According to the late Ronald Reagan, here are the most terrifying words in the English language - "I'm from the government and I'm here to help".
Having lost my visitation rights to see my children for a number of years now, I have decided to share my views as they pertain to the State of Michigan family court system. It does not take much time once you are in the system to realize something is amiss. This conclusion can also be supported by a litany of information found on the Internet. Enter a Google search for "family court horror stories" and you could spend hours if not days just wading through the results. I have to admit, even though my own experiences aligned with much of what I read, I was still somewhat shocked at the volume of data surrounding this topic.
Fortunately, sharing my views actually required me to provide very little original content. I basically took information written elsewhere and organized it in such a way to accurately represent my own experience. Other individuals wronged by family courts have been much more motivated. In extreme cases writing entire books on the subject - Family Court Hell, Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family, Friend of the court enemy of the family: Surviving the child support system and divorce racket while others like angiemedia created websites dedicated to the cause of exposing the real agenda of the family courts. It should be noted, that while my personal experience is isolated to the State of Michigan family court system, it appears this is a national phenomena.
Excerpt from angiemedia -
Governments use agencies such as the family courts and Child Protective Services to pit parents against each other in desperate battles to keep in contact with their kids. They do this to extort and defraud parents out of their income and assets, funneling the money to divorce and child abuse industry "experts" who mostly function as instigators and enablers of conflict, not healers.
Mental illness is a frequent feature in these battles, both as a contributing factor to initiating and continuing conflicts and as an enduring result. Personality disordered individuals often suffered child abuse and in turn become abusers, attacking their partners or former partners often in secret behind closed doors for years or decades. This often leads to devastating divorces featuring false allegations, false imprisonment, unconstitutional violations of civil and human rights, and fraud and theft that benefit almost nobody but the government and its agents and friends. The children of such families are abused and crippled by the conflicts and malicious government interference, leading to more generations of conflicts that will further increase the population’s subservience to the government.
To get in my situation, the path is relatively straightforward: simply procreate with a Personality Disordered Individual (PDI). Once that mistake is made it is almost always game over. The divorce/breakup rate of any relationship with a PDI is nearly 100%. Once in the legal system, PDIs turn quickly into Personality Disordered Abusers (PDAs) and family courts are there to support the PDA.
The bottom line is that if you are a target of a PDA, you cannot count on any protection whatsoever from today’s family law courts. If you try to protect yourself, you will probably be persecuted for it. You are in a lose-lose situation because the abuser is likely to be assisted and rewarded by incompetent judges and foolishly destructive laws. Possibly your only sure means to safety when being abused by a PDA is to disappear. The PDA may continue to attack you for some time, but if you are nowhere to be found and nobody who hears the defamation against you sees you again, it may have little if any lasting effect upon you.
While disappearing is feasible for people with no children, those who have children usually do not have such an option. They are stuck between only a few legal choices, all of which are horrible. These include abandoning their children for their own safety, staying and living with the ongoing abuse of the PDA against the children and themselves and possibly their extended families, trying to defend themselves in court which is virtually a guarantee of financial devastation, or trying to defend themselves outside of court which will almost certainly be spun by the PDA to get them into trouble with police, CPS, and courts. Meanwhile, the PDA keeps right on with the abuse.
Never tell the court that your ex has a personality disorder. There is a substantial risk that you will be ridiculed for your reasonable beliefs by divorce industry “professionals” who have an agenda that does not make room for unpleasant truths unless they are stated by an expensive paid expert.
So if there is already a mountain of information already available on the Internet and in books covering this topic, why write yet another account? The reason is to help explain my personal situation to people who ask. I could hand someone a 300 page book and say something like "What happened to this person, happened to me". But nobody is ever going to read a book. For that matter, even if I gave someone a link to this web page, probably 80% of them have already left before reading this last sentence. However even if nobody ever reads this, it was still worth it for me to write.
