A self-censored chronicle of family court dramas, lived by parents who lost all or some visitation with or custody of a child or children based on perjury and/or other false courtroom evidence
We are born for a higher destiny than that of earth, there is a realm where the rainbow never fades, where the stars will be spread before us like islands that slumber on the oceans, and where the beings that pass before us like shadows will stay in our presence forever.
The "Divorce and Domestic Violence INDUSTRY" is out of control and is literally ruining the lives of millions of parents and children daily. Buckle your seat belts because what you are about to learn is a bit unbelievable.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the average custody battle now costs $78,000! This is a $50 billion industry that destroys children for profit because all the research shows that sole custody is harmful to children (see Fatherless Statistics page on left for proof and sources of this research), driving up social problems and pathologies 14,600%. This is the #1 social problem of our time because it is the root cause of at least 20 other social problems including: teen suicide, mass murder, crime, drug usage, parental suicide, teen pregnancy and even over 50% of all mental health problems in the U.S. today. The divorce industry is essentially a criminal racket that is destroying society for its profit motives! Literally!
To eliminate this problem both parents MUST have equal custody rights in EVERY divorce by default, unless there is real proof of harm to a child in front of a jury! The divorce system has become nothing but a cash cow and power machine for lawyer$, judge$ and other government bureaucrats.
This system hurts families and children every day for its own convenience and profit totally ignoring the fundamental rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. It is an ILLEGAL kangaroo court. These people have lost touch with "We the people . ."
Family courts today are not a solution for divorcing parents, but a hindrance to the process and very harmful to children and families. Most state family courts operate unconstitutionally, without regard to the highest laws of the land by ignoring supreme court rulings, case law and the many fundamental guarantees of the U.S. and state constitution. Calling them "kangaroo courts" would be too generous as kangaroo courts go through the motions to pretend there is justice and due process - family courts often issue "judgments" without a trial or even an evidentiary hearing, as required by the U.S. Supreme Court to even limit parental rights.
Judges generate "temporary orders" that almost always become permanent to lull you into the belief there will be "real due process" later. There is not any. Most often orders are 100% based on your personal plumbing, not anything that is appropriate given the best interests of children, which we know is almost always near equal time with both parents. Even fathers that are primary caregivers, or spend equal time parenting are generally forced out of their children's lives. In many states, like Massachusetts, there is an order for sole physical custody over 90% of the time! This has been proven by science to be the worst possible scenario for children.
This type of behavior by the courts is by definition tyranny.
Abuse of the people by the court system is why many left England for America. History is repeating itself. The courts are hurting families for the financial gain of states, lawyers, judges and a spiraling government bureaucracy. Basically it is run for the "insiders" not for the benefits of citizens and families.
Today men are treated like criminals in these courts, and not even believed, so that the judge can do whatever they want. You are guilty until proven innocent as a man, and innocent until proven guilty as a woman. This is illegal and in fact an act of treason by judges because they are intentionally ignoring the law.
Remain an Equal Parent to your Child!
Spouses and parent must work around the system and not feed it money. They must use mediators who are not lawyers and divide both children's time and assets fairly. Lawyers will bait you into fights and create an unequal playing field on purpose to generate legal fees. Some lawyers target 40% of your estate before they "let you settle". This is essentially a criminal conspiracy, fraud and anti-trust. It has become so common that they even think it is okay to do, when it is like a doctor injecting you with a disease so they can sell you a cure.
LOWELL -- It has been more than a decade since Shawn Gillespie's acrimonious divorce turned into a custody battle that drained him mentally, physically and financially.
After only a year of marriage and one son, Gillespie and his wife split in 2002, triggering a downhill spiral that forced him to spend thousands of dollars in lawyers' fees and court costs, and lost time at work, in a battle for visitation rights to see his son.
"I had the fight of my life,'' said the 51-year-old truck driver from Lowell. Gillespie said he was stymied by judges who sided with his ex-wife, who took out a restraining order against Gillespie, creating a legal barrier for him to see his son. "I was in and out of court for years," he said.
Shawn Gillespie
Sun staff photos can be ordered by visiting ourSmugMug site.
