vengeance for nearly six years."

Source: New York Post, "Ma Defies 'Jail,'" by Kieran Crowley and Pedro Oliveira Jr., 2/21/12