Alexander Cuda with a potential mark.
Connecticut attorney Alexander Cuda is at the forefront of negotiations between the judiciary and Connecticut Bar Association attorneys.
And with the judiciary greedily taking their gravy first with their convenient Pathways Docket – and making it a harder pathway for family law attorneys to bill for multiple court hearings when they can all be heard at once, the two groups are now seeking to work things out. The powerful CBA attorney Cuda has become a power broker.
Cuda can get things done for a warring spouse.
Ambrose Knows on Which Side His Cuda Is Buttered
Take the Ambrose case, where the abusive father was willing to pay big bucks on a case with so much hair that numerous lawyers turned the case down at any price.
Christopher Ambrose left a legacy unto himself. Seven years earlier, he wrote scripts in Hollywood and pushed his joy buttons in the glamour world of tinsel town content to leave his wife and kids in dull CT, seeing them when he had time.
A nightmarish moment later, he woke up to find he had ruined his career by getting caught for plagiarism, the cardinal sin of the creatives of Hollywood. He had to go home, a fragment of the glamor boy he once was.
Christopher Ambrose
He came home to CT and took all the marital money from the stay-at-home wife, and with his and her money, he bought the kids for himself.
After he purchased them, he kept his kids captive for three long, lonely years. Then they got older and ran away to their mother. No judge would return them.
Ambrose retained attorney Chris Goulden, but judges were unafraid to say no to the mad idea of making three teenagers live with the bad dad who abused them and override juvenile court proceedings where the kids petitioned to be safe from him and live with their mom.
The three teens were happy away from their father. But Judge Thomas O’Neill chose not to consider their happiness. He had larger concerns as we shall see.
Ambrose knew how to play the game. When he first bought custody of the kids in 2020, he retained attorney Nancy Aldrich, whose son is Senator Will Haskell, who sat fat on the judicial committee and could ensure any judge got reappointed.
Nancy Aldrich helped in the sales transaction of three kids…
Then Aldrich moved the case away from Judge Eddie Rodriguez, who might not side with the money. They selected controversial judge Jane Grossman, one of Aldrich’s besties.
Grossman’s willingness to make kids unhappy to please rich fathers was legendary in CT Family Court.
Judge Jane Grossman.
She would find parental alienation, take the happiest, well-balanced kids from happy homes on a moment’s notice, and traumatize them by placing them with the parent they feared, while banning the parent they felt safe with and loved.
[In hell, they know of her great deeds and await her like one would a triumphal hero.]
Kids were always irrelevant to Judge Grossman. This made her beloved to family law attorneys, for she understood they were but a commodity. But it also made her unpopular with parents and dangerous legislators, like Minnie Gonzales, who might try to stop her reappointment.
Judge Grossman might not be reappointed like her friend and colleague, the equally ruthless Jane Emmons, a judge who got bounced for reappointment to the shock of the whole judiciary for stealing the happiness of too many children.
Former judge Jane B. Emons. She stole the happiness of so many children that parents got together and placed billboards…
Vote no to Judge Emons billboard…
Now Grossman was up for reappointment, and some $800,000 later – with the addition of Grossman bestie Jocelyn Hurwitz, the GAL – who pocketed $200,000 of the boodle, the Court sold the kids final and complete to Ambrose.
And Grossman, with Senator Haskell’s help, was reappointed.
Senator Haskell in the center ensured Judge Grossman continued to make children whose parents were stupid enough to go to family court unhappy, but the lawyers who practiced there, were made very happy….
As we said, Ambrose had the children alone and lonely for three years, missing the mother who raised them until this year when the teenagers ran and returned to their mom.
In wanting them back, Ambrose did not care about the teenagers’ feelings. He was concerned about himself. He was once disgraced in Hollywood. This new disgrace of his teens leaving him because of claimed abuse would make him look like a lifelong loser. And if ever the kids were believed, it could be worse. He could land in prison.
Only the great Cuda could arrange his salvation. Ambrose was willing to pay the fees the wily Cuda knew how to squeeze out of him.
They went to Family Court. Judge Gladys Neives and Judge Eddie Rodriguez refused to take the case.
