A man named Chris Ambrose gained full and exclusive custody of three children who don’t like him. They’re miserable.
Chris Ambrose won’t permit his children to even speak to their mother.
They have taken to Pinterest to show how much he abuses them. Three times they claimed to police and medical personnel he abused him and went to hospitals.
Three times the father, Chris Ambrose, got the officials to believe they were making it up. Once, and I will tell this story later, he even got the judge to order them out of protective custody to get them back to their abusers.
Ambrose mocks his children. He says such things as “Go tell the police or DCF. You saw how well that worked out the last time.”
I have recordings of him abusing the children – I did not ask for them. They are part of court filings. The children are desperate. No one will listen.
Ambrose took three children from the happy home they loved with their mother. They have been traumatized.
Three happy, healthy kids, now seeing many therapists, put on medications they did not need when they were happy. Ambrose has cut them off from their mother and all their family and friends they knew growing up.
Lonely, isolated. Medicated.
Can you imagine how you’d feel if you lived a life with your mother for 13 years – and rarely saw your father. He comes back in your life lately and acts the boor. He belittles you. He abuses you.
He is angry. He seems to do this with purpose. He has a plan. You go home and are happy and safe with your mother. He is menacing. He threatens.
Then one day, you are forced out of your home crying — and told you are going to live with your father, and you can’t talk to your mother anymore. Does anyone imagine the trauma that this causes?
Welcome to hell. Welcome to CT Family Court.
I can prove it to skeptics. Let the children voice for themselves – away from Chris Ambrose. Make the unconditional promise that you will not reveal their answers to him.
Ask the children – now 15, 15, and 12.
Ask them who they want to live with. Ask them how their father treats them. Ask them how much trauma they felt when the court ordered them yanked out of their home and sent to live with him.
Ask them how much torment they have experienced having their lives butchered by this selfish man. And removed from the woman who loved them.
An abusive father got custody of three children. He used the parental alienation gambit.
He alienated his children and made himself hateful. Then he blamed the mother for their not wanting to be with him.
Alienation.
You need two more things. You need money to have a high-priced attorney connected to the judges.
Attorney Nancy Aldrich made sure her client did not file a financial affidavit, while he controlled marital assets and paid ‘court appointed experts.’
Then money to buy the guardian ad litem – an attorney herself who is supposed to represent the children but only and always represents herself.
Jocelyn Hurwitz, GAL billed over $200,000. She saw the children twice in Sept. 2019, but decided in April 2020 there should be no-contact with their mother.
And you need a heartless custody evaluator. And pay her well. For she will recommend the destruction of children’s lives for a fee.
She is the greatest psychopath of them all.
Dr. Jessica Biren-Caverly will take care of your parenting problems.
Oh, and of course, you have to be in Connecticut.
Chris Ambrose used the pay-for-play Connecticut Family Court system.
I have written a few stories about Ambrose over the last few months. In response, he sent me a Cease & Desist Letter.
He wrote:
You repeatedly call me a thief. You publish that I “converted [sic] Karen’s six-figure inheritance into an account” in my name, which I supposedly admitted “under oath in a hearing.” These are provable lies.
There was no such testimony from me and Karen has never offered any evidence of an inheritance, the value of which she has changed many times in the telling.
I am an inveterate liar and make frequent threats
I am a thief
I have not financially supported my estranged wife since I filed for divorce.
***
My response to Ambrose is that it the truth. Here are the facts.
For 18 years, Chris Ambrose and Karen Riordan stayed married. They adopted three children. Karen was the stay-at-home mother. Ambrose worked in Hollywood and NYC as a screenwriter for TV. Then he got fired for plagiarism and theft of intellectual properties.
That stupid move ruined his career. He came home to CT. Before filing for divorce, Ambrose took possession of all the marital accounts. He changed the passwords. He moved the money.
There was more than a million. He got everything except one $60,000 account that required her signature. She could not get it either. It required his signature too.
Other than that he got it all. So you understand – he took their entire savings. Eighteen years of marriage, and he got it all. This is stealing in other lands. In places outside of Connecticut, this is criminal.
He took the money. Then he filed for divorce.
