On this day set aside to celebrate fathers, I dedicate my message to those fathers out there for which the day evokes pain, especially those that have been victimized by a society that devalues the importance of dads and instead treats them just as a source of finances. These fathers often stay silent due to a society that tries to shame them with stereotypical labels. I can stay silent no longer – not for me and my honor, but because of how these issues have and continue to impact my children negatively. I tried to play by the rules and do all the things I’m “supposed to” while I’ve been increasingly marginalized by a system that is largely driven by those playing outside the rules.
I have essentially not seen or spoken to my younger son for over a year, and this will be the second Father’s Day in a row that I don’t see him. I barely have spent time with either child over the last couple of years – including the last two years of my older son’s schooling. Contrary to the pervasive stereotype of absent fathers and deadbeat dads this is not by choice. In fact, I specifically moved back closer to them about two years ago to be more involved and now live about 10 minutes from their mom.
Playing along with the stigma Father’s often face today, I was met with challenges of why now when not before. The easy answer is, when I first got divorced, the kids were going to the same school where their mom taught, so it seemed logistically more practical for them to stay with her during the week for the most part. Now that is no longer the case, but that in and of itself wasn’t a motivator. The biggest reason was seeing needs in my children that weren’t adequately being met. For my older child, I wanted more time as he was nearing adulthood to instill the qualities I felt were important before he entered adult life. My younger child, who was quite young at the time of separation and divorce, struggled fitting in at school. I had been able to make progress with him a little here or there but hadn’t been able to sustain and build on that progress because of the infrequency at which I was seeing him. There were some good opportunities for this squandered, such as during the pandemic when he was in online school and I was on furlough at the same time, but I still wasn’t able get more time with him.
Instead, the attempt led to a dispute with the ex that resulted in my time with them being progressively diminished until it essentially evaporated entirely. There is of course more to the story and other complications exacerbated by our dysfunction, but I won’t get into those details here. The part of the story I want to focus on is how the attempt to get help actually worsened the problem. By a year later the resulting issues were getting too big to ignore and after another year of attempting unsuccessfully to resolve things directly with my, ex I finally took the issue to the court for help. My intention was never to “prosecute” my ex for not working with me, but to seek help for the dysfunction that was getting in the way. When we got divorced, we did so “collaboratively”, which essentially means that we had lawyers who were committed to not engage in adversarial methods to resolve things since that can be so damaging to families and children. I wanted to do the same again here, but the professionals assigned / involved were intent on trying to generate a big case to maximize what they could make off of it. And without the cooperation of my ex, I have not been able to avoid that no matter how hard I have tried.
So, here’s how things went down with the court, a little over a year ago, I filed a motion to address the issues with timesharing. Some counter motions were filed, and the situation remained in limbo with no action. Over last summer, my ex and I could not agree on what to do for schooling for our youngest child, but a change was needed because what he had been doing wasn’t working. With the summer quickly passing by, I hired an attorney to place an emergency motion to get the issue attention in time. Things with the court started off okay – the judge heard the motion, assigned a Guardian ad Litem to represent the interests of the child and a reunification therapist to address his separation from me. The schooling option selected may not have been ideal, but we had a decision so at least could move forward. Then progress with reunification therapy started progressing faster than expected – apparently too fast for those who were expecting to make more money off the situation. I had tentatively scheduled a winter trip with my boys that we had been talking about for years and asked the reunification therapist for a plan to be ready for such. Around that time both the Guardian ad Litem and Reunification Therapist submitted retainer replenishment requests. I went ahead and paid but expressed that I was running out of cash so asked that this money be prioritized toward resolving the situation and reaching settlement so that we could move forward. Instead, they pulled a complete about face, and suddenly started acting like I was mentally unstable and unfit to see my child. Neither ever responded to my messages and refused to engage in any discussion about reaching a settlement and establishing a transition plan. Instead I just received a high amount of pressure to take a psych eval. (My worst experience with used car salesman seems tame compared to this – after all there was a lot more money at stake for this “sale”.)