But the Big Kahuna Cuda was getting big bucks. This was a direct message to Family Court: You did your Pathways shit, but you aren’t gonna take my pie this time.
And shit flows downhill, and no judge would take it. No judge but one. Chief Administrator Bozzuto tapped the rookie, Judge Thomas J. O’Neill, eager to please and eager to rise.
Little did he know he was handed the crow’s feathers, made to walk under a ladder and break every mirror in the courthouse. The little guy O’Neill was ordered to be handsome to Cuda, let him get a lot of hours, then decide in his favor and make it look good.
O’Neill bit the bullet and listened to the sounds of deception from Cuda for two days. Then, on the third day, he handed the win to Cuda and deprived three teenage children of a mother to favor an unsavory but affluent father.
He issued restraining orders banning the mother from the kids using Jennifer’s Law, a law enacted to protect mothers and children.
The children, unable to see their mother, fled CT and ran to Rhode Island to be with their grandfather—desperate to escape from their father.
No one could see this as anything but pay-to-play. And now poor O’Neill will have to hold a hearing to figure out how to keep Cuda in clover without submarining his entire career.
Still, the pressure is on.
Ambrose is paying Cuda to get the mother arrested and insanely try to force three teens – two above the age of consent – back to his home, against their wishes. All eyes are on O’Neill.
Only Cuda can do it – for a fee. If he handles it right, he can hit the jackpot with Ambrose – for a few days work and get him the kids maybe until they run again.
But Ambrose will pay today, because he is vulnerable. He almost has to purchase his kids.
And because of the power dynamic, Cuda is selling long.
CT Cash for Kids
There is corruption in every place where there’s greed, where there’s power, where there’s ambition without morals, where there are men like Alexander Cuda, Thomas O’Neill, and Christopher Ambrose.
They are not unique. Remember that when men such as these enter the courthouse. Remember when you hear voices speaking through others. Remember when you hear parental alienation or a mother banged with Jennifer’s Law, losing her children, and punished by judges’ blind, unreasoning decisions.
Corruption is alive. It is a sickness that favors those with money and power. It aids the greedy, the avaricious, the fleet of tongue who can talk up a shit storm so long as they’re chasing a fast buck.
Alexander Cuda made his bucks fast and will make more. In return, the teenagers lost their mother, but won’t return to the man who bought them.
Nexus of Influence
The dynamics of outside-courtroom cooperation between the Connecticut Bar Association and the Judicial Branch have a malodorous stench of impropriety.
Power brokers like Cuda will always have influence over weak, inexperienced judges like O’Neill, a pawn in a complex game.
And whenever an attorney’s proximity to judges and his power threatens even the bogus pretense of a fair judicial system, the alarm bells of corruption resound with urgency and people take notice.
As the Ambrose case unfolds—with children homeless, a mother banished, and an accused father defended by a shark named Cuda, both men with stones where the human heart ought to beat, the game will continue.
Be forewarned, everything has its limits. The devil always takes a step too far.
Alarum
This story comes with a warning for mothers, fathers, and spouses without children who think of family court as a refuge when family troubles cloud.
I say listen. Hear the alarm bells, loud, piercing, clangorous.
Wild bells to the wild sky, the shrill alarm—shrieking its warning:
Keep yourself away, keep your children away, far away from family court lest you see them not again as though they were sold or dead.
Lost in the night as if pirates took them.
Do not be deceived by black-robed judges or the kindly lawyer who leads with lies through the gates of thievery and betrays with a smile.
You don’t become a family law attorney out of compassion any more than you rob a bank out of a vague longing to be rich.
Ruthlessness and alienation from a compassionate society are essential for the family law attorney, for his reward comes at the expense of children and parents.
Hear the alarum bells, shrieking, and clamorous.
They clang and clash and peal urgent chimes: There is no mercy in the hellfires of family court.
Bells tolling, jangling, booming, warn of danger. Listen to the angry clapper beating against the bow – strident, ear-piercing.
The bells signify terror, they signify sorrow, and death tolls a knell to the future. If you enter here, it will be no use going back to yesterday.
Hell is empty, and all the devils are in family court, dressed as lawyers and judges, feeding off children, lawyering their way to wealth and comfort and oblivion.
