An Illinois appeals court recently dismissed a lawsuit filed by the two adult children of Steven A. Milner and Kimberly Garrity, who divorced in 1995. Both children, Steven II and Kathryn, lived with their father, an attorney, in a $1.5 million house. They alleged that their mother caused emotional distress by sending dumb birthday cards or failing to send care packages when they were in college.
In reporting the story the Chicago Tribune portrayed Steven II and Kathryn—represented by their father and two other attorneys—as spoiled brats. Read:
‘Bad mothering’ lawsuit dismissed on ChicagoTribune.com.
I was all set to think that the case was a frivolous lawsuit driven by Steven Miner, the father, to harass the mother. But then I looked at the actual court decision. If the allegations in their claim are true, the picture is far muddier. The mother, Kimberly Garrity, may be disordered. Maybe both parents are disordered. Read:
Steven A. Miner II and Kathryn R. Miner v. Kimberly A. Garrity, on State.Il.Us
The moral of the story: It’s very difficult to know the truth about family life based on media accounts, or even court documents.
It seems that the Judge should have ordered counseling for these two children as they became pawns in the game their mother played against their father. I know this game too well… my ex DIL is exactly the same way. ‘I am going to control this situation no matter what happens to my children. It is about ME.’ It is sad for the children because they want her money as if that will ever make it right. What they need is a counselor to help them understand that they do not have to live as she did.
Interesting article, Donna, and I’m like you, I think it is very difficult to know the “rest of the story” from the news article and even from the court documents.
While the suit shows to me a pattern of petty crap between the mother and the children, I wonder what the father was doing during this time?
Apparently the daughter DID have counseling as a child (the court documents mentioned the mother insisted on interviewing the potential new counselors when the daughter wanted to change and it ended up the daughter had to stay with the first one).
While I can see that the now-adult children might have reason to not want to have anything to do with their mother after a very rocky youth with them….I don’t really see the benefit in suing her.
LF recommends, and I agree, that No Contact with a person who has been abusive gives us the emotional room to heal by getting this person out of our lives.
The mother trying to separate the two children’s custody in the divorce because the boy had been abused by an adult female (HER! for goodness sakes!) and therefore MIGHT abuse his sister….that sounds to me very much like someone high in psychopathic traits. NOT GETTING IT!
Still, how the father reacted is more of a mystery. Why did he cooperate with the law suit. He said he tried to talk them out of it, but he was the attorney and could have said NO! It is very unlikely they would have found another attorney to take on the case either pro bono, or on contingency and I doubt they had the funds to hire an attorney outright. So what was HIS motive? Revenge?
Still, an interesting case.
My goodness. Whatever the case is with this family, the lawsuit sounds ridiculous to me. Yes, the family sounds sketchy and I think there is a bit more going on than meets the eye, but these kids sound like spoiled brats to me.
Are they aware of what some kids have to deal with? Are they?
There are priests raping children, alcoholics beating kids to death, mothers who bring home “Johns” that rape the kids, my goodness the list goes on. I think that the very fact that these kids feel so self-righteous that they would waste so much time making a fuss about such trivial things signals that they haven’t paid attention to anything around them, all the people suffering around them. That is extremely narcissistic. If they just turned on the news and exercised a small shred of empathy, they might think, “Hmmm, I didn’t get care packages. My self-esteem is hurt and my mom is a bit neglectful, but some people have REAL PROBLEMS! Maybe I should stop thinking about MYSELF all the time!”
Perhaps I am being too harsh. This lawsuit just sounds like something a spoiled brat with an excessive sense of entitlement would bicker over. It’s a temper-tantrum on paper.
I also think I am a bit biased because my ex was a spoiled rich kid who threatened to move out of his parent’s house when they wouldn’t buy him the car he wanted when he was 16. This kind of behavior is just sick to me. I know parents aren’t perfect, but sometimes they really are doing the best they can and cannot always give the kid everything he/she wants.
Ox and Donna you sound a little more skeptical. I just had to say what this really made me think and I guess now you’ll tell me I am being too judgmental…..could be. I’m in my “anger” stage post-spath-bombs, so I might be a bit on the edgy side….
Did I miss something in those links?
Panther,
I think you pretty much called it right.
The dad is a spath, the kids are entitled N’s and the mom is a spath. They are all drama addicts.
How do I know the dad is a spath? I mean, he is hardly mentioned and we don’t know of anything he is guilty of. That’s why. The spath is always hidden in the background pulling the strings, planting the seeds. When it all blows up around the N’s, the spath slithers away, unaffected. He got the drama he wanted to feed on.
Well, the mother broke the kid’s arm when he was 6 or 7 years old and then “changed her story” several times….and tried to separate the two kids “because the boy had been abused by a woman, therefore he might abuse his sister” (the ABUSER WAS THE MOTHER).
Yea, the things they wrote in the law suit were trivial in appearance but a CONTINUAL list of irritating things over a years long pattern can be a MOUNTAIN of emotional and mental abuse.