Despite my progressively spending more time with my child successfully, suddenly they were claiming that I could only see my child under close supervision of the reunification therapist – which I’d have to pay for. And in my next visits to the therapist, it became quickly obvious that she was going to hyper-scrutinize everything I did to look for things to twist negatively to say that I wasn’t doing good enough. Then they were claiming that I needed a forensic psychological evaluation, which could easily cost tens of thousands of dollars that I didn’t have. Further, they insisted they would have to provide inputs to the evaluation, which I wasn’t comfortable with based on their obvious bias and conflicting financial interests. They refused to entertain any discussion on alternatives that would be more cost-effective and refused to provide a path to completing reunification therapy. As Thanksgiving approached, a last straw for me was their refusing to consider any scenario where my child could see me or my family on the holiday (which he missed for the second time in a row). They said that until I was willing to go along with all their demands, I wouldn’t be able to see my child at all.
By this point, the child who had become discontent with me during the period of separation, was now fully ready to resume spending time with me as normal. So, from my perspective the purpose of reunification therapy had been met. While I would have happily continued longer if it was serving a productive purpose, since it wasn’t and there was no willingness to rectify that, I decided to cancel the therapy and just proceed with my regular timesharing. However, while they claimed that I wouldn’t be able to get a hearing till the next year if I objectied to their recommendations, they were somehow able to slip in an emergency order right before the holiday when I decided to move forward with out them. They were able to get my timesharing suspended to block me from seeing my child. The notion of this being an emergency was a complete farce, and they really couldn’t even claim urgency since by then I had agreed not to attempt taking my child on the holiday due to complications arising from the lack of cooperation. (I had asked to try to have this addressed by the next time I was scheduled for timesharing, which was almost two weeks away.) But the judge rubber stamped the order, likely without as much thought in the rush ahead of the holiday. It took me a few weeks to get a hearing on this, during which the Guardian ad Litem and Reunification Therapist took up most of the time exaggerating minor / petty instances to look as negative as possible. Even still nothing they claimed even remotely approached a level that would warrant taking a child away from their parent. When I tried to give my counter arguments and show evidence of their unexplained and uncalled for reversal on my spending time with my child, suddenly everyone said they had to go, the Guardian called for a ruling and the judge upheld the prior order with her recommendations to suspend my time sharing.
So I then had to file a motion for rehearing / reconsideration based on not being given due process to present all my evidence or complete my arguments. At the end of last month, I finally got a hearing for that, but encountered a similar fate. My ex’s attorney objected to one argument I was making so the judge said I had to skip all my arguments and just show any new evidence. So, I was able to show more things, but unable to complete the arguments that would tie that to my case as well as the arguments that showed they had not met sufficient burden to show that I should be subjected to a psych eval or that there was justification in keeping me from seeing my child. Instead the judge acted like I was the one who had the burdern of proof. (I’m not a legal expert on the law, but this seems to violate one of the core premises from the founding of our country – innocent until proven guilty.) While I can understand that for getting the case reopened, that doesn't make sense once it was since I wasn't able to show that they hadn't met their burden of proof when the original trial was cut short. My arguments were backed up by established case law, but I wasn’t even allowed to raise them, which again violates my due process rights. (Even if it was decided that one aspect of one argument should not be considered, that objection did not apply to the rest of my arguments!)
They try to claim that I am wasting time by not giving in to their demands, but in the meantime I completed psych education online on an area requested (but wanted me to pay for them to educate me) and completed a psych evaluation through my insurance (rather than through a process they controlled) which showed not only was there no signs of any issue that would warrant separating me from my child, but also that my mental faculties are operating quite well, even despite my starting to get up there age-wise. But it seems, that wasn’t good enough if they didn’t have a chance to skew the results so they could make more money off me.
At this point, I’ve lost faith that the court will achieve justice here – at least not in the near term. (My child would probably be 18 or close to it by the time this were to finish bouncing around the legal system!) So, I feel the need to start taking action now to raise awareness of and support for the issue in the court of public opinion. Near term, I hope to put pressure on those holding my child hostage, and longer term I want to look into how I can promote positive changes in the system to help the many others suffering similar injustices and ultimately prevent such things from happening in their first place. Our families and our children are too important to allow people to profit off their destruction. Instead, we need people financially incentivized to do what’s right.
From the home page, there are links to ways you can show support as I push for resolving the immediate injustice sooner while wanting to promote associated positive change longer-term. Thank you!