Why would a family court order an ex parte be dropped or you lose visitation rights?

Question

I am in the middle of a custody case with my ex husband over our 5 year old son. My ex started threatening me and my family last weekend, so I filed for an emergency ex parte order or protection and it was approved. We had a family court hearing the following Monday and the Commissioner ordered that I drop my order of protection and until I do, all my visitation rights are suspended. The order only says that he can not threaten, abuse or stalk me or enter my house. It says nothing about not being able to communicate with me. It does not affect our child exchanges at all. I also requested that our exchanges be done at a secure location, and that was denied!! I was told it might be because the two cases were in different counties, so I had my order switched to her jurisdiction but was told that doesn't work. My only choice is to drop it or not see my son.

How is this right? Why should I have to jeopardize my safety and my other child's safety for this? This makes no sense to me. The man has abused me in the past and has threatened my family numerous times. I have all kinds of emails and police reports to prove that.

What can I do besides drop it? Do I have any choice?

Before anyone yells...I am seeking full custody of the child. I don't want him around the father, because of this exact reason. I have an attorney, but he's not giving me answers.

Answer 1

If your attorney can't explain it to you, even though I'm sure he knows 100 times as much detail as you were able to include here, I'd say the reason the commissioner ordered this is because your attorney failed to convince him that the ex parte didn't affect the ability to proceed with the case.

I would guess that you've got a lousy attorney and you need to switch as soon as you can.  Start shopping around immediately and get someone who can take charge of this for you.

On the other hand, the ex parte is worthless anyway.  An order from a judge isn't going to protect you if your ex decides to get violent.  It will just be a sad sidenote after the fact.  You don't really lose anything by dropping it at this point.