Riley involves a highly-disabled Child (with Down’s Syndrome and entirely nonverbal) who for 5 years has been prevented from seeing his Father, whom Court-appointed Counsel and all evidence describe and show is a loving, nurturing, and otherwise wonderful parent. The separation is due to unexplained rulings by Vermont Probate Judge Jeffrey Kilgore (“JK”), who ignored controlling legal factors and instead sidetracked to an irrelevant factual question of whether Mother had unduly influenced Child into saying (1 time out of 8) that he did not want to see Father. Any such influence was irrelevant because all expert and other evidence showed Child lacked capacity to make such a decision in any event. JK’s errors were left in place by Superior Court Judge Timothy Tomasi (“JT”), with whom he literally shared an office during the appeal. It is inconceivable that the separation would have been allowed for even a week were Child not disabled, or were the parents’ gender roles reversed.
Rather than correcting the errors or acknowledging Father’s right to appeal the controlling questions of law to Vermont’s Supreme Court, JT remanded the matter to JK. JT asserted that JK’s decision was not ripe for appeal until after JK determined the legally-irrelevant side-issue of Mother’s influence. Despite that even JK later acknowledged that Child lacks capacity (and thus that the side-issue of undue influence is irrelevant), neither JK nor JT has allowed Child to see Father or allowed Father to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Pleadings demonstrating both judges’ misconduct are linked below, and all pleadings are available here. Further evidence of the accuracy of this summary is the simple fact that, were any of it untrue, JK and JT would most certainly seek to sanction the attorney/writer for making false or misleading statements. They have not, and the writer has for over a year challenged them to try.
Pleadings Showing JK’s and JT’s Judicial Misconduct:
The base of the Judges’ House of Cards is JK’s 2023 Order prolonging what was then-already a 2-year-separation. JK failed even to discuss the fully-briefed and dispositive issues (in Father’s Opening Brief and Reply): that (1) it was in Child’s best interest to see Father; (2) Child lacked any capacity to decide otherwise; and (3) an earlier Judge had, in light of Mother’s prior untoward efforts to separate Child from Father, promised Father that Child and he could meet prior to any changes in the Court-Ordered 3x/week schedule of visits. JK’s rejection of the 3 controlling arguments with no basis in law or fact violated RPC 3.1.
Father’s Questions on Appeal identified JK’s errors in entirely ignoring the above 3 dispositive issues, yet JT never even acknowledged them on appeal. JT and JK also ignored the input of Child’s Court-Appointed Counsel that the visits should resume and Mother be sanctioned.
JT instead waited 4 months to do anything; then questioned whether the appeal was “ripe;” then largely ignored Father’s Sept. 2023 Response showing ripeness. In Jan. 2024, JT further postponed ruling so he could appoint and hear from Counsel for Child; he then largely ignored not only the ripeness issue but also Court-Appointed Counsel’s March 29 Motion for Contempt and Sanctions against Mother despite that Counsel reported ongoing harm by Mother and that the continued separation was causing “irreparable harm” to Child.
Court-Appointed Counsel further stated that JK should not have even allowed Child to be called as a witness since he lacks capacity, and she said “[t]he evidence in the record and my contact with [Father] suggest he has been a consistent and nurturing parent of [Child]” and urging that visitation begin immediately. Counsel concluded that “irreparable harm is happening and this court should act on an exigent basis,” but still JT did nothing … failing even to rule on whether he had jurisdiction.
A week after informing JT of the above and over a year after the appeal was filed, Court-Appointed Counsel repeated virtually all of the above in a separate Motion to JK for Contempt against Mother and Immediate Enforcement of the Schedule. Counsel repeated that there is “no evidence [Child] has the intellectual capacity to give informed consent or denial for any legal matter in his life” and again said that Father has been “a consistent and nurturing parent of [Child].” Still, neither judge stopped the separation.
Still another month later (May 8, 2024), Court-Appointed Counsel wrote that Mother is harming Child; that Mother’s goal seems to be to harm Father; that Child has a legal right to see Father; and that Mother’s Counsel had breached ethics by agreeing Child could resume visitation only if motions for sanctions and contempt were withdrawn.
Ignoring all of the above, on July 31, 2024, JT further further extended the separation by remanding to JK and refusing to allow Father to appeal the controlling legal issues to the Supreme Court (which, on September 10, dismissed Father’s (pro se) attempt to appeal).
Over 6 months later, JK acknowledged that Child lacks the capacity to make the decision Mother had alleged in order to justify any separation (Feb. 5, 2025 Tr. at 111), thus mooting the issue of Mother’s undue influence, yet neither judge ended the separation or allowed Father to appeal their errors to the Supreme Court.