Scott got the order dismissed last month. But Wilbanks, who still received a parting warning from the judge about the criminal harassment laws, feels he's been banished. In cases where kids and property are involved, the cases can get even stickier and the damage more severe, Scott said. The die may be cast by the time a parent ordered out of the house gets a chance to answer the charges in court. Ralph Moldauer, another Bellevue family law attorney, agreed that parents can, and do, work the protection order system to get an advantage in custody and property disputes.
Courts are reluctant to upset arrangements that give children stable homes.
So the person who gets the house and the kids first usually keeps them, he said. Judges and court commissioners who hear the thousands of cases filed each year in King County know that. Judge Jim Cayce, presiding judge of the King County District Courts, said he doesn't see signs of the abuses Scott talks about. During the summer of 1997, Cayce told a bar association committee that on several occasions people sought protection orders in District Court to force their partners out of the house. Some said attorneys told them of this as an expedient remedy.