Naïve Fathers in Family Court Are Kept Confused and Helpless for Money
© Shane Flait (2011)

Most fathers are dragged into family court by women-filed divorce and paternity complaints. They’re not as aware as the women are about family court outcomes. Unfortunately the family court and its lawyers maintain a father’s naivety and confusion about the protection of his unalienable rights including his right to continue to parent his children for their own protection and profit.

A typical father, never having been in any court before and not having done anything wrong, walks into family court to make clear his love of his children and his determination to continue to parent and care for them – at least equally to the mother. Most won’t disparage the mother since it’s just not gentlemanly unless she’s a true danger to his children. He trusts that a fair court will protect his rights and his children’s right to be parented by him and the mother equally. However, nothing could be further from the truth!

At best, he’s engulfed in perfunctory court procedures geared to determining his financial status, arranging his payments of so called child support that supports both mother and children, and making sure he’s out of his house. He can see his kids every other weekend and, perhaps, for just dinner during the week.

In front of the judge, he hears the mother – whom he’s supported and cared for over many years – make clearly planned disparaging remarks about him: ‘He abandoned the house and family’ when in fact he was threatened with an unjustified restraining order if he didn’t leave; ‘He’s controlling’ when he’s not sure what that’s supposed to mean and never did anything that can be considered abusive. In fact, the reverse of what she’s trying to imply seemed to be far truer – and that she had surreptitiously began alienating his children from him and purposely making his life miserable.

His lawyer signals him not to respond to her characterizations. But he may speak out to the judge that what she says is untrue. Nevertheless he’s denied equal custody of his children and burdened with child support payments that leave him nearly destitute.

Nothing is ever brought up about his rights to parent and directly care for his children, his rights to govern his earnings and property, nor assuring his equal rights to the mother. He quickly gets the feeling that he being treated as a criminal – and he’s never done anything wrong! 

He wonders what the criteria is that makes the mother of his children the court’s choice of parent – effectively a single parent – while he’s relegated to supplying her most of his wealth, and then most of his disposable income for years to come. He figures his lawyer has screwed up. Fathers typically go through two or more lawyers thinking their lawyer is incompetent.

The system fathers face

The fact is that family court judges are well versed in feminist jurisprudence. They’re appointed and promoted based on upholding a mother’s benefits and protections at the expense of father's rights. Women’s rights-related groups and an enormous child support industry counts on this. So, judges hide behind the ‘best interest of the child’ greater good excuse that violates a fit father’s parental rights. Judges expect the family all court lawyers to help make life easy for them – to grease the skids for fathers to lose their rights and children. 

Lawyers catch on quickly. They help setup fathers to lose by justifying and enabling the judge’s unconstitutional taking of a fit father’s right to parent in their arguments. They convince fathers to accept visitation, phony parenting plans, and best interest of the child excuses – especially if a father is running out of money to pay a lawyer. (Lawyers ideally are not supposed to abandon a client for lack of money.) They’ll warned them that going to trial rather than accepting a rights-denying slave settlement may anger the judge who will punish them more in his trial judgment.

If there’s plenty of money left and a father wants to go to trial, the lawyer knows that walking through a divorce trial devoid of constitutional issues can really created enormous lawyer fees.

A lawyer will not buck the system since he’s afraid to speak up against this rights-denying process. He fears the judge will complain about him – or undermine any future pleadings. And the money is just too good.

Fathers are often willing to risk all their money to keep their kids in their lives. Unfortunately if they’re kept ignorant of their rights – as the family court system contrives to do - and of the true tyranny they face, they waste it all by feeding it to the very system tyrannizing them.

Fathers are today’s unsung heroes – and most unjustly maligned by the system – for profit and agenda.

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Shane Flait writes on issues confronting freedom