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Leving Legal and law enforcement recover little girl for Dad
By Efar Veronique
A distraught dad was in despair because he didn’t know where his daughter was. He was horrified at the thought of never seeing his little girl again, and feared she would become a victim of abuse at the hands of the mother’s boyfriend.
A few years ago, Chicago attorney Jeffery M. Leving had represented this dad in a parentage action and secured for him an order granting him joint custody of his daughter and nearly 50% parenting time with her. So he reached out to Leving again.
“This was also important to me” said Leving “because I co-authored the first real Illinois joint custody law.”
Unfortunately, it was reported to Leving that the mother almost never followed the court order and dad had not seen his daughter in 3 ½ years.
By the time dad called Leving, he had almost given up on ever seeing his daughter again. But he was assured that Leving would fight for his daughter, and he did.
Leving put together a highly experienced team of lawyers from his firm, the Law Offices of Jeffery M. Leving, Ltd., to litigate this complex case. The team designed a legal strategy to find and recover the little girl and reunite her with her father.
The Leving team immediately drafted and filed a Petition seeking to enforce the court order providing dad parenting time. Leving’s detective found the mother and served that Petition on her. The team was then successful in Court and secured entry of a court order requiring the mother to comply with the previous order granting dad parenting time.
It was reported to Leving that soon after court, the mother took the child out of school, and fled Illinois with the child for an unknown location. Leving also learned that the mother allegedly had a live-in boyfriend with her and the child; Leving’s detective conducted an investigation of the boyfriend and found that he has a reported extensive criminal history. Dad feared that his daughter might be abused by the mother’s boyfriend. They had to find dad’s daughter.
After learning that the mother had fled, the Leving team quickly went to court again; this time they prosecuted a Petition for an Emergency Order of Protection, based on the mother’s reported concealment of the child. Although the judge was initially of the opinion that an Emergency Order of Protection could not be granted based on concealment of the child, after a lengthy oral argument in court, the judge was persuaded the Leving team was correct and granted its Emergency Order of Protection. The Order of Protection was a critical tool that ultimately led to Leving’s victory in recovering the little girl.
Also, Leving was successful in securing a court order for a body attachment of the mother for her failure to appear and answer to the court. The body attachment authorized law enforcement to execute a warrant for the mother’s arrest, and to bring her before the court.
Once Leving secured the Order of Protection, he still had the hurdle of finding the mother and getting her served again. It was reported to Leving that the mother was concealing the child. Leving’s detective persisted in his investigation and, after three months of investigative techniques, he located her in the state of Oregon. The team then went back to court and obtained an additional court order, granting immediate possession of the child to their client, and ordering that law enforcement in other states were authorized to execute the Illinois Orders. More specifically, the court ordered any local, state, or federal law enforcement agency in which the minor child may be found, to retrieve the child and place the child in the care of the father.
The Leving team then coordinated with local law enforcement to serve the mother of the child with the Illinois court orders, requiring the turnover of the child to the father immediately.
They faced another hurdle – local law enforcement initially refused to go to the address that Leving’s detective had uncovered where the mother was located, because they claimed it wasn’t a real address. But the detective ultimately convinced them that it was a valid address, and it was.
Local law enforcement put together a special “child rescue team” consisting of several officers.
The child rescue team went to the mother’s location, where they found the mother, child, and boyfriend, executed the warrant, served the Illinois Order of Protection on her, successfully recovered the child, and returned her to Leving’s anxious client who Leving had flown in the night before and was staying at a local hotel.
Against all odds, the Leving team found dad’s daughter reportedly concealed in another state, coordinated the process of having Illinois court orders recognized by a foreign jurisdiction, the state of Oregon, worked with out of state law enforcement officers to ensure that the mother was served with the Illinois orders, and effectuated turnover of the child to dad. This was a very complex case.
Leving reunited dad with his daughter. His client is absolutely thrilled after Leving’s persistent and strategic efforts brought about such great results for him and his daughter. “I didn’t give up,” Leving said. “Failure was not an option.”
Leving will talk about the case on the Dads’ Rights Legal Hour, 9-10 a.m. CDT this Saturday on Power 92.3 FM. This was an important victory modified for broadcast.
To learn more about law and fatherhood, follow Leving on Twitter and Facebook.
(Submitted by the Jeffery Leving Law firm. For more information on Jeffery Leving visit www.Dadsrights.com.
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Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
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