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The Divorced Dadvocate: Divorce Support For Dads
Dads face unique issues during and after divorce. We identify and address the issues relevant to divorced/divorcing dads and create an action plan to survive and thrive!
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DISCLAIMER: The purpose of this podcast is to inform not influence. It is not a substitute for professional care or advice by a qualified professional. The host as well as guests who speak on this podcast express their own opinions, experience and conclusions, and The Divorced Dadvocate Podcast & Website neither endorses or opposes any particular views discussed here.
The Divorced Dadvocate: Divorce Support For Dads
247 - Dad’s Law School: A Father’s Guide To Legal Survival
David Pissarro, attorney and founder of Union of Dads, shares powerful insights on navigating custody battles, challenging family court biases, and fighting for father's rights. Through his 26 years of legal experience and personal advocacy, David provides essential strategies for dads facing the often unfair family court system.
• Family courts often favor mothers despite laws being theoretically gender-neutral
• Mothers frequently enter court with extensive documentation while fathers are unprepared
• Court-appointed "experts" may be part of a cottage industry that lacks true impartiality
• High-conflict cases often involve personality disorders that judges aren't trained to identify
• Preparing for custody battles requires treating it like going to war with a strategic battle plan
• The presumption of 50/50 custody should be the starting point in all states
• Custody battles have generational impacts when children lose connections with their fathers
• Fathers must document everything and demonstrate specific involvement beyond saying "I'm a good dad"
• Domestic violence laws often used as weapons need significant reform
• Dad's Law School offers resources to help fathers represent themselves effectively in court
Check out DadsLawSchool.com to learn about upcoming Badass Boot Camps to prepare for court.
Mark Ludwig lobbying program is at www.stlmarkludwig.com
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*FREE Dads Guide To Divorce* How to survive and thrive during and after divorce: http://www.dadsguidetodivorce.com
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Music credit: Akira the Don
Hello and welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here. Today we are going to be talking about the realities of custody battles, the emotional toll that it takes on us dads and the legal strategies that you need to know. You are a dad fighting for time with your kiddos being alienated, or just someone interested in legal reform, or just passionate about fatherhood, like I know. If you're listening in, this conversation is going to be for you, and I've just got a tremendous guest today to talk about that. I'm just going to say tune out whatever else you're doing, put all the work down, just focus, because you're going to really want to hear. I mean, you always want to hear what I got to say, right, but you're going to really want to hear what my guest today has to say. Before I introduce him, let me just remind you to check out the website at thedivorcedadvocatecom and we've got all kinds of tools for you, from free to paid, that can help you wherever you're at in the process, including the divorce quiz, which will help you determine, kind of where you're at mentally, emotionally, in this process, compared to tens of thousands of other dads that have gone through this. So it's completely free, takes about 10 minutes and it's a great resource for you, so check that and other tools out at thedivorcedadvocatecom.
Speaker 1:Okay, my guest today is David Pissarro. He is an attorney, author and advocate for father's rights and, as the father of Union of Dads, he has dedicated his career to helping fathers navigate the often challenging world of custody battles, co-parenting and family law. With years of experience in the courtroom and firsthand knowledge of the struggles us dads face, david brings powerful insights into how fathers can fight for their rights. Stay connected with your kiddos and challenge the biases that we all know about in the family court system. David, welcome to the show, hey.
Speaker 2:Jude, thank you, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1:So I have been following you kind of like one of those internet lurkers right for a while. Right, we just connected. But I get your emails and I've followed some of the work and watched some of the videos that you've done and your work is absolutely tremendous and I appreciate it being another dad in the system or has been through the system and unfortunately is in the system still sometimes apparently not. But tell us a little bit about kind of how you got started with this, your background and what the mission of Union of Dads is.
Speaker 2:Sure. So 26 years ago I came out of law school and my partner and I, who met second day of law school, were going to start a firm and I wanted to go do business law. I thought I was going to be like the next Gordon Gekko type person to date myself and my partner wanted to do family law. He said it's a solid business, we serve people well and we're always going to have clients. And I thought, oh God, family law, like take it. But my job was the marketer. My job was to go out and beat the bushes, get some clients in. So I would go to the Rotary Club or the Chamber of Commerce, I'd do my little dog and pony show and nobody wanted to talk to me.
Speaker 1:Nobody cared about me in business.
Speaker 2:Nobody wanted to talk to me, nobody cared about me in business. But the minute I said my partner does family law, it was like this mad rush, can he lower my child support? I got to get out of this divorce. You got to give me an administrative order. I got to get, and it was just like, oh my God, this is insane. He was right, it's a good business because people are always fighting. And so he got really busy with clients and then that spilled into my calendar to the point where, all of a sudden I was doing a lot of family law and we were doing that for about four or five years and I got up to here Like I was just burned out.
Speaker 2:And you know, if you're dealing with the toxicity of family law, it's pretty easy to get burned out. You get a couple like really crazy cases and you get involved emotionally and you're fighting for the rights of the kids and dads and justice. But we had both men and women. I made a list of clients I liked and clients that I just couldn't stand anymore and it was like boys on the left and girls on the right. I'm like well, that's pretty interesting.