"The courts are a legal vehicle to shatter someone's life.''
Fathers, he said, "always seem to get the short end of the stick.''Thirteen years later, there are fewer issues surrounding visitation since Gillespie's every-other-weekend visitation schedule now revolves around his teenage son's schedule of school, friends and sports. But the years have not lessened Gillespie's bitterness about how he was treated by the courts.
"The system is broken and unfair toward dads,'' he said. 'Utopia doesn't exist'
Ned Holstein, founder of National Parents Organization, agrees.
"Utopia doesn't exist,'' Holstein said, at least not in the world of divorce and child-custody battles.
But a proposed bill, called the Massachusetts Child-Centered Family Law, strives to overhaul the state's outdated child-custody law and supports a "more modern understanding'' of what is in the best interest of children when parents divorce, Holstein said.
In all indications of the talk out of the legislative bodies, 2017 will be the year of reform of the social programs of Child Welfare Divisions. Although funded by the Federal Government, each State and county will have their own policies and procedures drafted around the new legislative actions in 2017. The new bills could be the means for some states to adopt a 'family friendly' policy of helping families to remain together, and some states will cling to their standard practice of seizing kids for federal dollars. The only way to end the incentivized profit gain off children is to end ASFAct. We encourage all writers to demand this end to ASFA.
In the year of 2017, the group will decide how to restructure our efforts to change the current justice system of Family law/dissolution and custody. As family law in relation to child custody, child support, is a federal justice problem, our need to write legislative bodys will end our refocus will be on addressing the justice system and the avenues available to bring a change, whereas prior change to the Child welfare divisions focused on a social program and policy change and not a justice system change.
Coming Soon: As a service to our readers, Grandparents.com is establishing the American Grandparents AssociationTM with the goal of becoming a key resource for grandparents who are physically removed from their grandchildren and would like to find a way to visit them.
Richard Kent, a family lawyer at Fairfield, Conn.-based Meyers Breiner & Kent, frequently goes to courtroom battle for grandparents seeking visitation with, or custody of, grandchildren.
"The state of grandparents' rights is terrible," says Kent. Under the current laws, if a couple's adult daughter dies, he says, those grandparents could be denied visitation with their grandchild by the child's father.
Even if they had what most people would consider a classic grandparent-grandchild relationship and, let's say, saw their grandchild every Sunday afternoon. But in the eyes of Connecticut law, says Kent, unless grandparents have functioned as de facto parents — meaning they lived with their grandchildren or took care of them while the parents were at work — they are treated no differently than strangers.
Families crumble for any number of reasons: divorce, the death of a parent, drug and alcohol abuse, incarceration. Grandparents in the U.S. do have rights and can seek visitation with grandchildren, but those rights vary from state to state. Understanding your basic rights can help ensure that your relationship with the grandchildren doesn't end should that with their parents. Of course, every case involves a unique set of facts and grandparents who find themselves suddenly cut off from grandchildren should consult a lawyer to discuss the course of action their specific situations require.
When Grandparents' Rights Changed
In June 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision on grandparents' visitation rights in the Troxel v. Granville case. This canceled out a Washington State law that permitted judges to grant visitation to any interested party so long as the visits were in the best interest of the child — even if the parents objected.
The Troxel v. Granville decision was ambiguous because while the majority of the justices agreed that Troxel should be decided a certain way, each had a different reason for doing so which resulted in six written opinions.
Children and parents who have undergone forced separation from each other in the absence of abuse, including cases of parental alienation, are highly subject to post-traumaticstress, and reunification efforts in these cases should proceed carefully and with sensitivity. Alienated children seem to have a secret wish for someone to call their bluff, compelling them to reconnect with the parent they claim to hate; despite strongly held positions of alignment, alienated children want nothing more than to be given the permission and freedom to loveand be loved by both parents (Baker, 2010). Yet the influence of the alienating parent is too strong to withstand, and children’s fear that the alienating parent may fall apart or withdraw his or her love holds them back. Research has shown that many alienated children can transform quickly from refusing or staunchly resisting the rejected parent to being able to show and receive love from that parent, followed by an equally swift shift back to the alienated position when back in the orbit of the alienating parent (Fidler and Bala, 2010). Thus while children’s stated wishes regarding parental residence and contact in contested custody afterdivorce should be considered, they should not be determinative in cases of parental alienation.
