Family Injustice: Thrown in Jail
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A Brazos County father has been jailed tonight for not paying his wife money during his divorce fight. The case has raised questions about unelected judges and the consequences of a screwed-up family court system.
Matt Murski is a fitness trainer in Bryan, College Station. A former aggie football player. A former marine.
An early star in the CrossFit wave, featured in this documentary about the mettle it takes to work out like this. The commitment.
“What standards there are no fucking standards,” said Matt Murski in the documentary.
But none of that training prepared Matt for the smack down he would get in a Brazos County family courtroom.
“And I’m getting zero respect from the court whatsoever. Zero,” expressed Murski.
We weren’t shocked, we’ve gotten complaints about Judge Wendy Wood Hencerling for years. Another prime example of a problem Texas legislators must fix, an unelected judge who gets to control a family’s destiny.
Who could forget the time she called a parent in a custody hearing a “dickhead” just because he drove a corvette? Seriously.
At least she then showed her disdain for both parents after they had left her courtroom. She’s real sweet.
“I wanted to throat punch both of them. And I didn’t have a big enough ring this one is too flat,” said Wendy Hencerling.
It was a rare chance to get the audio from inside a Texas courtroom and it’s the same lion’s den Matt Murski entered in September of 2021.
“It’s like watching a train wreck,” expressed Murski.
Before we let you hear the train go off the tracks, let’s tell you more about this tale of family injustice.
Matt and Leah married in 2014 and had their first child the next year. And that’s when Matt says everything started going wrong.
Matt says he complained about credit card spending. There were allegations of domestic abuse. Matt has a picture of a bite mark on his chest, but no police reports were filed.
“Repeated violence in the home, me being hit in the face. My life of living on the couch in my marriage,” recalled Murski.
Matt says he knew he had to have a divorce in 2020, the height of the pandemic.
“The second time she ran up my credit cards after I’d already borrowed from her parents to pay it off the first time, I said, that’s it, no more. I’m not pulling any more debt for you,” recalls Murski.
The business at his Body Lab Gym was all but nonexistent, his only real income he says coming from COVID loans for struggling small business.
So, Matt says he went to Leah’s attorney, Amy Banks, and asked her to mediate a quickie divorce.
“I think we can be agreeable. We want to be the best things for the kids. And Amy Banks said, oh, no, that’s not how we do this. We’re going to go to court,” states Murski.
Of course, that is how family lawyers billing by the hour make the most money. In a long dragged-out fight
Banks ignored our letter to interview. And Leah wasn’t interested either.
“I have nothing to say to you all. If you want to ask any questions everything is documented in court,” said Leah.
Matt had called 9-1-1 weeks before the hearing, claiming Leah was creating a scene at his gym.
“Yes, can I get a police officer sent out to my business? I’m afraid of some, you know, violence. My wife, who I’m in the middle of a divorce with, is saying that she’s sitting up here and pretty much slandering me and doing everything that we’re not allowed to do. I need her off the premises,” said Matt Murski in the call to 911.
But it was Leah who filed for divorce court first, and there’s a lesson in that. And that brings us back to the injustice of this Brazos County courtroom.
Not just an unelected judge passing judgement, but one with a growing reputation for finding a villain way too quickly.
“This is set for one hour. So, it will be thirty minutes for each side. Open. Close. Direct cross. And all exhibits,” said Judge Hencerling.
Only one hour to argue about years of trouble before a judge that was not only deciding on child support for three little kids, but how much money matt’s wife would get paid in temporary spousal support until the divorce was final.
We know from the transcript Leah was on the stand forty minutes.
“Okay. Now, I will say this once. I want this to go like Santa Claus, lightning quick,” said Rick Davis$$$$$$$$$$$
A frustrated Matt Murski got less than eight minutes to tell his side of the story on the witness stand. He had already learned the judge didn’t want to talk about anything other than dollars and cents.
Murski was ordered to pay $1,100 in monthly child support for the kids, and more than $2,000 in monthly spousal support for his wife.
