The years since my divorce have not been easy. I could have lain down and taken it but I choose to fight back and protect my rights. I have paid dearly in many ways, financially and in my personal life.

 

Personally it cost me a eight year long relationship with a woman that I care for deeply until she became very abusive in nature and I had to get away. She could never grasp the struggles that a person goes through when they are denied their child.

 

 The numerous false rumors that have been spread in an effort to discredit me have been unreal at times and laughable. If you want to believe the stories that are out there about me, I am a wife beating, drunken homosexual on parole. The sense of humor that I have is the only thing that makes these attacks on my character laughable to me. May the good Lord have mercy on the next person that attacks me in this manner. I will come after them with the full power of the courts.

 

Don't assume that people who supported you when you got into this will support you in the years to come.  I have had my own mother turn against me and most of my friends walk away. My own mother sold my house out from under me in an effort to discredit me and help my ex get custody of my son. I have put my son first in everything including my personal life.

 

Shortly after the divorce was final I was hit with papers stating that she was filling for full custody and it was back to court for a full-blown custody battle that was supposed to be settled. It took a year but I won because she couldn't pass the psychological testing that the court required.

 

I have had to put up with repeated violations of the agreement through the years. She has taken off with my son on vacations and failed to provide contact information that is required by the agreements. She has failed to share medical information. She has refused to allow me to pick him up on Fathers day because it was not convenient for her to get out of bed when my son wanted to be picked up. She has not picked him up on Mothers day or her birthday. Guess she figured that this was her time.

 

 Her father has attacked me in front of my son. Her new husband has threatened me when I told him to mind his own business because he has nothing to say with the raising of my son. I have never seen his name on any of my custody papers.

 

This is a woman who got married and informed her son when she picked him up on Sunday for the weekly transfer. She then proceeded to move him to a new residence. By the way this all took place during the school year.

 

This year she didnt even give him a birthday present until a week after his birthday so the she and he could celebrate their birthdays together. Through the years she has never given him a birthday party for him and his friends. That has always been up to me.

 

She has endangered my son by refusing to allow him to use a bathroom that was next to his bedroom, telling him that he could only use the one in the basement even if he had to use it at night.

This year I did the same thing again. She again filed for custody with no basis. Several court officials told her that she didn't have a case or issues that they would consider as cause to change custody. The result, again I defeated her and stood up for what I knew was right.

This has not been easy on my son but he has filed an affidavit with the court stating that he wants to now live with me full time. Yet her reaction has been to continually tell him that he is not old enough to know what he wants. She has told him that the school, that he enjoys going to isn't any good and that he will never succeed because of where he goes to school. This is a form of mental abuse by belittling him repeatedly. Any real wonders why he doesn't want to live with her.

 

The one thing that I have done through out the years is be honest with the boy. I told him when she filed the papers and told him what she was trying to do. He told me that he didn't want to live with her because of conditions within her house. I.E. step brothers that gang up on him and a lack of friends to play with. I have stood behind him the whole way.

 

Honesty with the child is the key to our relationship. We talk all the time and have stood behind each other all the way.  There are things that I dont tell him because I don't want him to have the same worries that I do. I don't lie to him; I just don't tell him everything. I carry the burden of the problems because these are not kid problems, they are adult problems.

 

Work can be a problem also because too few employers recognize fathers as the raising parent. Get your head out of the sand; you will make concessions for women that work for you, why not the fathers that are raising their kids? I actually had a guy tell me to not tell a company owner that I was single parent because he would look at this as a sign that I was more committed to my son that the company. I left that company shortly there after.

 

Public perception is a major problem that everyone faces. If you stop to think about how the general public approached this, it is common for the public to accept that a father does not have custody. Tell them that a mother does not and immediately the thought is that she is unfit. Tell someone that the courts are unfair and they will tell you that that is no possible because the courts are fair to all. That thought will remain until they have their family thrown under the bus by the family court system.

 

Mention equal parenting and you will get the response that a child can not have a life with two houses. So using that logic, then divorced parents are supposed to live under one roof with their new families because the child can't live in two places. Now this is question that has been addressed many times before the legislature and I have stated publicly that this is FALSE. In responding to questions concerning this when HB232 was introduced, as a group, PACE responded with the following:

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The Answers                      

If we are going to try to change the public perception that a mother is the only one capable of raising a child, we are going to have a major sales job on our hands. This will include convincing the general public that there is something major wrong with the way that parents are being treated by the courts. Many of these points will come from conversations that I have had with parents all over the world and face to face conversations I have had with people, which have never gone through it, when I try to explain the problems that we all face daily thru the current court system.

