PAS: The Judge Didn't Even Want To See It

My husband was in the Air Force for 20 years. In his early days in the Air Force, he was stationed in Japan and came home to California on leave where he met his PEW. She was hired by his mother to babysit his baby brother while he and his mother went out to do something. She is from Brazil and was working as a nanny while going to school in California. So after a few years of mostly long distance communication(she was either in CA or in Brazil, and he was in Japan and England), they decided to get married. Five painful years and 2 kids later, they were divorced. My husband said she had her first ‘freak out’ right after their 2nd wedding ceremony (they had a civil ceremony in England where my husband was stationed first and then went to Brazil for the big church ceremony a few months later) and he knew right then he had made a huge mistake, but she was already pregnant with his first son and he felt he couldn’t leave. He ended up filing for divorce just a few months after his second son was born. Of course, nothing was her fault. Even after 5 different marriage counselors told her that if she didn’t stop ‘freaking out’ on him and stop trying to control his life, he would leave her. Not to say my husband was 100% innocent. There were things he could have done to be a better husband, and those were also addressed in counseling, but the huge problems were her unstable behavior.

So, a little more background on the kids. They have 4 names. When they were born, my husband agreed to allow her to use her maiden name as one of the kids’ middle names. Their first son’s name is William Aaron Silvio Traylor (he goes by Aaron because his first name is the same as my husband’s). Their second son’s name is Matthew Alexander Silvio Traylor.

We have loads of documentation ranging from birth certificates, early passports, even her own writing on letters and forms she filled out that their last name is Traylor. But right after she was remarried and didn’t have the name ‘Traylor’ anymore, we started getting stuff from the school that had Aaron’s name listed as William Silvio-Traylor, with a hyphen! She basically changed his last name with the school! We quickly took the school to task on that by sending the school a copy of the birth certificate showing there was NO HYPEN between Silvio and Traylor They said they’d correct it and that was that. Well, later we get more stuff from the school that had his name listed as William Silvio Traylor (listing his last name as Silvio Traylor with no hyphen). The kids were born in England so we sent the school copies of their British birth certificates which had the names listed like this:

Child’s given names and surname: William Aaron Silvio TRAYLOR

Father’s given names and surname: William Alexander TRAYLOR

Mother’s given names and surname: Eva Carolina Silvio TRAYLOR

Mother’s maiden surname: SILVIO

Notice that all the surnames are listed in all caps. We also had their initial passports that they needed to get from England back to the US when he was relocated here. There is an actual separate box that says Surname: Traylor for both children. We brought this all to the school’s attention. Their answer? The mother showed us certificates that supported her opinion that his surname is Silvio Traylor and if you want it changed to just Traylor, YOU have to get a court order!

Wait a second here! He has been in this school for the whole previous year as Traylor, when his mother was also Traylor. She even admitted on the phone and in other documentation that Aaron was upset when she was getting remarried because they wouldn’t have the same last name anymore and so she changed his last name to Silvio Traylor because when she got remarried, she hyphenated her name to Silvio-Jones.

So we take the matter to court. The family court said they didn’t have the authority to decide what their real surname was, even though we had TONS of evidence, the judge didn’t even want to see it. The only thing that was done was the judge said that all official records would contain all four names of the kids. Then the PEW also asked that a stipulation be put in the order that neither parent may talk to the kids about what their last name was or try to encourage one name over the other. Of course, this is already after she had convinced them that their last name was Silvio Traylor.

On top of it all, she has the kids convinced the kids that Brazil is so much better than the US, even though they are half American and actually live here in the US. She constantly does things like this…promotes her family and heritage over my husband’s family and heritage, and since the kids are with her 80% of the time (my husband only has EOWE and 35 days in the summer), she has totally brainwashed them.

So that’s just one tiny, but significant piece of info on our life with a PEW. I appreciate reading about your story and that you are getting the info out there so people know the kinds of things husbands and fathers deal with to try to save their families, and most just get burned for it.

Thanks!

T.

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