Mara Silvia Rezende and Jose Augusto Sa

[Martin]

Get this. My daughter's mother, Mara Silvia Rezende, and her partner-in-crime, Jose Augusto Dos Santos Sa (who fraudulently adopted my daughter, removed my name from her birth certificate and has never had the guts to identify himself to me) have gone to ground to avoid being summonsed by the family court in Sao Jose dos Campos.

However, in the bizarre world that is the Brazilian legal system, they have issued a demand for R$ 231,571.36 (about £80,000) in child support through my ex's mother and a dodgy lawyer friend while the Brazilian courts are still unable to locate them. I have been told I have 15 days to pay this amount or face a 10% fine and that this is LEGAL! All of this to divert attention from the fact that they are being accused of fraudulent adoption and perjury.

When my ex discovered that I had been imprisoned in Brazil, she danced for joy and said that I would never see my daughter as long as I lived.

Either I am Rebeca's father in Brazilian law or I am not. The money is safe here in the UK and is Rebeca's.

It is clear that this is just a way of prolonging this issue indefinitely and physically preventing me from ever seeing my daughter.

The Brazilian courts know where Mara Silvia Oliveira Rezende and Jose Augusto dos Santos Sa live. Anyone can do a quick search through any Brazilian investigation website that provides this kind of information and will be able to find their three separate addresses in Sao Jose dos Campos plus the witch mother's lair in Itu.

[SageDad]

Get this. My daughter's mother, Mara Silvia Rezende, and her partner-in-crime, Jose Augusto Dos Santos Sa (who fraudulently adopted my daughter, removed my name from her birth certificate and has never had the guts to identify himself to me) have gone to ground to avoid being summonsed by the family court in Sao Jose dos Campos.

However, in the bizarre world that is the Brazilian legal system, they have issued a demand for R$ 231,571.36 (about £80,000) in child support through my ex's mother and a dodgy lawyer friend while the Brazilian courts are still unable to locate them. I have been told I have 15 days to pay this amount or face a 10% fine and that this is LEGAL! All of this to divert attention from the fact that they are being accused of fraudulent adoption and perjury.

When my ex discovered that I had been imprisoned in Brazil, she danced for joy and said that I would never see my daughter as long as I lived.

Either I am Rebeca's father in Brazilian law or I am not. The money is safe here in the UK and is Rebeca's.

It is clear that this is just a way of prolonging this issue indefinitely and physically preventing me from ever seeing my daughter.

The Brazilian courts know where Mara Silvia Oliveira Rezende and Jose Augusto dos Santos Sa live. Anyone can do a quick search through any Brazilian investigation website that provides this kind of information and will be able to find their three separate addresses in Sao Jose dos Campos plus the witch mother's lair in Itu.

Geez... what an embarrassment..  over 100k in child support for a child whose been kidnapped, illegally adopted and remains hidden from the father they claim owes child support for a daughter they also claim isn't  his... and it's all LEGAL.  Lots of colorful comments about kangaroo courts and banana republics come to mind...

[André Felipe]

Martin, this Child Support proceeding should've never be filed and judged by a Family Court (which is a State Court). It's attribution of the Federal Justice to decide in Child Support proceedings where defendant lives in another country. It should be judged by the Federal Court in the capital of São Paulo.

There's a International Convention of the UN (known as "New York Convention") about child support, published in Brasil as Decreto n. 56.826/65, and also the Law n. 5.478/68, art. 26, which says the Federal Justice attribution.

Ask your lawyer if he is aware of the above rules.

But, if the Federal Court issues a non favourable decision, saying you should pay, it will send a request, under the terms of International Treaty, to the UK's Court to demand you the payment of the child support, which is something the State Court can not do.

[Martin]

Thanks Andre. I've passed this on to my lawyer.

This is all clearly just a macabre game of chess. If they can prolong the legal issues indefinitely and distract attention from themselves, then they can prevent me seeing my daughter for ever.

I predict that their next move will be to declare Rebeca unfit to make her own decisions once she reaches the age of 18 on 23 July 2010. In fact, I'm willing to bet on this.


Thanks for your help, Andre.

Martin

[M.Capestro]

I saw your post of this on Facebook this morning as I was on my way to work and it just made me sick with anger.

