All Comments on 'Sullivan vs. Sullivan'

5* This well-constructed story manages to be both sad and sweet. I didn't see the "graveyard scene" coming. Thank you for posting it.

The graveyard scene was kind of telegraphed with the calls to the kids and grandkids, but none to the wife, and that’s fine. It was a well written story. Glad things worked out for the kids, though Jeff would have been pretty old to see the kids grow up, get married and be good parents. He was 67 IIRC, and the girl was ten and the boy younger, so he would have been pushing 90 to see them have their own kids.

Great story!

5

Well done. 5⭐️

Nice first attempt by LW. 5⭐.

What a sad twist at the end. Well done

Interesting and unique perspective for an LW story. I enjoyed that part very much.

It would have been much nicer to read with some decent editing and proofreading.

Little William had great manors? So what, the kid had some great country estates?

The judge granted the disillusionment of the marriage? I'm pretty sure the Sullivans were already disillusioned with each other. The judge couldn't grant that.

Overall the story was unique, well written, and enjoyable.

You need an editor for the concept of some words. It's "presiding" not "residing". Since it is repeated many times it was more "jarring" than a single mistake. The word "disillusionment ", i.e. a feeling of disappointment resulting from the discovery that something is not as good as one believed it to be, was obviously not correctly used. You were probably going for some form of "dissolved" (the dissolution of their marriage). I suggest you look up the less commonly used words to make sure of the meaning. There may have been a couple other incorrectly used words.

I gave you 4 stars for a very good first effort but almost dropped it to 3 stars because of the word mistakes. It sounds picky but for someone reading, hitting a wrong word is like hitting a speed bump in a car. One in a story is easily ignored. Too many ruin the ride.

Ditto to what jasonnh said. A judge does not RESIDE in his courtroom (there would be a bed in ot for them if they did), They PRESIDE OVER it.

Also, a court RESUMEs, not readjourns.

Overall, I quite liked this view on the LW category. Judges see the best and worst of us all.

Good story, and ditto to the comments ref wording. As I've learned to look for my own mistakes in spelling or misuse of the words, they now glare at me when reading the stories written by others. And such grammar and spelling errors may seem minor, they disrupt the flow of an otherwise well written story.

As for the content, I'm not sure a judge presiding over a petition for divorce could intervene with the placement of the children, unless he first ordered Social Services to investigate their situation. But even if he does, you should have clarified with him saying the child support payments from both parents goes to the grandparents charged with the kids' care.

I'll give this story a 5, since you're relatively new to posting stories and this is your first in LW.

First off 5 stars OK there were grammatical errors etc. that others have pointed out. But I loved how the focus was on the Sullivan children and the Judge's children. Most LW authors weaponize the kids, they're not tools, possessions or furniture to be fought over in a divorce case.

Really unique perspective you presented to us. Yes, as others have pointed out there were some editing errors but they didn't detract too much from the overall story. We were never told how his daughter's "problem" worked out, so that's a bit of a miss. 4.6*

Very good and nice to see a story where the kids come first.

Excellent story. Good example of what people who should have never married much less have children.

Full marks.

Good job, interesting perspective from the bench’s point of view

good story and well told.. I have friends who are judges, and it amazes me what kind of situations that they have to deal with.

I knew she was gone from the very beginning of the story. If you look at the words it was a 'tense' give away "had been married to the love of my life" [had]. Still sad but that's life and when I too have cancer it means more.

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One item I thought was unfair of the judge and never asked - if the grandparents wanted to raise the grand-kids or had the means or age to endure this burden this late in their life? The judge took much for granted saddling this heavy burden upon them - do the grandparents ever get to live some golden time? Most G-parents would jump at the chance but it is still a taxing burden even if the court insures the guilty parents support the kids financially. Which leads me to the question as the mother ran off - did she become a deadbeat missing her $600/mo?

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So the question now becomes was it a failure of the G-parents in raising their daughter or was it how shitty our me-me society has become? Since the G-kids came out good I would tend to believe the G-parents learned from their mistakes or they were good parents from the start. As the mother started the CHEATING and it looks like the husband gave up and did a tit-for-tat, good for the goose is better for the gander with both failing their parental duties.

