Well, the 9th Circuit (no, I will not refer to it as the 9th Circus, particularly in this circumstance) has finally issued a FINAL ruling concerning the custody/jurisdiction/breaking of international treaty case. Based on the briefs, they have once again ruled in my favor.
Yay!
Also, it does not look likely that we'll be going before the Supreme Court with this issue so I may very well be done with federal courts as a whole.
Double Yay!
However, we have one legal irritation left.
My appeal to the Arizona Appeals Court.
Once again, I was informed the timeline was something between immediate and "2 years from now".
Our brief is due the Tuesday after Memorial Day.
Gah.
On top of that, the death of the truck and the necessity of buying a new vehicle took essentially all of our savings. Plus, I'm going to be out of work for a couple of weeks until I get re-upped for the next phase.
So we have currently outstanding legal bills (ugh) plus more forthcoming (double ugh). Plus, my lawyer's finances have taken a turn for the worst, as most of his clients are businesses, many of which are in trouble. He can't put off payment anymore.
From Chris: The "funny" part of that? Instead of my bonus going to pay down debt as had been planned, what was left after the taxmans bite went straight into buying the truck. That put us in an unhappy spot on the credit cards, as I was planning on paying a bunch of them off either completely, or at least 60% with the bonus money.
So we cut our spending to the bone, sold some stuff, took on some side work, and put off everything we could except the new carry gun; to clear up some cash from the day we bought the truck until this Friday.
In one month, we managed to pull $4,000 together to pay off about half the remaining outstanding credit card debt (we also owe about $4k on furniture. Thankfully it's on zero percent through the middle of next year).
A few minutes after the payments to the credit card companies went through, the lawyer called.
Ironically, it was the legal bills that caused us to run up the cards that high in the first place. We ended up short on cash at the same time as he needed $7,000, so we put everything but the rent on the cards for six weeks, and paid him.
I wouldn't normally have done something like that; but I did it because I had a zero percent balance transfer for life on my higher limit card, so I just transferred all the balances over onto that card. That way at least I wasn't paying interest on it. That's where most of that $4000 went.
Yes I know, that's a bad idea. Unfortunately, when the laywer needs money, he needs money right then.
Now we've been pondering a solution for this problem, and working on said solution, for about 4 months now. We're not going to do what we did last time, which was ask for ideas and end up with a bunch of donations instead (thank you though, because that really did save our collective asses).
This time we have something else in mind entirely, a side business whose proceeds will be going straight to the legal bills as well.
Stay tuned.
Mel
