Creation of Rigged Family Courts: Facilitated Switching Custody to Fathers

And: Saturday Zoom Open to All Moms

The creation of the rigged Family Court system facilitated the switching of custody to fathers.

The idea was supposed to be to create a system in which children’s best interests after divorce were actualized. That is what the public was led to believe. But that is just Old Boy propaganda meant to keep people, including unsuspecting mothers, believing judges were actually doing what was best for children.

From the earliest days of divorce being decided in courts, though, it was men’s interests that prevailed. Judges were there to continue men’s power in the family, not to ensure the best interests of children.

Women have been led blindfolded to the slaughter with the expectation that family courts functioned like other courts, i.e. justice would prevail if they just put the facts and evidence before the judge.

But that was not to be.

So, how did we get here from there? A brief history.

IN THE BEGINNING

In the beginning, that is to say when Patriarchy took hold millennia ago, men conferred upon themselves absolute power and control in the family. Women and children were merely men’s property, just like all their other material property and animals. Men could barter, sell, and even kill their children without any legal consequences.

This totalitarian reign was challenged in the early 1800’s by Caroline Norton, an English aristocrat who’d lost custody of her three sons. [Her story is in our History of the Crisis series.] Caroline got a law passed that made mothers the preference for custody in children’s early years, often referred to as the Tender Years” doctrine. This marked the beginning of social consensus that children’s best interests should rule after divorce, not men.

However, men were the ones deciding what children’s best interests were. They agreed that before the age of 7, it was best for children to remain in the mother’s custody. No skin off their teeth. They lost nothing and actually benefitted. They did not want the early years of 24/7, icky (snot & poop) parenting labor, and this obligated the mother to do all of it. And they could still get custody if they wanted by telling a judge the mother was immoral or crazy.

The Old Boys deemed it in children’s best interest after 7-years-old to be with the father, because he was financially better off. No mention of the emotional attachment between mother and child.

So nothing really changed.

For nearly two hundred more years, men’s absolute power in the family continued unabated, all the while it being made to look like mothers were being favored in the early years and children’s best interests were being satisfied.

THINGS TAKE A TURN

Then in the 1960’s things seemed to take a turn. Two major changes occurred which caused men to create a system that would ensure their continued power after divorce: 1) Women gained the economic ability to leave bad and abusive husbands without being impoverished, and they were leaving in droves, and 2) child support began to be enforced, which they did not want to pay.

Enter Family Court.

So it should not be surprising that the structure of Family Court reflects men’s goal of maintaining control in the family post-separation. The foundation for this rigged system consists of laws that judges can interpret in men’s favor and judicial powers that do not exist in real courts, such as appointing professionals to aid in custody decisions.

Getting out of child support was a main goal of men, next to using custody of children to control and punish the ex. Presto! Child support was attached to parenting time, and if men had the kids half time, they would not have to pay.

This led to laws which favored equal parenting time. Language such as “frequent contact with both parents [read: fathers]” was used to deem lots of contact with the father to be in children’s best interests (by the Old Boys). These laws are used by judges to grant half parenting time and ta da! No child support—goal achieved.

And if the father wants to be paid child support by the mother, the judge can grant him that too, via court-appointee “evaluations” and reports that support it.

COURT ACTORS

A cabal of court-affiliated actors who can be counted on to steer the case to the father are used by the judge.

The first stop is usually a court-affiliated mediator. Women are informed by the mediator that if they do not agree to joint custody, the judge will assume they are not encouraging a relationship with the father and he will likely get sole custody. This functions as a threat and many mothers cave. The mediator then reports this “success” to her boss, the judge.

If the mother resists this first attempt to break her, the judge will appoint an evaluator. Evaluators steer the case to the father by falsely deeming the mother mentally ill, disordered, alienating, uncooperative, etc. They also write a report to their boss, the judge, with the foregone conclusions.

In cases involving children who have reported abuse by the father, a children’s attorney or legal representative (GAL) is often used. These appointees are experts in covering up abuse, especially sexual abuse. Their job is supposed to be to zealously represent the child’s wishes and best interests, but they actually are there to give their boss, the judge, what he wants.

In abuse cases, therapists are often appointed to coercively persuade (brainwash) children into silence and compliance with court orders to visit or live with their abuser father. Therapists are also required for the mother. They keep tabs on her and report to the court whether the mother is getting with the program—or not.

There are a slew of other actors as well: parenting coordinators, special masters, counselors, parent educators, visitation supervisors, et. al. who help ensure the father gets custody. Of course these minions are all sold to mothers as neutral, when nothing could be further from the truth.

So does every appointee steer the case to the father? No, that would be too obvious. No matter, judges ignore reports that do not give them what they can use in the great custody switch.

This parade of expensive professionals devastates mothers financially. This serves as another tactic to disempower them and empower their ex. The narrative that children are better off with the richer father is still alive and well.

TAKEAWAYS

This brief history of the creation of Family Court should disavow anyone of the notion that women ever had the advantage in getting custody. So if anyone says this, point them here. The truth is, men have always had power to take custody away from mothers if they so chose.

From the Tender Years onward, men have deceptively maintained control via “their” judges crediting their false claims that the mother was mad or bad and deeming custody to the father in the children’s best interests. It’s just that today there are more sophisticated ways of accomplishing this same feat in the modern family court system, including the appointment of professionals who go along to get along.

