Help a blogger out
Doubleplusundead emailed and asked me to post this message and get this fellow Moronosphere blogger some help, or at the very least, some prayers;
For a little background on Stash, he served honorably in the Army for 24 years, most of that time was spent as a psychiatric nurse, some of you may remember Stashiu’s multi-part interview at Patterico’s Pontifications, where he spoke about his time as a Psychiatric Nurse at Guantanamo Bay. He’s always been a good source and unique perspective on issues of terrorist detainees and detention policy, particularly with Guantanamo.
Stashiu is the proud father of two adopted daughters. Unfortunately, Stash later found that the lawyer who was supposed to square away all the legal paperwork for the adoption didn’t quite get it right, so he has to now backtrack with new lawyers to get things right and finally seal the deal. The process is costing Stash and his family a king’s ransom.
The tough financial situation and worry over the prospect of losing his two daughters is unsurprisingly starting to wear him down and take a toll on his health. Several people have been in contact with him over the weekend and suggested he start up a donation account. Stash now has an Amazon account here, or the Amazon widget should appear on his right sidebar, if you can help, it would be a wonderful thing.
You had me at “Army for 24 years”, 2x+U. If cash is tight, that’s understandable, what with gas and chow going up lately, just include the Stash clan in your prayers tonight. Thanks for reading.
Category: Bloggers
Not that it will help him emotionally, but he should file a lawsuit against his attorney who provided “ineffective assistance of counsel” by providing sub-standard legal advice. Part of this MAY (but perhaps maybe not) pay for his payment of legal services previously provided by this lawyer. What was the prior lawyer’s professional insurance like?
As to the effects to his health, that is the subject of additional damages that he could sue this lawyer for. Of course, the limitation is whether his lawyer has resources that could pay for his damages.
Since I am unaware of the specifics, I cannot provide any further advise, and, because I work for the U.S. Government, I am precluded, by law, from representing individuals in any kind of personal or criminal capacity.
Thank you for the post John, the prayers and donations are providing a lot of unexpected and welcome support. 509th Bob, those are excellent points and we’ll be sure to explore those options once the legal situation is stable. Going after an attorney while trying to resolve a legal issue would probably be unwise. We were unaware of how screwed up the situation was for almost a year and a half after the adoption itself was complete. Trying to make things right has been the biggest legal hassle I’ve ever had. An example would be filing income taxes. Everything was done in good faith and the taxes were prepared by professionals. We were required to amend everything before we could submit any of the paperwork now because they want copies of your last three years of income taxes as part of the application packet. This meant removing the girls as dependents (even though withholding was done assuming we would be able to take the dependent deduction), removing the adoption credit for the first year, etc… resulting in us having to write a very large check to the IRS for taxes that we really don’t owe. This meant dipping into financial reserves way before we ever expected to use them, but that was the best choice available in the circumstance. We hope to be able to re-amend those returns and recover at least part of that money, but the timing is iffy and we just don’t know yet if we’ll be able to. It’s pretty much been a nightmare caused by the first attorney’s incompetence, but fixing the problem and making sure we can keep our daughters has to come first. Once that’s done, we can look to see if anything can be done about the original attorney. (Sorry for the long rant, I’ve been thinking those exact thoughts and forcing myself to stay quiet about them so we could concentrate on what’s important. I guess there was a little more repressed anger there than I was aware of, lol) Thanks again for the post and good advice… and for listening… Read more »