He refused to allow Karen access to their assets or even her maternal inheritance. Ambrose never filed financial affidavits from the start of the divorce.
Karen objected in court to Ambrose’s failure to file. She objected to loss of access to joint marital assets. Without funds, she lost custody of her three children.
On August 5, 2019, when she had custody, she motioned to secure alimony and child support.
The court failed to act on these motions until Ambrose filed a Financial Affidavit.
In August 2019 Judge Eddie Rodriguez confirmed Ambrose had not filed his financial affidavit.
Judge Eddie Rodriguez ordered Ambrose to file his financial affidavit at a hearing.
Judge Eddie Rodriguez Jr.
At the hearing on August 22, 2019, Judge Rodriguez gave Ambrose a deadline of September 5, 2019 to file his financial affidavit.
Ambrose admitted he controlled the marital assets and Karen’s inheritance at that hearing.
He managed the marital assets without her consent.
The relevant testimony:
Karen’s lawyer was Richard Callahan.
CALLAHAN: Mrs. Ambrose at one point asked you for access to the financial accounts, your marital, financial accounts, right?
AMBROSE: Uh-hum.
CALLAHAN: And she wanted that information to have an adult conversation with you about what was possible for your children in the midst of this divorce—
AMBROSE: Uh-hum.
ATTY CALLAHAN: That you just started, correct?
AMBROSE: Uh-hum.
ATTY CALLAHAN: Yeah?
JUDGE RODRIQUEZ: Yes?
AMBROSE: Yes. I’m sorry. Yes.
ATTY CALLAHAN: And you didn’t give it to her?
AMBROSE: I told her. I said what– I said that it’s the same as before. The mutual fund is the same as it was before. I was not going to give Karen the password to our investment portfolio.
ATTY CALLAHAN: Why?
AMBROSE: Because I don’t trust her.
ATTY CALLAHAN: Okay. Even though you know that there is $150,000 of money that she received from her mother’s estate that you are in control of?
AMBROSE: And the rest of it is– she never had a problem with that. She never asked for access before. And I don’t trust her to have access… And when she started asking for the passwords to the Fidelity account, it was the same kind of dynamic. And I was worried that Karen– if I gave her the passwords, she could go in, she could sell stock, she could deplete the whole thing, she could lock me out of the account….
ATTY CALLAHAN: So, you have control over that?
AMBROSE: I — I have– well, control, as I have the entire marriage, and she’s never asked once before this year to see the accounts.
***
Ambrose took control of the marital assets. Why?
Because he said, she might take control of marital assets. He locked her out because he did not want her to deplete the money.
He locked her out. He took control of their money, and according to later testimony in court, depleted it.
He took her share because he thought she would take his share.
That may pass muster in CT Family Court, where they make up the law as they go, but nowhere else.
An example:
Two people owned $2 million. That means they each own $1 million.
One said I am taking all $2 million, because I am afraid you will take my $1 million.
This would not be defensible in criminal court in any courtroom in the USA.
Someone takes the assets of a partnership on the theory that the partner would take the assets.
It would not be defensible in civil court.
Ambrose took money that did not belong to him. He also took her $150,000 maternal inheritance. With complete control of their assets, he retained attorneys and professionals. They helped him prevail in the case.
On August 23, 2019, Ambrose admitted he seized the marital assets and inheritance.
His Cease & Desist letter said, “There was no such testimony from me.”
But he testified he took it and why he took it.
Judge Rodriquez ordered Ambrose to file a FA. “All right. The date I’m picking is September 5.”
Ambrose did not file a financial affidavit by September 5.
His attorney Nancy Aldrich got the case transferred to Judge Jane Grossman.
The case was transferred in September 2019, so Ambrose did not have to face Judge Rodriquez.
Aldrich got the court to appoint a guardian ad litem, Jocelyn Hurwitz of Cohen and Wolf.
GAL Hurwitz arranged for custody evaluator Dr. Biren-Caverly.
Ambrose paid them because he had the money. He paid them from their joint marital funds, and they sided with him.
A year after Judge Rodriquez ordered Ambrose to file a FA, he had not filed.
Judge Jane Grossman ordered the children out of their mother’s house. They were not to contact the woman who raised them every day of their lives since they were infants.