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Still a grand story, thought provoking.... Original too!

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6✨✨✨✨✨✨Hooyah, Salutes...

@KRD19254 You are right with the grandparents i never even thought about any of that with them wanted to or not i just made it look as if he assumed with the way they always watched them and loved them that they would take them. I also didnt really take into account the mother running off and not paying the support.

As for everyone about the grammatical errors with the words i used ill admit i messed up a bit with that. I dont really know the court lingo well and probably should have done some research on that. Ill be sure to do better.

Thank you all for the amazing amd positive comments and feedback i appreciate it.

5* for your first LW story. Very good plot with a divorce case seen from the eyes of a judge, which is very rare in LW. You need to improve your vocabulary and punctuation.

I also have to give 5 stars for this one, even though I had a suspicion that the Judge's wife was no longer part of his life in some way.

The cemetery visit did bring a tear to my eye in sympathy for his loss as it was done with empathy and understanding.

Very nicely done.

Excellent story. The Bear approves. 5 stars. I would give you more, because it is rumored I can't count, and it was worth it. But I love happy endings. This was more along the lines of mediocre endings; not from the writing, but the content. I look forward to more from you. Well done, faithful author.

The BEAR

Excellent, excellent story! Really very fine. Weaving the calls to the children and grandchildren into the sadness of the job while watching the destruction of a marriage was a perfect contrast. It's hard to say that I enjoyed this sad story, but I did.

We’ll done. 5 Stars.

The worst of numerous typos and similar errors is that the Jjudge would not be RESIDING. He would be PRESIDING. Very distracting to read.

All five stars turned golden...

Well done thanks for sharing. Enjoyed your moral compass, and I look forward to more stories.

No doubt a true story, well told.

A few mistakes. I was going to point out that the bailiff tells the people to all rise, the judge who is presiding over the case, the name of the parties involved, to be seated and to rise as the judge leaves the bench. He also handles all evidence that is presented to the judge and keeps order when needed to protect the judge. I guess a few have already done that.

I enjoyed the story. Thankfully the children arrived to adulthood successfully. Thanks for your writing.

The gist of the story is great and even through the muck of the parents hope does spring eternal. Thanks for a different take on the theme.

I liked your point of view. Nicely done.

Please get an editor to make the story more readable. Not a bad attempt but would benefit from being proofread.

Well done!

Decent twist on telling the story from the judge's perspective, which have glaring contrast between his own life and the warring couple. I think with the kids the judge would need to talk to children's services & they would evaluate the situation. If they felt the kids were in danger they could petition the court after taking temporary custody that the grandparents be the custodians. Personally I would hope a judge had that kind of power, but I don't think so.

One small quibble. You write he met his wife senior year of college, then a year later after taking the bar exam he got married. He would need to attend& finish law school to take the bar exam, you can take the bar without law school but you have to work with a licensed lawyer first for a certain period of time ( they used to call it reading law I believe) .

A good story told from an interesting perspective. Engaging, well written. Thank you.

Bry, if, as your bio says, you are open to suggestions to make your stories better then please note that it is almost universal that a SHAKE of the head is a side-to-side movement and usually indicates a negative response, or an indication that an answer is NO.

On the other hand, a NOD pf the head (forward and backward movement) is almost universally accepted as indicating YES or a positive indication. I even checked on Google and Wikipedia to see if it was somehow different in the USA (and although your bio does not say where you're from, the vast bulk of authors here are from the US), and it's not. So, a NOD indicates YES and a shake indicates NO. I've seen this error before in quite a few Lit stories, and it always jars when the author uses the wrong term when the context shows his intention was the opposite.

I liked the story, especially the surprise of h8s wife's earlier death.

The only jarring note was that the judge presides over the trials and other matters occurring in his courtroom. He actually resides in the house where he lives.

Sorry. I was formerly a judge's law clerk/bailiff, then a practicing trial lawyer prior to my retirement.

Good stuff, especially since it's from a different POV. 5 stars. Thanks for posting.

5 Stars, great story, a lot of love and emotion, it's rare to read a story in Literotica that is non-sexual, you handled it well.