The legion of court-affiliates leads some to believe that the profiteering by these professionals is what is causing the crisis, when it actually just adds fuel to an existing fire. It rewards those who go along with the agenda to switch custody to the father, not those who do not. See “Down the Cottage Industry Rabbit Hole”.

It’s also important to recognize that male-constructed narratives play a huge role in diverting from the truth of what is going on. Ever since the change from absolute male control to children’s best interests in the 1800’s, men have controlled the narrative about what is best for children. The modern-day version is that frequent and continuing contact with fathers is best, regardless of past parenting involvement or abuse. This is easily interpreted as half time with fathers, which achieves their main goal of eluding child support. They are tied together.

Another important takeaway is how children’s primary emotional attachment to their mother has never been part of the custody equation, even though it is obviously in children’s best interest to consider it. That is not a coincidence. Men have always known that the strong maternal bond naturally diminishes their power in the family—so they have simply disappeared it. The truth is, children’s primary emotional attachment to their mother is the most important thing for children’s well-being, but that is for another discussion.

Women need to dispel the false narratives. The most important true narratives to establish is that children do best after divorce living primarily with their primary bond and nurturer, and if there is abuse, contact must be professionally supervised, paid by the abuser. And if there is sexual abuse, there should be no contact.

But even if the narratives change, Family Court judges can still do what they have been doing forever: falsely deem the mother bad or mad and use that to switch custody to the father.

So women must demand a new system.

Custody cases must be moved out of the rigged Family Court system and into a real court where juries that understand what is really best for children are the fact-finders.

Join The Women’s Revolution!

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IN OTHER NEWS

SATURDAY ZOOM OPEN TO ALL

Our March Sisters in Solidarity forum will again be open to all mothers who are interested in knowing more about our Discrimination in Family Court Lawsuit or our Sisters in Solidarity activism group or the Women’s Revolution.

As most of you know, we have an attorney in New York who is working on the lawsuit, so if you’re from New York, be sure and join. And—we’ve got big news about another lawyer possibly taking our lawsuit, so be the first to find out where!

LINK to the zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89055932152

SATURDAY, March 15th at 1pm Pacific; 4pm Eastern; 9pm London; 7am Sydney (16th)

ALERT: This zoom is ONLY for mothers who are victims of the Custody Crisis. There will be a waiting room, so plz be patient while mothers are admitted.

More info about the discrimination lawsuit

Join the lawsuit: fill out this form for the U.S. and for other countries this form.

More info about Sisters in Solidarity

Join SIS

More info about the Women’s Revolution

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CHAPTER 28 NEXT SECTION IS OUT!

In this section of Chapter 28, Legion goes pro se, and realizes she did a much better job representing herself than either of her lawyers—not that that would make any difference in the end. She just wishes she hadn’t wasted so much money on them. And she she notes how this able representation of herself seems to piss off the male judges.

Legion is also beginning to realize that her presumption that if she got all the truth on the record, she would get justice. After all, it was a justice system, wasn’t it? Grace’s response is to heartily guffaw at her sheer naïveté.

Thinking back, she bitterly reminisces about how her boys would say that Herry never said anything bad about her. If they only knew that was part of his ploy to make himself appear wonderful, while destroying her by ruining her career prospects and making sure she remained as poor and traumatized as he could achieve.

In the last section of Chapter 28, Legion barely makes the deadline for filing a new Petition for custody/visitation, claiming that Herry has wrongly moved to another state and is keeping the kids completely away from her. He had promised the judge in writing that if he were granted custody, he would stay in Iowa until the boys graduated from high school.

CHAPTER 28 of Mother-Fucking: The Saga of One Fucked Mother begins with Act III, Part 4 of “The Opera” from Book 3. The Opera has three Acts with five Parts—one for each of the three Family Court and two Appellate Court trials. Chapter 28 covers all of Act III: Part 4: the third Family Court trial and Part 5: the second Appellate trial. This is a long chapter and will be published in newsletter-sized bites.

Dr. Blue’s novel is based on her own experience of the Custody Crisis. It uniquely conveys how Family Court judges are “mother-fucking” women—a form of systemic oppression—as protagonist Legion is systematically and methodically deprived of her children and money and reduced to “one fucked mother”.

Chapters are stand-alone interesting so you can begin reading anywhere. A Cast of Characters follows to help readers at any point. All published chapters are included in the Section: “Saga of One F**ked Mother” accessible on the top bar of the home page of Women’s Coalition News & Views. Sequential chapters are published every Wednesday so make sure to subscribe if you haven’t yet!

TEASERS

I can remember thinking from time to time just exactly how it was that I actually “believed in the legal system.” I mean I, in point of fact, thought that I would, there within it, “the legal system,” receive back out of it … justice.

I can also remember poised, courteous, calm and balanced Grace Portia throwing her head back at least one time and on several other occasions just outright heartily guffawing because of my sheer naïveté as well as of my stupendous stupidity at this very suggestion of mine: that if I “just told the Truth, why, justice would prevail because it’s … it’s … it is supposed to … to … to jus’ work out that way!”

The plan was: Zane, Jesse and Mirzah were never going to hear a thing––bad or good because I did not exist to them––immediately and for always after Daddee‑Herry spirited all three out of and away from 6143 Havencourt and The Teacup on that autumnal Saturday. I ceased to be. And so did they in the sense of their lives before that day, in the sense of their lives … with me.

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