Selfish

In the world of divorce or broken relationships one thing is forever prevalent. Greed. Well let me retract, maybe not all of the time, but definitely more often than not. Private investigators are utilized a lot in custody cases specifically. The scenarios can vary, they can go from investigating allegations of abused time and neglect, allegations of one of the parents not working, allegations that the other parents significant other is not good or fit to be around the kids...etc. Or it can boil down to just being greedy and not wanting to share time with the other parent for personal reasons.

One day our offices were retained by an attorney client to assist in locating a woman who had taken of with her and the client's child. The client had been trying to see his child for the past year and every time he got close the woman would take off and her family would help in hiding her. Normally we are skeptical with these cases due to the amount of abuse and stalking that is going on in the world, however we conducted a background investigation on the client and found nothing that would indicate that abuse had occurred. After taking down the information that the client had provided to his attorney we set out to locate the woman and her daughter. Database searches were not able to pull up any new information. We utilized pretext calls to no avail. Finally after continuing to hit brick wall after brick wall our we decided to locate the woman's Mother. Most Mom's know where their kids are living. We sat on the Mother's residence for a couple of days and finally the woman and her child showed up. We quickly took a photograph of the woman and the child. The woman left the child and we followed her to her place of employment. We were able to determine what time her shift would end and came back at the end of the shift time. The woman was followed back to her Mother's residence and then after picking up the child, to her residence. The following morning we reported our findings back to our client. The client decided that they would like for our investigators to serve papers on the woman to initiate reunification and custodial time. 

A couple days later we went to the woman's residence and knocked, we heard noises in the residence and even heard the t.v. volume get turned down, but no one responded to our inquiry. We decided that we would attempt service at the woman's place of employment since she obviously was not opening the door or attempting to interact with anyone. The following morning our investigator waited for the woman to show up at work, when she did we served papers on her and even took a photograph since the woman was refusing service. We filed the paperwork with the court, including the picture, and the woman never showed up. The judge issued orders for a slow reunification, my client would be able to see his daughter every Saturday for eight hours, this would take place for about a month and half and then the time would get extended. The only problem was that these new orders needed to get served on the defendant, our offices attempted services again and the woman was no longer living at her residence, we went to her job and found out that she had quit her job as well. One of the employees feeling empathy to my client's situation advised that the woman moved out of state down south. We reported this back to the client's attorney and the attorney decided to sit on the case and wait a while. 

The following year our offices were contacted and we were requested to locate the woman as the client heard that she was being seen around town. Taking a short cut from our prior experience we waited at her Mother's house and sure enough she showed up. We again attempted to serve her but she denied the paperwork, this time we not only took photographs but also recorded the attempt. Our investigator had to go to court and give testimony and show supportive evidence, the judge found the woman in contempt of court but unfortunately she did not want to involve law enforcement as she felt that this would have a negative impact on the child. I guess the other negative impact, the child growing up without a father was not as serious or at least not considered to be as serious.  

Another year goes by, our offices are contacted by the client directly, he tells us that he knows where his child is going to school and he needs the woman served again, this time the judge was putting orders for full custody for my client due to the woman's blatant disregard for the system. We again waited around and finally got the paperwork to the woman for the third time. This time the woman accepted the paperwork, she even asked for our client's phone number which was in the documents. A funny and amazing thing happened after that. The woman called my client and arranged for him to see his child. After that day the client and his child have grown closer and he has been able to be a part of the child's life. We recently received a photograph of the client with his child. 

We don't know why this woman kept her child's father from being a part of the child's life, we don't know what prompted the woman to change her mind. But we do know that the look in the child's face and the look in our client's eye tells us that no reason outside of abuse is enough. The damage of kids growing up without their parents is unacceptable. It has been proven that children grow up to be better balanced and more successful when both parents are actively engaged in their lives. We at Morrow Detective Agency hope that more people will take that into consideration before going the selfish route. 

Morrow Detective Agency is a licensed private investigation firm located on the border of Ventura and Los Angeles, Ca in Simi Valley, CA. Morrow Detective Agency is capable of performing surveillance, process service, locates, background investigations, asset investigations, and more. Please feel free to visit our website at www.MorrowDetectiveAgency.com or give us a call at (805) 823-3540 and allow us to make your problem our solution!