Also when I'm asked "Do you have children?" I always say "Yes". Almost routinely comes one of the following questions "How often do you see them?" or if they know that I have kids "How are they doing?". These are difficult questions to answer and most of the time I say something like "I haven't seen them in over X years and not really sure how they are doing". I mostly get something like "I'm sorry" which really is about all someone can say. But I'm sure what has to go through someone's mind is - "What did he do to lose visitation rights with his own kids?" Well, the short answer is described above, but there are a lot of dots to connect between procreation and losing visitation rights to your children. Below I will attempt to connect the dots.
One thing I do not want from this writing is sympathy. The world we live in contains beauty and goodness which I am blessed with each and every day. It is also broken in many ways. This just being one of those ways that happens to be very personal to me.
Matthew 5:43-45 - You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
Of course to find your way into the family court system you need to be both divorced and have minor children. Most people are not unfamiliar with divorce. Just about everyone knows statistically speaking, your success of staying married is about 50 percent. I knew that statistic going into my marriage and despite my efforts to avoid divorce, it happened. Unfortunately in my case, little did I know long before I said "I do", my chance of staying married was a lot closer to 0% than the average of 50%. Of course knowing what I know now, I would have never got married to the person I chose. The type of person you marry will determine whether or not your family court experience is tolerable or horrific, should a divorce occur while you share minor children.
While I accepted divorce as a real possibility before I was married, I was completely unaware getting a divorce meant being indoctrinated into a very dysfunctional legal system system broadly known as family court. In the State of Michigan you don't really spend that much time in family court but with a supporting entity called Friend of the Court (FOC). The FOC exists to offload the family court to only those issues that cannot be rectified by the FOC. Naively, my initial uneducated view on the purpose of the FOC was the protection of children in family matters involving divorce or domestic violence. But after about a year in the system, I began to realize the welfare of the children is at best a secondary priority for the courts real purpose: funding itself. One of my biggest mistakes was to presume justice or fairness would prevail. I also learned that any attempt made to defend myself against false testimony will not be tolerated and the price of doing so can be quite high. In my case, it meant losing all contact with my children.
I know there are those of you that may be reading this who are divorced yourselves with children and so far have no idea what I am talking about. That's because you are one of the majority divorce cases and likely you or your ex-spouse do not suffer from any form of Personality Disorder nor would either one of you be evaluated as a PDI. As a matter of fact, most people who get a divorce may never even make it in front of a judge because almost all divorces are settled through mediation. After the divorce is final, many couples may never step foot in a courthouse. But there are a few of us considered High Conflict that spend a considerable amount of time in court well past the divorce finalization date. While it is rare that ex-spouses that share children get along well, most can manage to share parenting duties within a tolerable level of conflict. With a high conflict divorce, you can pretty much throw out any ability to manage your disagreements with the other parent. In most of these high conflict cases, a few things usually occur:
According to Kevin Thompson in his book titled Exposing the Corruption in the Massachusetts Family Courts there are 3 types of divorce cases in family court.
Kevin Thompson goes on to state -
Even the courts are powerless to inflict such damage on fathers without one key ingredient. These cases require mothers who are integrity challenged. The selling points are the guarantee of victory and the child support orders, which far exceed the child-related costs. In many cases, it also means sole custody and no visitation rights whatsoever for the father. Since most mothers cannot be bought with any amount of money when it comes to the welfare of their children nor made to feel "entitled" to an unfair arrangement, the courts feed off women who are bitter, unstable, immature, and unethical. The stability and integrity of the father in these cases is irrelevant since the most caring, selfless, involved father on the planet has no chance of success in these type of cases.
I have never been a fan of conspiracy theories. I wanted to understand what would motivate the family court system to act in such a sinister manner? I've quoted documents above stating the courts actually protect the abuser. Why would a court want to place children solely in the home of the more abusive parent? My personal experience aligned well with all the information I read, but I was curious to understand the motivation behind the unfair treatment I consistently received. I must come clean and say the explanation is still not 100% clear, but the bulk of the data I obtained comes down to what else? money!
