High-Stakes Showdown
Bridgeport, Connecticut – On September 1, Superior Court Judge Thomas J. O’Neill will hear Christopher Ambrose’s motion for contempt against his ex-wife Karen Riordan.
On August 8, Judge O’Neill granted Ambrose’s petition for Restraining Orders, made on behalf of his teenage children against their wishes. His orders barred their mother, Riordan, from seeing Mia, 16, Matthew, 16, and Sawyer, 13, for one year.
Now Ambrose wants her arrested for custodial interference.
Christopher Ambrose aims to maintain control of his children’s lives, regardless of their wishes….
Teens’ Pleas for Understanding
During his three days of hearings, Judge O’Neill refused to hear the testimony of the teenagers. His decision cast three teens into homelessness, since they lived with their mother.
Ambrose perhaps hoped the teens would come to him. Instead, they fled to their maternal grandfather in Rhode Island.
This is the basis of his contempt motion. He wants the judge to punish the mother for the teens not coming to him.
Mia, Sawyer and Matthew Ambrose – the voices of vulnerable teens are drowned out by the sound of money.
An Abrupt End to Mother-Child Bonding
Ambrose will go to court this Friday to seek to get Riordan arrested in an evidence-free attempt to blame her for the teenagers refusing to return to live with him.
The children were kept in isolation – away from their mother, and extended family by their father for three years. They grew old enough to escape. Now they say they do not want to return to his home of loneliness and abuse.
Legal Battle Unfolds as Teens Seek Refuge
They lived with their father – by CT Family Court order – for three years until they ran away earlier this year to reunite with their mother. She had raised them every day for 13 years.
The mother Karen Riordan never had a chance with Judge O’Neill, where money talks and justice walks.
Riordan had no money for an attorney and represented herself, trying to save her children from the abuse they claim they endured.
Law partners Melissa Needle and Alexander Cuda are said to carry family court judges in their pocket, like so many nickels and dimes….
Ambrose retained the well-connected attorney Alexander Cuda, whose silver tongue inspired by his green-loving heart was like magical notes for the money-driven Judge O’Neill.
Artist Titan Surge’s Portrait of a Cuda…
Cuda got Judge O’Neill to remove the mother from the lives of teenagers. They perverted a new Connecticut law, Jennifer’s Law, to hand the victims – the children – a stunning defeat by mislabeling the mother as the abuser when the children say it is the father who abuses them.
This is about money, and that is what corporate lawyer turned judge Thomas O’Neill understands. He does not understand children.
No man with a heart would possibly think teenage children should not be heard. That he would listen only to the cooing of Cuda parroting the lies of blackheart Ambrose, a man so depraved and delusional that he would, without shame, try to force teenagers terrified of him to live with him.
But Ambrose can outspend his wife. This is all that is needed in CT Family Court’s cash for kids enterprise.
Because family court judges never mandated Ambrose file financial affidavits – though required by law – he absconded with more than one million dollars of Riordan’s money.
With that money, he bought the kids.
Four Years Ago…
The following is from the transcript of a hearing on August 22, 2019.
Judge Eddie Rodriguez Jr.
At the hearing, before Judge Eddie Rodriguez, in the case of Ambrose v Riordan, Ambrose admitted he took 100 percent of the marital assets [he was entitled to 50 percent] and all of Riordan’s inheritance.
At the time, Riordan had a lawyer, Richard Callahan. The relevant testimony:
Richard Callahan
CALLAHAN: [Karen Riordan] 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.
CALLAHAN: That you just started, correct?
AMBROSE: Uh-hum.
CALLAHAN: Yeah?
JUDGE RODRIQUEZ: Yes?
AMBROSE: Yes. I’m sorry. Yes.
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.
CALLAHAN: Why?
AMBROSE: Because I don’t trust her.
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, [their joint money], 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….
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.
Sounds Legit: He stole her money because she might steal it from him. Will that work in any other court?
They were getting a divorce. How things were handled when they were married is no argument that he could take control of all the money during their divorce. But that is what Ambrose said and he took control of the marital assets.
He locked her out of their joint accounts because he said he did not want her to lock him out and deplete the money – even though more than half the money was hers.
He took her entire share of the marital assets accumulated over 17 years of marriage and took all of her inheritance because he said if he didn’t, she would take his share.
Imagine the nonsense of this. He stole her money because he was afraid she would steal his. The first thief gets all. Stealers, keepers, losers, weepers.
Judge Rodriguez was not buying it. He gave Ambrose a deadline of September 5, 2019, to file his financial affidavit so the court could explore where the marital money was and how to divide it.
Ambrose did not want to file a financial affidavit.
So he switched judges. He went to Judge Jane Grossman, who was up for reappointment as a judge.
Ambrose retained attorney Nancy Aldrich, the mother of State Senator Will Haskell, a member of the judicial reappointment committee.
That sent a clear message to the enterprising Judge Grossman.
Shortly after, Judge Grossman flipped custody to Ambrose. He used his wife’s money to pay for the lawyer-mother of the senator. He bought his kids.
And the lawyer mother, who got paid about $600,000 for her services, sold her son’s influence to get Ambrose his kids. She got paid for her kid-selling with Riordan’s share of the money.
Senator Haskell duly worked to help Judge Grossman get reappointed, when it was far from a sure thing.
Judge Grossman never required Ambrose to show where the marital funds went, or where Riordan’s inheritance went. It never got on the record, because she never required a financial affidavit from Ambrose.
Judge Jane Grossman ordered three children out of their mother’s house, not to contact the woman who raised them. There was money and a judicial reappointment involved.
Twisted Justice: When Money Determines Custody
So, all these years, Riordan was at a disadvantage, as Ambrose spent her share of the money on his own lawyers. And she represented herself penniless, powerless to persuade the various judges Ambrose moved the cases to with the slick moves of his high paid lawyers.
In CT Family Court you can move from one lawyer to the next if you have the money. If one won’t sell you the kids, you go to another.
None of the slick judges Ambrose chose required him to show the money he took from her. In CT Family Court silence is literally golden.
It’s a long story that will perhaps play out in a federal criminal racketeering case.
Attorney’s Silver Tongue Paves Way for Money-Driven Judge
After his kids ran away in 2023, Ambrose retained attorney Chris Goulden, who was to ensure the courts forced the teens back to Ambrose’s house. They went to two different judges. Both said they were not going to force three teens back.
Artist Surge Titan’s Portrait of a ‘Bari’ Cuda
Ambrose dumped Goulden and retained big gun Alex Cuda, and arranged to get in front of money-driven Judge O’Neill – the third judge on the same matter.
As Cuda might have told Ambrose, “Guys like O’Neill don’t care where you get the money. For a guy like O’Neill, possession is all 10- points of the law. A guy like O’Neill doesn’t care what kids want. Kids are irrelevant in family court. He knows you have the money.”
Yes, Ambrose was smart to retain Cuda, the former head of the CT bar association family section, and active in making judges happy.
This is cash for kids and nothing else.
This is not a Jewish game, an Irish game or Italian. It is neither male nor female, black or white. It is greed, and in the end, it is criminal.
