Legal Question in Family Law in Washington

Verbally abusive father.. how can my mom get a seperation

My father is manipulative & verbally abusive, esp to my mother. He is in his 50's, and a few years ago, he quit the part-time job that he only held for a few years to ''retire.'' However, for the last 4 months he has been working for $5-20 a day doing janitorial work for a used car salesman that takes advantage of him (isn't it illegal to work for below min wage for a for-profit org?). He has bought things when my mother and I have presented rational reasons not to buy them (a canoe, trailer, truck, and boat). When she objects to what he does, he puts her down, calls her controlling and storms out. He wants his car-salesman friend to sell the trailer while my mom (who paid for it) wants to keep it and he called her unethical for going back on an agreement that she didn't even know about!

She always pays the bills with her money. What little money he ever made he spent on himself. She wants him to go live with his mother (the one who has persuaded him to buy things) and does not want him to have any of the money she has made. He refuses to talk about seperation and gets extremely angry when we mention it. How can we force him to go to a court or sign a seperation form & how can we keep him from taking the house or my mom's money?


Asked on 8/19/04, 5:14 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Elizabeth Powell ELizabeth Powell PS Inc

Re: Verbally abusive father.. how can my mom get a seperation

Your mother can call the county bar association in whatever county you live in and they will direct her to assistance whether she can afford private counsel or not. The big issue here is: why, with all due politeness, is this your issue? If it's just that you mother can't figure out computers, that's fine. But you are relaying information that may - or may not- represent the way she feels about this situation. I cannot tell from this perspective. So, I have to say -gently- you can't make anybody do what you want them to do; it has to be what *she* wants to do. Part of the pain of watching a DV situation is that the victim can be oblivious. But she's probably not incompetent, and you have to rely on the idea that adults make their own decisions as to how to conduct their lives. I'm trying to be very diplomatic because I don't want to hurt your feelings, but this may well be a completely foriegn notion to your mother.

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Answered on 8/21/04, 5:03 pm


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