In August 2020, Judge Grossman confirmed Ambrose had still not filed a financial affidavit. Excerpt from transcript: August 31, 2020: Bridgeport, CT. Judge Jane Grossman.
Nickola Cunha was Karen’s attorney.
ATTY CUNHA: I would like the court to note that there are no financial affidavits…filed in this matter…
GROSSMAN: I will note that there is a financial affidavit for the defendant [Karen] filed item number 131. Attorney Cunha’s right. I don’t see a financial affidavit filed with the court for the plaintiff [Ambrose]… it looks like we need one. I’m certainly capable of asking for one.
Judge Grossman was capable of asking for a Financial Affidavit, but she never did.
Ambrose did not file a financial affidavit. He avoided disclosing what he did with the marital assets.
In August 2020, they sold the marital house. Judge Grossman wanted it sold, because Ambrose said the family was running out of money.
Judge Grossman said the proceeds must go to attorneys first.
Karen’s half of the equity went to pay the GAL’s fees and attorney fees.
All the while, she had no access to their marital assets or her inheritance. The court ordered Ambrose and Karen to pay the GAL’s fees 50-50 when she had no access to the marital funds. So they used her share of the house.
The case was transferred to Judge Gerard Adelman in 2021.
On May 6, 2021, Judge Adelman ordered Ambrose to make spousal payments.
These were to come from their marital assets – at $4500/month.
Judge Adelman ordered Ambrose to pay Karen’s outstanding bills and debts.
Ambrose did not work on the books. He said he was living off their marital assets.
Any payments made to Karen would come from their money, not his.
Ambrose did not pay Karen’s bills. He made four spousal payments, then stopped.
Her landlord evicted her from her apartment.
Ambrose stopped making his court-ordered spousal payments. He persuaded Judge Adelman to reduce his spousal payments from $4500 to $3100.
Judge Adelman did not mind much when he was told Ambrose stopped making spousal payments.
He told Ambrose to make up the back payments – but at the lower amount. Ambrose did not pay that either.
When Judge Adelman heard, he did not seem perplexed.
He ordered Karen to sign documents to liquidate the mutual funds.
The only account Ambrose had not yet stolen.
He could not get the $60,000 from this account. It required Karen’s signature.
Ambrose told the judge this was the “only remaining funds” from the marital assets. He needed them. He had to take care of the children.
Judge Adleman ordered Karen to assign to Ambrose the Funds for his sole control and use. Without a financial affidavit.
Judge Adleman ordered Ambrose to give Karen $9,000, and he could keep the other $51,000.
Ambrose liquidated the money, but did not pay Karen the $9,000.
Judge Adelman waxed philosophical. He told Karen that she could challenge him when she got to cross-examine him.
That day never came. Her attorney was disbarred. That’s another story for another day. But it wasn’t Karen’s fault she got disbarred.
She had no attorney and no money to retain a new one.
If Ambrose told the truth, if there were no other remaining marital funds, he depleted more than $1 million in assets. Plus, his wife’s inheritance.
Either that or he secreted the money. He snatched more than a million dollars in two and half years, while Karen received $18,000.
CT Family Court denied Karen an accounting of her life savings during an 18-year marriage.
The court permitted Ambrose to liquidate her assets. He made transactions and payments to whomever he chose. He determined without her consent and without financial disclosure.
Nancy Aldrich
Ambrose’s attorney Aldrich explained that a stay-at-home mother is not entitled to marital assets. She wrote to Karen’s attorney on June 4, 2020.
“Why does your client believe she is entitled to any funds when she has contributed nothing throughout the marriage?”
One thing more.
The trial went on without Karen. She asked for an adjournment to get an attorney. Judge Adelman was not concerned. Perhaps he had already made up his mind.
Judge Gerard Adelman
Adelman held only one more day of trial so the GAL could testify. Put the lies on the record – and let her make another payday – at $400 per hour.
Jocelyn Hurwitz made more than $200,000, recommending that the court remove the mother from their children’s lives.
Without Riordan ever putting on her case, Adelman decided Ambrose got full custody of the children.
The children are beside themselves, having lost their mother. But how could she compete? He had all the money.