 

1. Mothers are ALWAYS best for raising a child. This one goes back to the tender year doctrine when the mother always got the children, especially when they were young. More or less a throw back to the old Dad goes to work and mom stays home to clean house an clean, what I call the Leave it to Beaver syndrome. My how things have changed as out society became a two working parent nation just top keep up with the bills. Dads do cook and clean (some of them better than their female counterparts). Ask and one that throws this at you to look at their neighbors and see how many have both parents working and if that makes the female unfit.
2. She didn't get custody, so she is unfit. Funny isn't it how public perception is that a female without custody is unfit but we accept a male not getting custody as the best interest of the child. I have heard from as mothers as fathers through out my work on this issue and have yet to have anyone claim that they were unfit. I have seen more than my share of court orders where the court believes the affidavits (hear-say) of the father over the mother but I have yet to see any one found unfit by a domestic relations court, which is the only way that a person can be denied access to their child. That is why the bill contains references to clear and convincing evidence as the new standard for divorce trials and the stetting of all custody orders.
3. Shared parenting is more likely to lead to domestic violence.  I think that NOW invented this one to give females a leg up in all custody battles. An Important point to make to anyone that raises this is that this bill, as written does NOT touch the current domestic violence requirements on the law. Anyone that is violent has no business raising a child and is unfit to do so. This was not changed to protect the innocent from harm and in order to be convicted of a crime of domestic violence you would have gone to trial before a jury of your peers and had your due process rights protected. I have no tolerance for violence personally and if you were stupid enough to physically assault someone and be convicted, you have made your own bed, now lay in it. I was attacked twice by my exs family and both times I had the presence of mind to place my hands behind my back and NOT fight back.
4. If two people cannot get along them they can't raise a child while divorced. Mike Galluzzo and I love this one. Think about this one and ask yourself, "If they got along fine, then why are they getting a divorce?" This line has been used so many times to deny shared or equal custody that it is ridiculous. If the incentives to fight over the children is taken out of the law (custody) then the fighting will stop. The wasted money on attorneys will stop. The disruption of personal lives will stop. The children will turn out better because they will have BOTH parents active in their lives.
5.  Would this bill "tie judges' hands" and prevent them from doing what is best for children?  No. Judges will still retain the authority to make decisions in the best interest of the children. However, before ordering, over the objections of one of the parents, a parenting arrangement that would not be substantially equal, the court would have to find, by clear and convincing evidence, that a substantially equal arrangement would be harmful to the child.
6. Does this bill force parents into a 50/50 arrangement when they don't want it?  . Parents who agree on another arrangement for raising their children would be free to do so provided the arrangement wasn't harmful to the children. This bill does not involve forced shared parenting if that means it is forced over the objections of both parents. It could involve a court ordering shared parenting over the objections of one parent. However, in the first place, courts have this power already. Secondly, current "sole custody" arrangements are routinely ordered over the objections of one parent
7. Would this bill involve a "cookie-cutter" approach, forcing every family into the same arrangement? No. Currently, each Ohio County has a standard (or model) parenting time (visitation) rule. Courts routinely order this schedule when the parents can't agree. These rules are truly "cookie-cutters." They specify not only the amount of time each parent has with the children but the specific days and hours of the days. This bill requires only "equality" of parental rights and responsibilities, including for the care of and access to the children. The parents are free to divide the time in the way that is appropriate for the children and the special situation of the family.
8. Does this bill this bill increase the risk children might be abused? No. Quite the contrary. A parent who abuses his or her children should not have unsupervised care of the children. Under current law, nonresidential parents are routinely given "standard parenting time" (in Franklin County this amounts to about 27% of the year) with the children. Residential parents have the remainder of the time with the children. Unless our system functions successfully to protect children from abuse, abusive parents whether they are residential or nonresidential can harm children. Routinely refusing to give one parent roughly equal time with the children but allowing him or her over a quarter of the child's time is no way to protect children from abuse. If a parent is abusive to the children, we think that even having the children 27% of the time is bad. We don't think that having the children in the care of an abusive parent is fine up to 27% but becomes dangerous when it is nearer to 50%.
9. Would this bill clog the courts with litigation? There is no reason to believe that litigation would increase under HB 232 and good reason to believe that it would decrease. Stating a clear presumption in favor of equal parenting helps parents move toward an agreement that keeps both parents highly involved in their children's lives.
10. Would passage of this bill help to ensure that children have two loving parents highly involved in their lives? YES!

Why is the public so misinformed about the issues of equality? Because the majority have never been faced with this and have their heads in the sand UNTIL they are faced with it and then they will scream bloody murder. Frankly, we are seeing more second wives and grandparents taking up the cause now as they see what this does to the children that are involved. When enough people scream about this, something will be done.

Write your legislators and tell them that it is time to provide a guarantee of equal custody for all fit parents. I have many times ands will continue to do so until this is a reality.