On the positive side, the writing was crisp and clear, and flowed well.

However, the author's failure to research and understand the most basic aspects of the legal process degraded the story. If a writer intends to write about family law, and especially of the Judge’s role in administering the law, the author must learn at least a bit about how the legal process works, and the roles played bot only by the Judge, but by the evidence.

The author’s erroneous assumptions about the Judge’s powers, and about the presentation of evidence, were no less than astonishingly ignorant. Amusing, yes, although it was clearly not intended to be. It was so off the mark that it presented a cockeyed, demented, fun-house version of the actual legal system. The real deal is far more interesting, and the Judge’s challenges are, in real life, much more complex, with far greater limitations to the Judge’s powers. Three ⭐️s for a good effort; docked two stars because of the impact on the tale of the failure to do the basic research to ground the story in the real universe it pretended to inhabit.

Well written refreshingly different take on a tale of two cheaters.

Have to pick a couple nits, sorry. The judge is Presiding not Residing and one nods their head yes and shakes their head no. The few other typos, probably the result of autocorrect, were inconsequential.

Thanks for posting this and please keep writing.

Good effort and a very original perspective. I enjoyed how you managed to weave all of the standard cliches into this tale as though lampooning classic LW fare but still telling a solid story. Four stars.

After a loooong long time a LE story that really touched my heart!!

A nice moral to the story.

While mechanically correct, the story is fairly boring and uninteresting. This is the type of story that you could skip ahead huge portions of and not miss anything.

A really well developed and told story. Very balanced. Five stars from me.

JPB

Thanks for sharing...

I really enjoyed the third party perspective, well done.

I hate grammer and spelling nazi's leaving comments. I'm sure you English snobs can find a teacher that will let you grade papers. Stick to the story. Did you like it or not!!

Not bad, agree a little careful editing would help. Figured his wife was gone since he was thinking about her but calling his kids. Blessed to be 40+ years into an amazing marriage I always call her first.

Keep writing. "Practice makes Perfect" as they say. Or at least improves over time. It seems to be that USA Judges can exceed their real authority at times, at least going by the stories one reads here. A "child" becomes an independent adult at age 18. They can vote, get married, leave home, join Military, sign legal Contracts, work in Bars/taverns/strip clubs (Well, in any Country except the USA for alcohol) Why would "Child support" continue until age 21. It is not logical and is not followed in most (if not all) western Countries?

Nice story.

I'm glad it turned out well for the children.

I bet those two digusting adults started with swinging.

And gradually, wife took on a lover. As they both are not home most of the time.

Very nice story. Thank you

Loved the use of the Judges viewpoint. I know you are being hit with needing someone to assist in editing. I agree that would be good but nitpicking. Very good story.

I have to agree with Jasonnh, you need an editor. There are just too many mistakes in this to make it enjoyable reading and the 'jarring' got too much for me to finish reading your story.

An interesting story but in need of proof reading and editing. Judges preside over a court, not reside. I note the errors that others have spotted.

"No where near as good as you. I mean, he's not bad. He's gentle and loving just not as good and does not give me the amount of orgasms that you do." - That doesn't sound like someone simply having a revenge affair.

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I know he's the MC and narrator, but what does his life have to do with the story?

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"disillusionment" should be dissolution.

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Heh. I missed "residing" for "presiding," ans "readjourns" but they met for "dinner," not "diner."

Like the story and want to encourage you to keep posting more. Spelling, grammar, capitalization don’t normally bother me, but the number of errors in this was really distracting. Get a good editor and keep writing.

Not bad. Lots of loose ends….e.g., how did his daughter’s marriage fare? What about Mrs Sullivan’s parents? And wow did things move fast in that Court!

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But overall…not bad. More please.

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4 ****

5 stars and primarily because of the way you cared for the children during court and after the divorce.

I certainly wish someone had done something similar for me when I was just 13.

Please keep writing.

Have a nice day.

"[G]ranting the disillusionment of this marriage"? "Manors"? And the legal stuff - where to begin? One thing is that I am pretty sure that most courts cannot order child support past the age of majority unless the parents agree to it. And why on earth would the wife want to reconcile in the first place. especially after what she said on the video? Yes, parenting classes are real in divorces. They are not about reconciliation. They are about how not to be assholes to each other when you are sharing custody.