Reunification efforts subsequent to prolonged absence should be undertaken with service providers with specialized expertise in parental alienation reunification. A number of models of intervention have been developed, the best-known being Warshak’s (2010) Family Bridges Program, an educative and experiential program focused on multiple goals: allowing the child to have a healthy relationship with both parents, removing the child from the parental conflict, and encouraging child autonomy, multiple perspective-taking, and critical thinking. Sullivan’s Overcoming Barriers Family Camp (Sullivan et al, 2010), which combines psycho-educational and clinical intervention within an environment of milieu therapy, is aimed toward the development of an agreement regarding the sharing of parenting time, and a written aftercare plan. Friedlander and Walters’ (2010) Multimodal Family Intervention provides differential interventions for situations of parental alignment, alienation, enmeshment and estrangement. All of these programs emphasize the clinical significance of children coming to regard their parents as equally valued and important in their lives, while at the same time helping enmeshed children relinquish their protective role toward their alienating parents.
In reunification programs, alienated parents will benefit from guidelines with respect to their efforts to provide a safe, comfortable, open and inviting atmosphere for their children. Ellis (2005) outlines five strategies for alienated parents: (1) erode children’s negative image by providing incongruent information; (2) refrain from actions that put the child in the middle of conflict; (3) consider ways to mollify the anger and hurt of the alienating parent; (4) look for ways to dismantle the coalition between the child and alienating parent and convert enemies to allies; and (5) never give up on reunification efforts. As much as possible, Warshak (2010) recommends, alienated parents should try to expose their children to people who regard them, as parents, with honor and respect, to let children see that their negative opinion, and the opinion of the alienating parent, is not shared by the rest of the world. This type of experience will leave a stronger impression than anything the alienated parent can say on his or her own behalf, according to Warshak.
As Baker (2010) writes, alienated parents acutely feel the hostility and rejection of their children. These children seem cruel, heartless, and devaluing of their parents. Yet it is important to realize that from the child’s perspective, it is the targeted parent who has rejected them; they have been led to believe that the parent whom they are rejecting does not love them, is unsafe, and has abandoned them. Thus, the primary response of the alienated parent must always be one of loving compassion, emotional availability, and absolute safety. Patience and hope, unconditional love, being there for the child, is the best response that alienated parents can provide their children, even in the face of the sad truth that this may not be enough to bring back the child.
With alienating parents, it is important to emphasize that as responsible parenting involves respecting the other parent’s role in the child’s life, any form of denigration of a former partner and co-parent is harmful to children. Children’s connections to each parent must be fully respected, to ensure their well being, as children instinctively know, at the core of their being, that they are half their mother and half their father. This is easier said than done, as alienating parents are themselves emotionally fragile, with a prodigious sense of entitlement and need to control (Richardson, 2006), and thus pose significant clinical challenges. Yet poisoned minds and instilled hatred toward a parent is a very serious form of abuse of children. When children grow up in an atmosphere of parental alienation, their primary role model is a maladaptive, dysfunctional parent. It is for this reason that many divorce specialists (e.g., Fidler and Bala, 2010) recommend custody reversal in such cases, or at least a period of separation between a child and an alienating parent during the reunification process with an alienated parent. I have come to believe, however, that the means of combating alienation should not themselves be alienating, and that a non-punitive approach is most effective, with co-parenting being the primary goal. Thus engaging and involving the alienating parent in reunification programs, whenever possible, is critical (Sullivan et al, 2010).
Thank you to the members and supporters of Parental Alienation Awareness Organization USANorth Texas Chapter who made valuable contributions to the article, both with personal stories and expert advice.
Such loss deserves extensive due process protection.
Does a wife who may have driven a husband to suicide with the assistance of our corrupt family court system, then have a legal right to claim copyright — of his suicide note?
According to attorney Rachelle E. Hill, of Bean, Kinney and Korman, and a judge, that is precisely the claim. Their lawyer has written the offices of A Voice for Men to demand that we remove a post from the forums containing the note.