“So, get unhappy now so you will be unhappy after the ruling. And you can just get happy afterwards. Okay,” said Judge Hencerling.
It wasn’t as much as she wanted, but the judge had totally ignored Matt’s claims that his personal training business was now actually losing money every month in the wake of the pandemic.
The judge had a fix for that too, reduce expenses and make more money. Easy for the judge to say that, but I don’t know. It sure sounds pretty damn rude although I am thinking of another word too.
“Pick up 17 more clients by the end of the day and get a second job. Sorry that’s just why it’s got to be,” said Hencerling.
“What I can tell you is there is a problem in the state of Texas with the way temporary orders hearings are conducted,” said John Lagrappe
Houston attorney, John Lagrappe, says family law judges often impose arbitrary time limits to hear deeply personal family fights.
“It’s wrong because you have due process, right, to a fair hearing and what’s really happening is your clients don’t get a fair hearing. It’s basically a rush to judgment,” expressed Lagrappe.
If I don’t pay this back spousal support that was more than I was making at the time, then I go to jail. I’m like, how do I get that ruling,” said Matt Murski.
Well, this may tell us why, Judge Hencerling’s docket notes we found in courthouse record. Remember matt Murski had only gotten a few minutes to testify.
“Those are odd docket notes,” said Lagrappe.
Judge Hencerling took issue with Murski talking fast even though his lawyer had told him to, “fathers testimony is lots of fast talk” read the notes.
“Seems to me if you have a shorter hearing, someone’s going to have to talk a lot quicker to get out what they want to say. It’s just common sense,” said Lagrappe.
But the judge didn’t stop there.
She decided that the real reason Matt Murski stopped paying his wife so much money wasn’t because he was relying on loans that had run out. It was really because she stopped giving him sex.
The judge wrote quote “he would give her $1080 per week but then stopped that when she wouldn’t sleep with him.”
Judge Hencerling had clearly picked a favorite.
He’s “seemingly quite shady or very ignorant or some semblance of both,” wrote the judge. We showed Matt what we found.
“I thought it was awful. It’s like I’d never had a fighting chance,” said Murski.
Matt filed for bankruptcy a month later.
“During the chapter 13 case, temporary orders kept being extended,” said Murski.
Matt fought every step of the way not to pay his wife, who he said had no involvement in a business he started before they were married.
“What I would like to do is get my side heard. For good faith, I was at the top of what I was doing at the time. And I got saddled with an albatross that has intentionally done this to sink herself on to somebody and make me the fall guy for her and get a payoff for the rest of her life,” expressed Matt Murski.
To bolster his claim, Matt even found eyewitnesses to that trespassing complaint he filed. One of them called his now ex-wife “unhinged.”
“He deserves better than what he’s gotten. And I feel that the ruling that she gave is what’s causing his life to be such a mess,” said Babs.
Turned out they were neighbors to judge Hencerling. And so she decided to recuse herself.
It took almost two years for the Murski divorce to be finalized and those monthly payments to his wife finally ended.
It’s another weird quirk in Texas law. If you are married less than ten years, like matt was, you don’t have to pay spousal support when a divorce is finalized.
Family lawyers know that. It’s an incentive lawyers tell us to keep the temporary rulings in place.
“The problem is that can be ripe for abuse, because what happens is, since the spouse that’s receiving the spousal support knows when the case is over, they’re not going to get alimony. They have an incentive to drag out the case as long as they can, and therefore they can collect this much spousal support. And so, it drags the case out sometimes for years and years,” explained Lagrappe.
It’s another example of a family court system built on making lawyers a lot of money no matter what.
And like Judge Hencerling the new judge didn’t seem to want to talk about the trauma of the Murski marriage either. Claiming matt was intentionally underemployed.
Matt believes Judge Hencerling’s courthouse notes poisoned the system against him.
And now he owes $67,000 in spousal support that is past due. He has closed his gym and moved in with his dad. Still fighting.
“I can’t start a new lease. I can’t start a new gym. I can’t get an apartment or get on my feet. I can’t do anything where I’m looking over my should every day that I am going to jail for six months,” expressed Matt Murski.
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