The heaping up on top of each other of the thousands of small things that “drive us crazy” is one of the things the psychopathic group did to me….it kept me spinning in place, with my head in the spin cycle of the washer, never able to get my balance.
I don’t think, however, that the law suit was something I would have done, but at the same time, maybe these kids felt it was the only way to vindicate themselves from the “drip drip drip of the slow Chinese water torture” that was their mother. Maybe it was the father’s way of giving the finger to the X wife, I’m not really sure, but I don’t have much doubt that the mother at least was not “mother of the year” for sure.
She broke her own son’s arm? I must have actually read over that part without really seeing it. Okay, that is definitely messed up.
If there were real grievances, like that one, then I think the children would have been a lot better off leaving out every little complaint about cards not being sent and focused only on specific things that would be accepted as truly abusive or cruel. I still think these children are N’s, and I suspected that the parents might be spaths, yet I am very hesitant to call anyone an spath until I am sure, so I didn’t want to call that one. Skylar has no qualms pointing them all out in a room 🙂 I am the one standing behind her going, “Now now, let’s get a full report first….” HEY wait a minute! I know why I am sooo patient with spathy crap!!! Aha! It’s cause my FATHER thinks that I am an spath (doesn’t use that word) but he projected himself onto me for many years and I know how it feels to have someone keep calling you a sociopath (he used different words, but same point) all the time. I bet this is why I have a hard time pointing the finger. I feel bad for people who get labelled, and so the ones who really deserve it still end up with some mercy from me. I always think maybe we’ve all just misunderstood them, because I thought my father misunderstood me. NO I am NOT a sociopath, and I am SURE of it, but he had me worried that I was the same monster as he is for the longest time. He always told me that I had his genes, and that his genes were really strong/potent–strong enough to cancel out my mother’s genes–and therefore I was just like him. Yuck.
Okay, so this mom broke her own kid’s arm? Then she tried to separate them because he had been abused. She sounds like a nut case. But this law suit sounds like a nut case as well.
Ox, without question, the drip drip drip of the little things does have that effect when it’s coming from an spath/P. You’ve got a point with that one for sure.
In my opinion, the whole situation is a mess. I don’t agree with the kids filing the lawsuit. But if the mother’s behavior as described in the complaint is true, then she very well have been sociopathic and abusive.
And no, there is no information about the father’s behavior. Skylar may be right – he may be in the back pulling the strings.
It just seems that there is plenty of dysfunction to go around.
I’ll tell you one thing though – this is why it’s so important to make sure that court filings are accurate. Appeals courts, I believe, make their decisions based on the paperwork. If lies are part of the court record – standard in cases with sociopaths – the lies may become the basis upon which decisions are made.
Donna,
I absolutely agree with you about making sure that any information filed in a law suit is TRUE because in courts if it is WRITTEN it is “true”—based on someone’s “sworn testimony.”
There was a time when I fantasized about suing my P-sperm donor’s estate after he died….to vindicate myself from what he had said and done, but when the time came, when he was dead, the DESIRE WAS GONE. I no longer needed to do that to validate my own assessment that he was evil, that he was a psychopath….but I do know I think how the kids may have felt in WANTING to do this. Especially at such a young age. I would have thought that the father might have restrained them though, supposedly being an “older, wiser, and cooler head.” After all he was an attorney.
Also it was an expense to the mother (since she had to hire an attorney) and an embarrassment to her as well I am sure, even if she was a psychopath she wouldn’t want people to know it. So this might very well have been the father’s way of revenging himself against the mother using the kids as weapons. I would not encourage my kids to sue their dad even if I was a lawyer, and the dad could have said NO! and didn’t, so I guess he was at least part and parcel of it as well.
Donna,
after reading the court document, doesn’t it strike you odd that there are so many “frivolous” accusations? stuff like: no money in the birthday card? Consider that the father is one of the attorneys involved. One would think that ANY attorney would advise the clients against making ridiculous allegations BECAUSE it would get the entire case thrown out as frivolous. But that is exactly what happened. So is the father, who lives in a mansion, an inept lawyer? I think not. I think things played out exactly as he planned. It was a test on the kids to see how far he could manipulate them as pawns to torture the ex-wife. It was also a drama for his enjoyment and an instrument to show her how he can still have power over her. He made sure it was frivolous so that it WOULD get thrown out and his own behavior would never be brought before the court.
This is exactly what happened to me when my brother accused me of domestic violence, scratched himself, and called the cops. He had me arrested but later dropped the charges. I spent two days in jail, but never got my day in court or even got to go before the judge to show him my bruises. Bruises take time to show up and the cops arrested me within minutes of the altercation. Because he had “marks” and I didn’t, they arrested me and not him. This is how spaths do things. If I’d gotten to go before a judge, his mask would have been revealed, so he dropped the charges.
Spaths are all the same.
Skylar, yes – all is certainly possible. That’s why the case is a mess. I have no idea what the truth is.