Apparently this all starts with something called Title IV-D. This is a federal program that distributes money to states based primarily on child support payments. The Title IV-D program probably started with good intentions as a mechanism to keep divorced women off of the welfare dole. But like most well intentioned government programs, it has morphed over time into something quite different.
Anyone involved with paying or receiving child support knows there is a middleman collection and distribution agency involved. Apparently the more money that flows through this system, the more money the states receive in federal funding. So for states to get their share, it is in their best interests to maximize the child support number. The best way to maximize this number is to provide sole custody to the parent with the least amount of income. High conflict cases usually do this with the added benefit of being able to also assign a host of other services such as counseling, supervised parenting coordinators, lots of court hearings, child advocacy, psychological evaluations, etc. Here are couple of links describing Title IV corruption - A Child's Right and Federal Incentives to Make Children Fatherless, and Child Support Enforcement and the SS Act Title IV-D Program.
Excerpt from Child Support Enforcement and the SS Act Title IV-D Program:
The problem with child support enforcement is that this agency has a forward facing public side that most people have been socialized to accept. When thinking about child support, and the enforcement of non-custodial parents, we surmise that most people believe that enforcement is a wonderful program that has the SOLE purpose of taking care of children. And, it most cases this is true. However, there is a rear facing side of child support enforcement that is not well known or talked about much by Judges, Politicians, and many special interest groups; this fact being that there is an industry surrounding enforcement that is replenishing money for Welfare, TANF, and other Low Income Assistance Programs.
So how does this fit in with child support enforcement? If you are part of a non-custodial family who’s child custody case was heard in the Family Courts, you likely experienced allegations of domestic violence that is becoming almost routine because hopeful custodial mothers realize that it brings them lots of attention, and immediately puts a father on the defense. These allegations are a perfect tactical weapon that brings about favor in the Family Courts. Unfortunately, many of the false allegations will immediately lead to the complete alienation of children from their non-custodial fathers, step-mothers, paternal grandmothers, and other family members for an indefinite time. So what happens when a non-custodial father has ZERO time with his kids, he pays greater child support. And what happens when one pays greater child support? You got it, more Title IV-D money is released back to the US States.
Carol Rhodes author of Friend of the Court enemy of the family has this to say about Title IV-D as a case worker while employed by Michigan's Friend of the Court.
Earlier it was stated by Kevin Thompson that the real money makers to the system are those cases deemed high conflict. And to be high conflict you need a key ingredient which is usually an integrity challenged mother. So who are these mothers and what makes them special to the system?
In short, many of these women would be classified as sociopaths, PDIs, PDAs or someone possessing sociopathic traits. While many people think they might know what that word means or how to identify a PDI, most do not. I surely didn't. I didn't even know any of this personality disorder stuff existed until it was much too late. Of course I knew there were true psychopathic killers out there, but I figured they would be relatively easy to spot and could guarantee they would never become a part of my world. I can also guarantee everyone will at sometime in their life encounter at least one PDI probably many more. Well encountering is one thing, marrying and having children with one puts you at a whole new level in messing up your life.
You see unfortunately for some of us men who married a woman who carries these traits, you frequently end up in a world of hurt. When the relationship ends, and they all end, you are going to be attacked like you never have encountered or thought possible. This is the case even if it was your ex-wife who wanted to end the relationship. There are thousands of web links, books, etc. that discusses PDIs and all the various sub-classifications. For example in my particular case, a more accurate diagnosis for my ex-wife would likely be Borderline Personality Disorder. But no matter what the sub-classification, the common trait shared by all people with this condition is that they have no conscience.
There are varying statistics on just how many PDIs are running around the world at the present, but an agreed upon range is about 4% of the population. It is also greatly debated as what causes this condition - is it nature or nurture or some of both. In my opinion I believe it to be nature, but even more disheartening - no matter how it develops there appears to be no cure.
