Big Tech executive uses courts: now one child may be transitioning
Big tech execs using the courts as their own child custody playpen is one of many untold stories.
A big tech executive has manipulated the courts to all but erase his ex-wife from their two children’s lives.
Now, one of them is transitioning and there is nothing this mother, Joanna Rivera, can do about it. Below is part of an email Joanna sent to her attorneys from March of 2021.
I just received this email from {their daughter’s} case manager. Apparently {their daughter} is being seen at the Gender clinic in SF, first I have been informed. And Mani is sighting I didn’t inform David before scheduling a 10 min meeting with the school counselor? He’s just sloppy, and he is getting sloppier.
Mani is Matthew Mani, the California attorney for Joanna’s ex-husband, David Hillard.
Mani provided this statement to me when I reached him by email, “As I imagine you know, an attorney may not discuss his clients' cases, due to privilege issues. I watched the video that Mrs. Rivera apparently took during a court hearing and provided to you, and urge you to review the file and orders in this case. The history and events are far different than you have apparently been led to believe. The entirety is right there, in the court's files, and the truth is something quite a bit different than what Mrs. Rivera sets out in her video. This will be my only response.”
I recently dealt with this type of non-response when I wrote about Dr. Elizabeth Hersey. It is not accurate. While attorneys can’t divulge details of communications they have with clients, they are not prohibited from speaking about the case, especially when they believe-as Mr. Mani seems to think- that their client is being portrayed inaccurately.
Check out my interview with Missouri attorney Susan Ward, discussing this case. Ward does- adeptly I might add- what Mr. Mani claims no attorney can do.
Hillard was long time executive at Cisco who currently works in the C-suite at Brandle Corporation.
I reached out to David on his personal email, but he did not respond.
This story touches on two emerging phenomenon- both rarely covered. The first is the link between family court and gender dysphoria.
The second is how big tech executives use these family courtrooms near Silicon Valley- in San Francisco, Marin, and other counties- as their personal playpen.
Considering the amount of press big tech gets, this should get more attention.
Susan Bassi- who previously did an interview with me- has examined courts near Silicon Valley and she recently told me that she finds that executives from companies like PayPal, Apple, Google, and others often receive very preferential treatment when divorcing their spouses.
In this case, in 2017, Joanna told me that David acknowledged affairs and suggested a move to Virginia.
The whole thing may have been a ruse; approximately a year after moving to Virginia, he filed for divorce: in August 2018.
Why would David move his family across the country?
“It’s not an equitable distribution stated,” Joanna told me, “California is.”
Rather than settling their multi millions in assets, the two only settled on a custody arrangement in Virginia.
This tenuous agreement was made even more tenuous when both moved back to California.
Working off this Virginia agreement, the two attempted to maintain a custody arrangement in California.
All of that blew up on September 26, 2019. An argument escalated until it got physical, leaving Joanna’s elbow bloodied. She immediately filed for a protective order in Marin County, California. David responded by filing one of his own: claiming she had taken some of his personal possessions.
The court treated both their allegations with equal weight, even though this was not the first time David was accused of physical violence. Some evidence of those arrests is below.
He was also arrested in 2006 for an attack on another individual.
Furthermore, shortly after the attack, David continued to pose a threat, mainly stalking.
Joanna also found notes with David’s handwriting in which he writes about committing the perfect crime- photo at the top.
Here is where David seems to have gotten preferential treatment from the courts.
First, both got domestic violence restraining orders on each other and then the judge, Sheila Lichtblau, ordered that the two revert back to a Virginia child custody agreement, which granted David approximately 75% of the child custody time.
“He weaponized the restraining order,” Joanna told me.
By this, he simply refused to return one daughter for her scheduled custody time.
With a restraining order in place, Joanna could not go to his home, or she would be arrested.
David, Joanna tells me, was also monitoring all his oldest daughter’s electronics so there was no way for Joanna to communicate with her one daughter.
All the while, he was telling her- through a court messaging application called Our Family Wizard- that the oldest daughter did not want to see her.
Even more bizarre, they held to a tenuous custody arrangement with the younger daughter until the summer 2022.
All of those the court allowed: mainly Judge Sheila Lichtblau.
Joanna tells me that what she heard about her oldest daughter was horrifying: suicidal thoughts, not eating, and now, it appears she is about to transition to a male.
She hasn’t seen her oldest daughter in over two years.
Her youngest daughter, Joanna told me, refused to go back to her father in the summer 2022, so Mr. Mani filed an emergency ex-parte motion, which led to the hearing below.
Joanna had quite the emotional outburst which did not help her situation. The judge granted David sole custody and she has not seen her youngest daughter since September 2022.
Postscript:
Find the previous articles in this series: Article 1, Article 2, Article 3., Article 4, and Article 5.
For more articles like this on corruption in California family courts check out the fundraiser.
