Amy Clifford
Appearances
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
I remember then she hired an attorney. And, you know, obviously, when somebody hires an attorney, you never speak to them. You speak to their attorney. So she hired an attorney named Catherine Periculus. And then from there on, I would speak to Attorney Periculus about the matter. So I was like, oh, great. I got another attorney involved. This should be easy.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
You know, these parties don't have anything to fight over and they both want to get a divorce. So quickity quick, bang, bang, bang. Like, you know, I think we should be done with this soon.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
She had taken his sperm when he was not able to speak for himself. And he absolutely did not want her to have a child with that sperm. That was really important to him. And the other one was that he wanted to be able to tell his story. And other than that, I remember he wanted some photographs, some things that she had access to, like things that his mother had left him.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
His mother had passed away. Cancer, I believe. There was some possessions that his mother had given him and some other just mementos of him and maybe even the relationship that he wanted. Jake would tell me, I would just like my photos. She's got this photo. I know she has it because here's this email. And I'd be like, how do you know she has it? And he's like, well, there's this email.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
And she's talking about, I have the photo. I was like, well, I guess she has the photo. But he would ask for things that he knew she had because in communication, she would say that she had them. I would see the documentations. You know, I'd ask her for the thing that he asked for. And then the answer would come back from attorney Parakilis that she doesn't have that.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
And so we just go back and forth like that, where Jake would be like, can I have it? And she'd say, Antonia Periculus would say she doesn't have it.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
There was like six items or something that she said she had. And so I was like, Jake, that's all she says she has. Like, we can't get we can't get anything from her that she says she doesn't have.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
Oh, she just doesn't have that anymore. She lost her phone. And I'd be like, Oh, Jake, sorry, she doesn't have that anymore. She lost her phone. And he'd be like, Well, no, that that doesn't make sense. Because she has an Apple phone. She always has. She's never lost anything. She like her habit is to back stuff up to the cloud. And so she has it from the cloud.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
So I'd be like, Okay, I'd go back to return to Perry Hills back and forth. And then, you know, eventually she come back to me. She said she just doesn't have it. We got to this point where we're like, well, the string cheese incident video that you forwarded to somebody else via email, like, and we'd have a record to say she sent this video to somebody else.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
And we know that she sent it on this day because of the email. And they'd be like, oh, no, we don't have it. Because if you send something via email, you just look in your email history. And I'm like, okay. She would pretend not to understand how to do a search on email. She pretended to be, like, completely incompetent.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
So I said, you know what, why don't I, I'll meet you somewhere and we'll go through, you know, your email, we'll do a search and we'll just forward the stuff that I offered to do that, stuff like that. It was like absolutely, you know, went nowhere. I believe I filed a motion with the court to demand that she hands over certain things. One of those items was Jake's driver's license.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
The court issued a ruling, as I recall, for the things that she said she did have for them, for her to hand them over. And then we arranged a meeting. I think it was in the Friendly's parking lot. I met her and it was like apparently her mom and her. They unloaded some stuff, I don't remember what it all is, into my car.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
Things were so heated between the parties, it's not normal for your attorney to go and gather things from the other side. But in this instance, I was like, this is just absolutely the way it has to be because Ellen, I was concerned she would bring additional claims against Eli or just anybody who went to meet her. I was concerned what she would do.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
So I volunteered to go. So I went, I grabbed the stuff from her and her mom. They were perfectly polite. I take the things and then I drive them to Eli's house and I drop them off.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
I remember we were negotiating the divorce and that he was on the Reddit forum and it was like a very good forum for him to be on. And he was making great strides in his recovery and trying to tell a story. And at the same time, I was challenged with negotiating this divorce agreement. And I think I got an email from attorney Periculus saying like, your client really screwed it up.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
He's talking about Ellen on the Reddit forum. And You know, I still do this thing where I take an attorney at their words.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
I went back to the attorney and I was like, he never mentioned her name. Then the attorney wouldn't agree to that.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
She didn't want her name to be associated with it at all. And she just didn't want him to have the ability to tell his story. And so there was this really bizarre back and forth because she was trying to negotiate a confidentiality agreement. She was holding the divorce hostage in order to get Jake to sign a confidentiality agreement that he wouldn't tell his story.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
So she didn't want her name in it, but that's not what she said. She also just didn't want him to tell his story. I... Told Jake at the time, I was like, listen, do you want to get divorced or do you want to tell your story? You can get divorced pretty quick. Or if you want to hold on to your story, like we got to we got to get a hunker in.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
We stuck to the guns about keeping that out of the marital separation agreement.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
There was some challenges because we didn't actually know where Ellen was living. So the way you bring about a divorce is, A, like I said, I'm very practical. So I'll just call the other party and say, hey, are you also interested in getting a divorce? And if they are, there's like path one, which is called a joint divorce. I tried to go that path, but it didn't work. And then...