Remember the movie "10" starring Bo Derek and Dudley Moore? Do you think anyone would rate Ms. Derek as a 10 if she had even the smallest of warts on the end of her nose?

As someone else commented, those "small" word usage, spelling and/or grammatical errors tend to drop the reader out of the story for a bit, regardless of how small and insignificant they may be.

And they prevent even a well though out story from being a 5.

That's one of the reasons why people run their story past an editor before posting it.

The court doesn’t have the authority to just give custody over to third parties like that. He can’t have conversations with those people in his chambers. That’s unethical. Just a shitshow of a legal proceeding. Considering the entire farce of a story was based on legal proceeding, and didn’t belong in loving wives, I had to give a 2

Would you be surprised to learn that an honorable judge is "presiding", instead of "residing"?

Creative idea that deserved better execution. More character development was needed. Apart from the judge, the characters had no real depth...they were just stereotypes. Yes, there are parenting classes, but much of the legal part was confused. And, there were grammsr aspellng issues. Here's just one example: If you write educated characters, they won't say that they are doing "good" in response to "How are you?" The correct response is "I'm doing well." because "doing" is a verb and is modified by an adverb.

Keep writing. Technique can be learned; creativity can't.

Damn it 21 in New York? Its only 18 in Texas. Eh probably harder to get a job in New York

KRD19254 It's the paternal not the maternal grandparents is it not?

Bry1977 Nothing further on the judge's daughter's problems, or is there to be a follow-up?

Thanks for the story, all the best with future efforts.

A fresh, solid story. Five stars.

Clichés, typos, spelling errors, lack of proof reading.

You will fit in well here on LW

Good story. Well done. Spelling and poor word use are distractions.

Ed

It was different, which in itself is a refreshing change. A few gaffes but nothing to complain about.

Good story.

It was average at best. The belaboring of the “interviews” with children and grandparents were unnecessary detailed and stereotypical. There really wasn’t much emotions described. For my money a story comparison/contrasting with his daughter’s own marital issues instead of the caricature Sullivans would have made for a better story.

What an imaginative idea. A judge who uses his intellect to determine the outcome of his judgement rather than the norms of societies biases. Well worth the time to read and enjoy.

A morality play. Its OK, even if most of the legal principles and requirements are wrong.

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Judges have No training or authority to make decisions about parental competency or sufficiency. The children and the parents would have to be evaluated by a psychologists and other child welfare experts for the state to deprive the parents of custody. And all of that would be subject to appeal. And the judge just deciding to issue restraining orders, because HE thinks its a good idea? Laughable. A restraining order is issued by request of a threatened or injured party, with evidence of probable physical harm.

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What you have implied here is that some bureaucrat has the right and responsibility to decide if people are good spouses and good parents, based on personal opinions and values. God help us when that becomes more prevalent; its bad enough already. I get your moral posturing, but fortunately we are Still of government of LAWS rather than the opinions of some self anointed potentate.

small nit. 1000 yards restraining order is over a half mile and hard to enforce.

Great story though of a different flavor than the usual.

Thank you for an enjoyable story. I find that the minor mistakes did not take away from your submission. well done 5*****

Justonemansopinion

Once again I walked through those doors to hear, "All rise. The honorable Jeffery Stone residing."

Someone else said it and he heard it.

It brought tears to my eyes (the closest thing a guy like me gets to actually crying.) Unfortunately it's not fiction, it repeats itself hundreds of times a week. People are so stupid and selfish! Thanks for the tears. . . They fely good.

Absolutely great story. I don’t think I’ve ever read one from the judge’s perspective. The saddest part of a sad story was the treatment of the children by a pair of selfish, cheating parents. Judge Stone seemed to be a good man, who with Solomon like wisdom, tried to be fair and impartial in his ruling. This one packed a punch in two pages. Judge stone deserves a few more stories.

Decent idea, could have been a good story, but horribly written. Wooden dialogue. Misused words galore.

Interesting variation of the LW theme. Points for creativity.