WHY doesn't a family court judge know what Andre just told Martin? Why would the family court even accept the filing? Where are the legal associations in Brazil and why are they not doing more to educate judges on international law?

This is absolutely an embarrassment for Brazil's court system -- only who in Brazil is embarrassed enough to take the action necessary to clean up this mess? Is anyone in Brazil even embarrassed or is it just accepted as the status quo?

[André Felipe]

WHY doesn't a family court judge know what Andre just told Martin? Why would the family court even accept the filing? Where are the legal associations in Brazil and why are they not doing more to educate judges on international law?

Because not only the judges, but also most of lawyers also don't know International Law and its effects over some disputed relations. They have to know thousands of laws and other thousands of precedences, and so International Law passes unnoticed for most of them. The discussion about international law and its repercussions over national laws recently started to have larger proportions because of some recent decisions from the Supreme Court.

[SageDad]

I've read a lot of embarrassing child support orders in the US too though.  I remember reading about a father in CA or AZ that was forced to pay child support for years for a child that was not his, which is actually not uncommon, but in this case the child didn't even exist.  The "mother" just kept bringing in other people's kids and claiming they were hers and that he was the father.  The "father" kept saying he didn't know about the child and didn't think he was the father but it took years to get the support order dropped. 

[kittykat]

And I'll bet he didn't get paid back the money he had already paid and that the "mother" didn't get charged with anything.

[JamesJosephs]

WHY doesn't a family court judge know what Andre just told Martin? Why would the family court even accept the filing? Where are the legal associations in Brazil and why are they not doing more to educate judges on international law?

Because not only the judges, but also most of lawyers also don't know International Law and its effects over some disputed relations. They have to know thousands of laws and other thousands of precedences, and so International Law passes unnoticed for most of them. The discussion about international law and its repercussions over national laws recently started to have larger proportions because of some recent decisions from the Supreme Court.

Unfortunately, I am not buying the "ignorance" argument.  While I do not believe that any left behind parent should have to pay child support to the kidnapping spouse, the Boyle example is absurd.

How can Brazilian law not recognize him as the father because his name has been illegally removed from his daughters birth certificate, and at the same time require him to pay child support.  If the state court is requiring child support payments, then they are recognizing him as the father, and should return legal custody to Martin where she will have all the paternal child support in the world, and jail the criminal stepfather.  Brazilian law is trying to have it both ways, and both ways are wrong.

Another example of the third world "justice".

[André Felipe]

That is not an argument, that is not a justification, it's obviously only an explanation about the motives I don't see any lawyer association engaged in educate judges about international law.

[Martin]

The fact is that the money is there and has always been there in Rebeca's account in the UK AND THE REZENDES KNOW IT. It is in the UK because Mara Silvia Rezende disappeared with my daughter and ignored all attempts to contact her. The mother could have had it at any time in return for a commitment to respecting the original visitation and access rights that we signed. Instead, and with the connivance of her parents, who refused to say where she was, she played a game of cat and mouse with the British Consulate, the Brazilian Central Authority (SEDH), International Social Services and the Social Services Department in Itu, Sao Paulo, firstly refusing to respond and then only responding by phone calls in which she passed herself off as a lawyer (whose details she had stolen).

I sent inumerable emails to her father, Milton Pessoa Rezende, a director of the US multinational toolmaker Starrett in Itu, Sao Paulo, to try and resolve this (I wonder if American readers know of Starrett or use their tools) and was first of all told that it was nothing to do with him and then ignored.

I was arrested and imprisoned in Brazil in 2008 when I went there in desperation simply because I had no idea that they had gone and issued the writ through the family court in Itu in the first place - and it is clear that they did it simply as part of a convoluted and macabre mechanism to physically prevent me from seeing Rebeca. This current move is them revisiting the original writ.

They don't need the money. The lengths they have gone to and the family background make this clear. What they are doing is muddying the water in order to distract attention from themselves (shades of other similar cases we know of?)
The whole story is indeed convoluted and involves them trying to have things both ways but the strategy is essentially simple and straightforward:
1)Tell the child that her dad has disappeared and doesn't want to know her.
2)Put the dad in jail.
3)Take his name off the birth certificate.
4) Continue revisiting a bogus p.a. claim to keep the dad off-balance.
5)Job done.