Legal Question in Family Law in Massachusetts

: Calling employer?

yes. I do.

Re: Calling employer?

If you suspect that your husband is lying to you, the last thing you should do is call his employer. First off, you will be asking the employer to violate your husband's employee rights without proper subpoena. Second, you will be putting a question in the employer's mind about the employee's honesty. Third, your husband is likely to be told you called about it.

You have several options that are better.

1. Check his pay stubs. This won't tell you his schedule, but it -will- tell you if he is being credited with the approximate number of hours he is away.

2. You can quietly (and surreptitiously) check out his movements. There are ways to do this, including the use of such simple techniques as having a friend check in the employer's parking lot for the car from time to time. More complicated matters include the use of GPS to track him, but this will require some sneaking around in his actual presence to set up and retreive the device. There is, of course, the tried-and-true method of using a private investigator. BIG WARNING: once you go to -any- of these methods, you are acting on your own doubts in a way that will escalate and widen the gap that is already developing. Whatever you discover will either confirm your doubts or not -- but if he discovers this, he will at the very least know you distrust him. Even if you really have cause, this will somehow be your fault. This kind of technique usually means the marriage is effectively over, regardless of your hopes and intentions.

3. The usual "suspects" are an affair, surreptitious gambling, surreptitious drinking, and other conduct that indicates addictive or obsessive behavior. If you focus on what you suspect, you also have other ways to check on things. Most of the "suspects" are engaged in by use of cash, which in tis day and age usually means the use of debit cards at cash machines. You should be checking your family bank statements to see if there are unusual withdrawals, and the track back the locations of the withdrawals. If you have online banking, this becomes fairly easy.

4. Get into counseling for yourself right away and work on inviting him into the counseling. If he and you genuinely want to fix the marriage, this will help you both express your doubts and concerns to one another, and create the possibility that you can both get honest with each other. If you can't get there, it will help you confirm that the marriage is over, and create at least some chance that the divorce will be less ugly.

Whatever you decide, you need to honestly and openly decide for yourself what you suspect him of doing when he is supposedly working.

Once again, though, look at this with a serious consideration: by posting the question, you are more than halfway down the path to a divorce proceeding, whether you are right or wrong. You should seek some counseling to deal with your situation, whether your suspicions are found to be justified or not.

Re: Calling employer?

I mis-read this, and my response assumes that you are still married. I apologize. Pay no attention to what I wrote, as it is based on a mis-assumption.

You are already divorced. The word "ex" should have clued me in to this. Obviously, I need to get new reading glasses, or maybe just read twice next time.

You have absolutely no right to poke into your ex's schedule and activities.

If his alleged work schedule changes are affecting visitation, you certainly have the right to seek some kind of alteration in how you schedule visitation. If need be, you can file a modification complaint in order to properly and legally work this out. If he pleads his work schedule as a grounds for his way of doing things, you certainly have the right to subpoena his schedule to a deposition or hearing.

You can also refuse to amend the visitation or custody schedule when he requests it without his producing a copy of his schedule. If he doesn't provide the copy, you can risk his filing a contempt.

Finally, you can explain your frustration and seek mediation.

Any of the investigation I suggested as to a married couple, however, would clearly violate your divorce judgment, whether entered by agreement or after trial, in which you each have reasonable privacy from the other, and each are prohibited from interfering with the other's personal liberty.

Indeed, attaching a GPS to non-mutual property would be an illegal trespass, and probably violate the stalking laws. Now that I think about it, it could arguably violate the stalking laws for a married couple, though I think a magistrate would hesitate to issue the process.

Again, I apologize.