Something different. *****

A different very well written thought provoking take on what is unfortunately a wide spread problem in our society today.

Great story thanks for sharing.

Refreshing to see the judge’s perspective. Please keep writing.

Certainly an unusual PoV in LW.

Bry# needs to know about the LIT free editing opportunity. But step one is that once the last period has been recorded, put it down for several days (rather than sending it in for publication.). Then read it as though the story were totally unknown. No speed-reading or scanning! Check that each sentence follows the previous one, and leads to the next one. And then check that each paragraph has a theme.

4*

Shit story different but not very entertaining (jaybee186)

A few minor mistakes- as said below & punctuation mistakes, but to me it’s minor. A saddening story about parents not really loving their children, or themselves or spouses. Judge did the right thing in speaking to the parents & children. To be clear, his parents moreso.

The scene @ the cemetery totally floored me; I never would’ve thought. Beautifully written. 5 stars. Bob

The only thing left hanging was his daughter's situation, but I am going to assume that she took the judge's advice and forced the issue of communication, and her and her husband worked it out. The lack of further dialogue about it, means that it became a non-issue.

Besides that, this was an interesting exercise, seen from a side hardly ever explored. Nice to see a court where a sense of justice was the underlying motivational factor. Sadly though... that underscores that this is a fictional story. The real motivational factors in court, are political correctness from a very particular perspective, then money... in that order.

Very good story! Congratulations! 5 stars from here ;)

wtf was the point of this, a sstory to nowhere, about nothing. Did i miss the point?

Makes one wonder why they had a second child when they didn’t care much for their first one. A sad story which unfortunately happens much too often.

@patilli apparently you missed the point and read the wrong story because everyone else in the comments got it and liked it even with my stupid mistakes.

@Everyone else Thank you for the constructive criticism and kind words I take it all to heart. Im debating on re-writing this story and adding to it the things i missed and making it better and then resubmitting it.

Disillusionment? Really? Get an editor and a dictionary; you clearly need both.

KRD19254 "So the question now becomes was it a failure of the G-parents in raising their daughter or was it how shitty our me-me society has become?" The children were being left with their paternal, not maternal grandparents."

As the last comment asks what happens to the judge's daughter's marriage?

Best of luck with future stories.

Tried to post this comment yesterday, but everything disappeared into the ether.

I really enjoyed this story I wish I had the talent to write stories. It takes real talent that I don’t have but you do.Thank you for an enjoyable entertaining read

A decent story. I was intrigued at the beginning with the judge as narrator.it seemed to me a different and interesting way to tell about a marriage in trouble; I half expected the troubled marriage to be the judge’s own. You might want someday to use this approach again.

Just a couple of technical comments.

Your writing would benefit from proofreading. The judge looked at “the wife[‘s] evidence.” It is “Judge Stone [p]residing.” A court cannot “readjourn” (adjourn again) when it has already adjourned and is not in session; I wondered if you meant to say that “court was about to resume.” There were others.

It seemed odd that the judge asked the grandparents and kids so few questions. It just went unrealistically fast. You don’t have to create a whole series of questions to make the interviews seem longer to the reader. You could just say in each case something like “The judge talked with the grandparents for about 10 more minutes to make sure he understood what they were saying.”

The judge’s accusation that the wife was a gold-digger came out of nowhere. Without any basis for this earlier in the story, I was unsure whether you just hadn’t prepared readers for this, or whether the judge went of half-cocked. Sort of like a legal case, authors have to “lay a foundation” for what comes later in a story for the story to be believable and make sense.

These are things you can improve. I hope you keep writing.

They shook their heads, "Yes sir, Grandma makes us cookies," said William with a smile.

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You shake your head no and nod your head yes. It's disruptive to the story when the visual you create doesn't match the story.

sbrooks I am sure that your shoes are full of the shit that spouts out of your mouth

Loved the story! it would be nice if they were more judges like this. Thanks for writing this one!

Now that is what I call a story!

Meh. Really quite boring. Where are the emotions and perspectives of the Sullivans? This story is more about the judge and gives little development to any of the other characters mentioned in the story. Readers want to get to know the characters in any tale, a d whether they end up liking them or hating them, without background and character development the story has no impact.