It is not going to happen.
The text of the note was posted to our forums months ago. We considered doing a feature story on it at the time, but opted not to because we had no credible corroboration that the story was factual.
Attorney Hill, her law firm, and the suicide victim’s former wife have now resolved that matter to our satisfaction. The demand letter itself is sufficient for us to believe that the following note is genuine.*
Okay, so you’re the Dad. That means you want to be Mr. Generous, and you want to make sure your children have everything. Good for you.
But the best we can do for our children has very little to do with passing over the keys to a new car, hooking Jr. up with that fly pair of $200 sneakers, or making sure your offspring attend the finest schools. What loving fathers “do” is to provide a framework in which kids can grow up to be the very best young people they can possibly be. Our opportunity, as loving All Pro Dads, is to craft the kind of environment where such growth is possible. There’s a lot we can do – and the following “10 Things loving fathers do for their children” are a great place to start:
Loving fathers… love their children’s mother: This is huge – possibly the most beneficial intervention dads can do on behalf of their children. Love your wife without reservation - you can’t do much more for your kids than that.
Love them unconditionally: Make sure that your children know you love them “no matter what.” Don’t confuse this with permissiveness - unconditional love does nothing to encourage the wrong kind of behavior. In fact, kids who are secure in their father’s love tend to act out less, not more.
Grow up: We’re talking about the dads here, not the kids! Children don’t want another buddy - they want a dad. They want someone who thinks things through, makes tough decisions and engages life with responsibility – someone they can count on.
Be there: “Quality time” is all well and good… but it has nothing on quantity time. Make the time. Everyone has the same 24 hours available. Make yours count.
Provide:Just do it.
- A stable home
- Love and affection
- Material needs
- Presence
Discipline: Children appreciate an even hand, balance, accountability and love-drenched discipline. It’s called consistency, and without clearly defined boundaries, it is very difficult to grow up.
Value education: Don’t just read to them – read with them. Don’t just fuss about grades – get involved with their homework. Don’t just talk about learning – be a hands-on advocate
Raise them to leave: The simple goal of being a family, of parenting our children, doesn’t look any more complicated than this: raise them well equipped to leave home and to establish faithful lives.
Teach them to take responsibility: Kids who learn how to duck responsibility and avoid cost will – sooner or later – fall flat on their faces. Loving fathers make sure their children know how to own up, clean up, and move forward.
Teach them to love this life: The best predictor of happiness in children is happiness in their parents. If we learn how to love this life, and then give that blessing to our kids, then they will be well prepared for satisfaction
Spouses and parent must work around the system and not feed it money. They must use mediators who are not lawyers and divide both children's time and assets fairly. Lawyers will bait you into fights and create an unequal playing field on purpose to generate legal fees. Some lawyers target 40% of your estate before they "let you settle". This is essentially a criminal conspiracy, fraud and anti-trust. It has become so common that they even think it is okay to do, when it is like a doctor injecting you with a disease so they can sell you a cure.
Thirteen years later, there are fewer issues surrounding visitation since Gillespie's every-other-weekend visitation schedule now revolves around his teenage son's schedule of school, friends and sports. But the years have not lessened Gillespie's bitterness about how he was treated by the courts.
"The state of grandparents' rights is terrible," says Kent. Under the current laws, if a couple's adult daughter dies, he says, those grandparents could be denied visitation with their grandchild by the child's father.
"I think it's absurd that a boy's father can legally keep his grandparents out of his life," says Kent, who wrote Solomon's Choice: A Guide to Custody for Ex-Husbands, Spurned Partners, & Forgotten Grandparents (Taylor Trade Publishing).
Thank you to the members and supporters of Parental Alienation Awareness Organization USA North Texas Chapter who made valuable contributions to the article, both with personal stories and expert advice.
It is not going to happen.
But the best we can do for our children has very little to do with passing over the keys to a new car, hooking Jr. up with that fly pair of $200 sneakers, or making sure your offspring attend the finest schools. What loving fathers “do” is to provide a framework in which kids can grow up to be the very best young people they can possibly be.