So what exactly does a person with no conscience want out of life? Well we are better off asking what is it that the non-PDI person wants out of life and compare the differences. You will see a lot of answers to "what is the meaning of life?" question, but for most of us it all comes down to relationships. The world might be telling us that it is important to be wealthy, good looking, funny, smart, etc.. but ultimately what makes us happiest are our relationships with other people. So we go to great lengths to build and preserve our relationships. Additionally most of us carry around something called empathy. This allows us to relate to others and feel their joys and sadnesses and protects them and us from purposely hurting one another. So we spend a lot of time thinking about and investing in relationships. And when important relationships are terminated, we become distraught.
But what if you didn't care about any relationship? Nor lost a minute's sleep if a very important relationship ended. How would you spend your time? The following excerpts from common everyday sociopaths and psychopathy awareness answers that question.
What do they want?
This is an interesting question. Of course most of our purposes are strongly influenced by our connections and affections with others. Our relationships with others, and our love for them, give us most of the meaning and purpose in our lives. So if a sociopath doesn't have these things, what is left? What kind of purposes do they have?
The answer is chilling: They want to win. Take away love and relationships and all you have left is winning the game, whatever the game is. If they are in business, it's becoming rich and defeating competitors. If it's sibling rivalry, it's defeating the sibling. If it's a contest, the goal is to dominate. If a sociopath is the envious sort, winning could be simply making the other lose or fail or be frustrated or embarrassed.
A sociopath's goal is to win. And he (or she) is willing to do anything at all to win.
Why do they waste our time?
Because they find no inherent meaning in human life–no higher purpose, no real feelings of loyalty and love–sociopaths perceive life as an empty stretch of time that they must somehow fill up with diversions, schemes and games at other people’s expense. Even most sociopaths who are well-educated and intelligent waste their natural abilities and their lives, on playing constant mind games, pursuing a string of vacuous and ultimately unsatisfying sexual relationships, manipulation, and often pointless deceit. Sociopaths lie to attain their short-term goals, of course. But they also lie when it doesn’t serve any obvious useful purpose, just for the fun of it. Deception fills their empty lives with sadistic entertainment and ephemeral pleasure. In that sense, sociopaths are free.
Normal people, however, have everything to lose in becoming involved with sociopaths. For us, time is very precious and life is not something to be wasted. It’s filled with positive desires and goals, with the meaning we find in fulfilling emotional bonds with those we care about, with what we can accomplish for both ourselves and others. Because of the vast difference in our concepts of time, a sociopath has nothing to lose in engaging in empty diversions while we have nothing to gain from them. This is why victims involved with sociopathic predators describe their time together as wasted time: as months or even years that can never be recaptured and were essentially thrown away. Most sociopaths don’t commit actual murder. Wasting our time with their lies, intimidation tactics, manipulation and mind games is the most common way in which sociopaths waste our lives.
PDIs and Family Court - the Perfect Combination
With an absence of conscience comes some character traits that work well in the family court system. First off is that these people are very comfortable lying. It is impossible for a PDI to ever feel bad about anything they say or do to another individual so lying has zero consequences morally for the person lying. But just because someone can lie without feeling guilty, they need protection from the court in case they are caught lying. The court supports the PDI by removing any consequences for lying. So lying is tolerated and as a bonus the court system provides a venue for long term entertainment for the PDI.
STRATEGY FOR MOTHERS IN FAMILY COURT
Mothers who are integrity-challenged have a full-proof strategy for success in family courts. The rules are simple:
(1) Make up as many slanderous stories as you can dream up about the father of your child because, as the mother, the courts are eager to believe whatever you say and will not allow any evidence that would bring into question your credibility.
(2) Do not concern yourself with the consequences of lying under oath, committing perjury on legal documents, or ignoring court orders because the courts will not verify your allegations or hold you accountable for your crimes.
