When Tess Vega tried doing her 2021 taxes, she was greeted with a surprise.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rejected her return, telling her a return had been done already on her social security number.
That return led to a tax refund.
She complained to her local Congress person, Republican Aaron Bean, and to the IRS.
Bean’s office sent her a surprising letter in response.
Tess told me she was told that the IRS does not prosecute a family member if the identity theft is done by a family member. I asked the IRS if this was true, but they didn’t respond to an email for comment.
Tess said that she was certain her ex-husband, Michael Dale, was the culprit.
I reached out to Dale’s attorney, Michael Webster, but he didn’t respond to my email.
No one was ever charged with the identity theft.
It’s not the only time she received such a shock. When she attempted to install a security system, Tess was told she was dead.
Again, she suspected Dale of being the culprit. She reached out to the Social Security Administration (SSA), but nothing was done about that either, she told me.
Dale, it appeared, could break the law with impunity.
The same was true of custody orders in their child custody case.
Last year, Hurricane Helene hit Florida, where both live. The hurricane, Tess said, was going to hit where Dale lived but not where she lived, near Jacksonville.
Furthermore, it was about to be her scheduled child custody time. Dale unilaterally took their daughter to Alabama instead of exchanging custody.
Dale’s claim that Helene would not hit Alabama was not true.
It also violated a court order. It was Tess’s custody time, and he was required to get her permission to take their daughter out of state.
Tess told me she was helpless to stop it. She would need to file a contempt of court motion. She’s a teacher and he is a teacher’s union representative, who makes approximately twice as much as her, she told me.
The cost of filing the contempt motion is cost prohibitive to Tess.
Meanwhile, Dale has plenty of funds. She told me that he routinely threatens these contempt motions.
In January, a storm hit Florida. Tess had their daughter, but it was nearing Dale’s custody time.
She told me that to transfer custody meant driving hours in the storm. Dale insisted, with the threat of contempt.
Tess told me she did not drive in the storm, and no contempt was filed. She called the experience “stressful.”
In another case, Dale withheld the name of the nanny he hired from Tess. When Tess finally got a hold of her, the nanny lawyered up and told Tess she would not communicate with her.
Tess told me she was again helpless because any legal action required money she didn’t have.
Legal abuse often leads to legal abuse syndrome, coined by the late Karin Huffer.
It’s devastating, particularly in child custody cases.
Legal Abuse: Using the family court system as a weapon to destroy the healthy parent. It is done with malicious intent and includes intimidation, false narratives and lies. It often results in financial devastation created by uneven playing fields.
For Tess, she is vulnerable to attack, while having no way to fight back. If Dale ever brings her to court, she will struggle paying to defend herself, while she’s hamstrung in bringing action when he violates a court order.
That legal abuse has been compounded by the presence of a biased judge named Kelvin Wells.
Wells is no longer on the case, but the combination of the biased judge, uneven financial resources, and her inability to get anyone to hold Dale accountable for any misdeeds has made Tess feel like the process is hopeless.
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