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
a contested divorce. So this is the other path, which is like not the easy path where one party files and then the other person answers and then there's just a whole bunch of back and forth until a judge grants a divorce. So I remember filing a 1B petition and then trying to serve Ellen and being unable to serve her. She wouldn't give me her address, which makes it impossible to move forward.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
In the meantime, Ellen filed for divorce. which is stupid because it costs money to file divorce. And so that was just a waste to have two divorces open. But we ended up withdrawing our complaint for divorce and moving forward with her complaint for divorce. I did get the sense it was very important to Ellen that she be the defendant.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
When I started talking to her, she was very mistrustful of me. Ellen filed her divorce herself without an attorney. So a normal hearing in this matter is like the parties deliver financial statements, like explaining what their financial position is, and they tell the court whether they agree with this divorce and what are the issues. But I showed up and Ellen had this story.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
She was requesting restraining orders against not Jake, but against Jake's dad and I think his brother. And she had a whole story where they were abusing her. And I was like, what is going on? And so I tried to work with her to understand where she was coming from and, you know, see what statements she had written in the affidavits. So you
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
If you request a temporary restraining order from the court, you have to write an affidavit that says, like, why you're asking for it. And you have to have a certain number of incidents. And you have to be actually, like, in fear of, you know, your own personal safety. And if you meet all these standards, then the court will grant it. And they often do this in, like, family court matters.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
But this came out of the blue for me. I did not understand what this was about. Because as far as I understood, Alan and Jake's dad hadn't been in a room together for years. well over a year at least. So you have to have reasonable fear of your safety in it. To my understanding, there was no set of facts where somebody could be reasonably in fear. But she's very pretty.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
9: Signed, Sealed, Silenced
She's very well put together. And she's pretty articulate. And she seemed really afraid. Like she presented herself as being very afraid of Jake's dad and Like, had I not been there to contradict the story that she told, I'm pretty sure she would have gotten a temporary restraining order. I think that was the first time where I really questioned what was going on with Ellen.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
7: The Resurrection of Jake
My name is Amy Clifford and I've had a law office, Clifford Law Office, since 2019. But when I became a lawyer, I joined an incubator called Justice Bridge. And Justice Bridge connected new attorneys like me to low and moderate income individuals who are looking for legal representation. Wir bieten diese Repräsentation auf eine reduzierte Fee.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
7: The Resurrection of Jake
Und wir als neue Anwesende können diese Repräsentation in einem Bereich bieten, in dem wir es sonst nicht können, weil wir einen Stapel von 72 vertretenen Juden und erfahrene Praktizierenden hatten.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
7: The Resurrection of Jake
Also, wenn wir einfach etwas gefunden haben, was wir interessiert haben und mit dem wir helfen konnten, konnten wir diesen Fall nehmen, weil wir ein Team von erfahren Praktizierenden hatten, auf die wir relying haben.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
7: The Resurrection of Jake
The rep payee for Social Security was Ellen. Und ich glaube, dass sie nicht zu signieren, um das zu verändern. Und so war das Resultat, dass ich glaube, sie war auf den Social Security Payments. Und so war Tewkesbury Hospital nicht in der Portion, die sie sollten. Und es benötigte, dass ich in Person nach Tewkesbury Hospital gehe. It was late in the evening.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
7: The Resurrection of Jake
It might have been snowing or raining at the time. It was dark. Jake didn't really have all the documentation. So he was just really stuck between a rock and a hard place and couldn't get anything. So I was super happy to be involved in the solution there, to establish a durable power of attorney so that we could start getting things in order for himself.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
7: The Resurrection of Jake
Ich fühlte mich wirklich gut. Ich konnte jemanden helfen und ging auf meine eigene Art und Weise. Und dann hat Jake mich behauptet, ihn in seinem Divorz zu repräsentieren. Weißt du, ich bin immer romantisch. Also habe ich gesagt, bist du sicher, dass du einen Divorz bekommen willst? Und Jake hatte eine sehr gerechtfertigende Position, nämlich, dass ich einen Divorz bekommen will.