Reform Family Courts

I recently finished reading the book The Prisoner in His Palace by Will Bardenwerper about the imprisonment and execution of Saddam Hussein, but also his time as dictator of Iraq. Most of the reviews and descriptions don't really adequately represent the book. It's many things: complex, nuanced, and factual, but I think what it is mostly is a psychological portrait of a traumatized malignant narcissist and the people around him. You might be thinking that people like Saddam Hussein are one in a million, or maybe one in a billion and none of us will ever encounter anyone who is remotely like him and that it has little to do with anything related to custody and divorce proceedings. And I am certain that family courts would like to believe that as well. But there are important parallels between the trial of Saddam Hussein and many contested custody cases and it would be wise to examine and understand those parallels. Saddam turned his trial into a circus with frequent rants about...

 By and large, there is no requirement that a parent receiving child support provide any proof that the money is being used for the children. One divorce attorney in California states this on his website : "  In California, custodial parents are not required to give an accounting of how child support money is spent  to  the parent who pays the support." I suppose this seems like a good idea on the face of it. What parent would use child support money on themselves? I suppose the assumption underlying this is that no parent could possibly be that selfish. Courts might also believe that it's not worth fighting over how the money is spent. Dad is mad about sending child support to Mom and complains that she used child support money to buy birthday presents and the courts want to make sure that Mom isn't getting harassed by Dad about the birthday presents. Either way, the only way to view the fact that there is no oversight required for child support is that courts are a...

 The other day I got an email saying that the coparenting app I have been required to use by the court is no longer going to offer a free option. I've discussed how coparenting apps are not really an answer to high conflict divorce and custody arrangements . There's no app that can substitute for someone deciding to get help for their mental and emotional imbalances and disturbances. It's bad enough that courts require parents to use these apps (and pay for coparenting classes that teach inaccurate information about domestic violence and coparenting), but it' worse that they require abuse victims to pay for them. There are quite a few people who do make money off of courts' naive custody decisions. This isn't a problem with capitalism, it's an ethical problem when it comes to individuals and companies profiting off of unsafe and unstable custody situations. The more unsafe and unstable custody arrangements there are, the more money these classes and apps mak...

  The impression that family courts (which basically means the majority of people who are working in and making decisions in the family courts) give is that there are zero downsides or hazards to co parenting. It's all upside. And if they hold that view, then of course they continue to demand and push for co parenting for almost every situation. Unfortunately for children and abuse victims, the premise that family courts are operating on is wrong-- very, very wrong. "One parent is as good as another" is an all too common view in family courts and it lulls them into the belief that there aren't really any wrong answers in custody as long as they get the couple to "co parent".   The reality is that people who are not capable of caring for children get primary custody because of family courts require little, if any, objective information and refuse to accept that one or both parents in a custody situation might be violent, abusive, or incapable of taking care ...