(3) Most importantly, no matter how willing the father is to resolve the case short of a trial, refuse to communicate or cooperate with him.
Ironically, the more unethical and unstable the mother, the more likely she leaves the courtroom with sole custody because the court will interpret any attempt by the father to communicate such an ugly reality to the court as a hostile act against the mother and evidence that the parents cannot get along. The fact is that Jesus Christ himself, in a custody battle with the Glenn Close character from "Fatal Attraction," could not get a joint physical custody arrangement in a family courtroom where the rulings are predetermined and the "fix" is already in.
So just to recap-
Many people have difficulties understanding the last bullet item. Most people have a conscience and cannot step outside themselves to fathom how they would respond or act if they did not. Often I am asked "Why would my ex want to do this or that, doesn't she realize that ultimately she is hurting the children by keeping you out of their lives?" The answer to that question is - "she doesn't care!" Remember once you care about a single relationship - for example your children - you would have the capacity to care about some or all relationships. That capacity is simply not present. Not for anyone.. even for her own kids.
The reason most divorced couples do not end up in my position is because they have some sort of moral compass that guides them through life. They may not like the ex-spouse, but they put their feelings aside for the benefit of their kids. Even if they wanted to get back at the other parent, to keep up the war and take on the "lie until I die" mindset usually becomes to draining and either or both will relent at some point. To always live in conflict would ruin most people's lives, but not for the PDI. The conflict gives them stimulation and provides them with a sense of purpose.
How do I know my ex-wife is a PDI?
Let's assume I have convinced some (hopefully all but I know there are skeptics) that what has been stated thus far is true. How can I be so sure my ex-wife is a PDI? Doesn't this need to be diagnosed by a MD? Technically yes, but I just know. Plus do you know how many PDIs go to a doctor to find out if they have the condition or what they can do to live a less conflicted life? About zero. And really I cannot blame them. If you enjoy conflict and will never have the capacity to care or really love another person, what is the point of seeking help? Not to mention these people live in a constant state of denial. Even if they come to grips they may possess one of more of the negative traits associated with this type of disorder, they dismiss it.
I tried to get the court to test my ex-wife offering $50,000 if the results came out negative. The result of this motion - I was tested (Unfortunately I did not read what I stated earlier about never accusing the other parent of having a personality disorder until after the fact).
So when did I come to my PDI diagnosis? Like many people in these sort of relationships, during the breakup process. Of course there are glimpses of dysfunction along the way, but it is the ending that is truly unlike no other. Everyone that has had a relationship with a PDI usually does not fair too well when it ends and I was no exception. Also, like death and taxes, almost all relationships with a PDI will end. The PDI relationship life cycle is described in 3 phases: Seducer, Clinger and Hater.
The Hater is the last stage and where you always end up.
What gives this rage its characteristically borderline flavor is that it is very difficult for someone witnessing it to know what triggered it in reality. But that is its primary identifying clue: the actual rage-trigger is difficult for you to see. But in the Borderline's mind it always seems to be very clear. To her, there is always a cause. And the cause is always you. Whether it is the tone of your voice, how you think, how you feel, dress, move or breathe - or "the way you're looking at her" - she will always justify her rage by blaming you for "having hurt her.
The ending process is brutal and when you look at any message board surrounding this topic, they contain some of the longest heart felt emotionally pouring out you will ever read. I believe there are a couple of reasons why people take these breakups much harder than the average breakup. First off the PDI will give you no closure. Because they do what is called objectify relationships (treat people like objects) they have no empathy for that which they have discarded. I mean how much empathy do you give your car when you trade it in for a new one? Also, the end is a great time to bleed the other person dry in case they still have feelings for you or think this is just a passing phase. Believe me, the phase is permanent.
I have to chuckle a bit when I read literature on how hard it is for the people that suffer with this disorder and what we as loved ones can do to help them. Help them!! They seem to be perfectly content leaving a path of carnage where ever they go. The real people who suffer are those that enter into relationships with these people, not those with the condition.
The simple solution
So what is the solution if there could be one? To paraphrase Kevin Thompson, the answer is to just use the same practice that is employed in other forms of the judicial system. That is "innocent until proven guilty". Family court acts using the opposite approach - "guilty until proven innocent". If at the conclusion of the divorce both parties were deemed safe to parent their children, then the visitation rights of a parent could only be altered if they were taken to court and proved to be "unsafe". The way the system is setup, once an accusation is made, the kids are immediately stripped from the accused parent and it is up to that parent to prove their innocence. Since there are no penalties in place for making an accusation, the cycle can continue.
But it is not like those working in the system do not understand this. The problem with simplifying the process, by making it harder on the accuser, is that doing so would hurt business.
Connecting the dots
November 3, 2010 was the last time I had any contact with my 2 children. The so called reason I do not have contact with them is because I played them a 2 minute tape of their mother ranting to me on the phone. While I know it was not in the best interest of the kids to listen to this rant, I don't think the punishment fits the crime. However, the real reason I don't have contact was articulated above. For the record, the kid's only living grandparent and her older brother are also cut out of their lives. That would be my ex-wife's own Mother. Alienation is not just isolated to the father. Any family member can become a target.
What about the kids, how do I think they are fairing and what may their future hold? Well I'm stating the obvious here and any child separated from their father statistically has more problems than one coming from an intact family or raised by two separated parents. Also only being exposed to a PDI parent makes matters worse. Oddly during this whole loss of visitation process the kids were never asked for their opinion on the matter. As far as them being "abused" by the ex-wife, that abuse is hard to quantify. To be fair, what I witnessed during the years we all lived together and even apart for the first year, the mother seems to do an adequate job of providing for their basic needs. She has no moral compass, but neither do a lot of other parents. I'm sure the kids can get from point A (infants) to point B (adults) under her care, but that journey will be far less than optimal. Likely they will have some sort of lingering issues resulting from their upbringing, but hopefully at some point I can help.
As for me, in many ways this experience has been the most transformative experience in my life. If anything positive has come from this it would be my identification with the word "acceptance". I don't really blame my ex-wife for my predicament. She has always been the same person, I just did not have the tools to identify the type of person she was until much too late. Also, if you are a well adjusted male to start with, you will not end up with a person like my ex. I do blame the court system some. I know most people if given the opportunity to do something "good" for others versus what is "good" for themselves they will most always choose the later. I don't believe everyone involved with the family court system enjoys screwing men over and looks forward to inventing new ways to extort money from a few of us that can afford to be extorted from. I just don't think those in the system care. As long as it's legal, supported by the government most will just do as instructed. Still, this would not be something I would do myself. But of course the biggest loss for me personally, is missing out on life experiences with the kids that can never be recovered.
I know the next statement may sound a bit odd, but I do believe there is one rather small advantage of not having contact with my kids. When I did have contact, the war was much closer. Of course there are the endless FOC complaints for non or fabricated issues, but also the more minor aggravations that are alway present. It's like going to a picnic and then adding in high humidity, lots of ants, mosquitoes and bees, crowds, traffic, a rancid smell in the air. At some point all the good company, food and scenery cannot makeup for the distractions. I never really got the chance to spend time with my kids without an intervention from the ex-wife to make sure that time with them was as miserable as possible. And as I stated above, that was never going to change. Perhaps a more "enlightened" individual could completely be immune to ever ending annoyances, but it did take its toll on my personal well being.
Below are some links to various documents associated with my case. All are public record so I didn't feel it necessary alter the names. I did sanitize the phone numbers and email addresses to be safe.
Well if you made it this far, thanks for reading. I'm glad to have finally finished something I started many months ago, but always found a good reason to leave incomplete.
Brett Behm