Speaker 2:And when I looked at it, what I saw was when a woman comes into a lawyer's office, she wants the kids, the house, the pensions and she wants him destroyed. She wants him out of work, emotionally broken, and she wants him to pay for everything and she's got no money. He walks into my office. He's like dude, we haven't been intimate in six years. Like I want out. What's it going to cost me? How long is it gonna take? What do you need from me? And I'm like give me five thousand dollars, I'll call you when I need you. And they're like cool, we're out and as a client, they're so much easier to work with because when she's in my office, it's I need you to be my best friend, my therapist, my stylist. Talk to me about the family law. Give me 43 different options. Uh, what could happen today? If this goes that way, then what about that dude?
Speaker 2:it's exhausting okay it's like, okay, here's what we're gonna end up with, here's how we fight, here's what we're most likely gonna get at the end of the day. And so I found like there are easier clients and I could do better work. And over the what's that has happened is it's gone from men's family law, which is where we started men's family law dot com. Now we're really focused on dad's law school, because what was happening is there's fewer and fewer marriages. So when there's fewer marriages, that also means there's gonna be fewer divorces.
Speaker 2:We're really dealing with these days is child custody be fewer divorces. What we're really dealing with these days is child custody. What we're really dealing with is a lot of people who are now finding out like oh, I don't actually have any rights to my kids. Oh, what do I do? How do I get to see my kid? And they don't have any real deep resources. They may be able to scrape together three or $5,000. But when you've got a mom on the other side who's being paid by her mom to get a lawyer or her grandfather or the state that says, guess what, mom, you get a lawyer, we're going to make dad pay for it.
Speaker 2:Dad's left living in his truck, probably going to lose his job, emotionally destroyed and doesn't have any rights. So I started looking like how do I help men at scale? I still have clients on a day-to-day basis, but I need to do something more, because what I was seeing is dad's walking into court and they would just get destroyed because they walk into court and they're like I'm a great dad, I love my kids, I want to be there for my kids, and the judge like that's great sir. I've heard that from every man that's ever stood in front of me.
Speaker 2:What else? Because she's saying you're a drug addict, alcoholic, negligent, don't know anything about your kids, you never show up, you don't know the doctors, you don't know the dentist, you don't know the teachers, you don't know the shoe size. You don't know the teachers. You don't know the shoe size. I said, okay, here's how I can start helping and I created dad's law school out of that and it's a program designed to help dads be able to walk into court with a plan and a declaration that's been filed before they walk into court that tells the judge I've got my act together. I know what I have to do. I'm starting to do it. I want time with my kids and so from the guy that started off as like I want to be captain of industry, let's go like conquer the world Turned into the guy who's like, let's go protect dads and kids, because that relationship is really crucial.
Speaker 1:Right, which is a blessing because you could make a lot more money just taking on more clients and using that time and energy to do hourly. You guys get paid by the hour and just doing by the hour billing.
Speaker 2:If I was in for the money, it would be mom's law.
Speaker 1:It would be the opinion of moms.
Speaker 2:it would be the biggest mom advocate. All men are assholes. I'm sorry, I don't mean to swear all men are horrible losers deadbeats, not showing up enough, not paying enough it's easy when you're representing moms because they come in and they generate all that stuff.
Speaker 2:I was in court last week and literally the filings were like had to be an inch thick of all the things dad's horrible about. By the end of the morning we hadn't even talked to the judge. But I've been able to negotiate a settlement to get dad more time. And he's looking at me going. I don't understand. The filings are saying I'm this horrible human being he doesn't know anything about, his kids shouldn't be allowed near them. And I'm walking out with almost 50 percent custom that she's agreed to like she's taking these two opposite positions. What is?
Speaker 2:that about yeah, and it's about generating money and anger and emotion for the lawyers in mom to make more money.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, let's talk about that a little bit. And because family courts are criticized for favoring mothers, I'm taking it that you, from your perspective, that you agree with that. I would agree with that statement based upon my experiences personally as well, the experiences that that I have had with the thousands of dads that I have done what. So you, you talked about a few things of what happens when they go into court and why that happens. Can you talk about a little bit some more reasons why that happens? But also, let's get into a little bit about what dads can do to level that playing field when going to court.
Speaker 1:So I, I, I mostly agree with that statement that there's a bias.
Speaker 2:The law is, in theory, gender neutral in most states, so so the law is one thing.
Speaker 2:Then you've got the law as applied by judges, who are looking at these two people walking into court and trying to make a decision as to what's best for the child, and this is where it gets off track. This is where we've got internal biases of judges. This is where we've got internal preferences, because mom walks into court with an inch thick declaration of all the ways dad's incompetent, lazy, negligent, doesn't know what he's doing. And another one, that's another inch thick, about what an amazing mother she is, how she knows everything about her children. She can tell them before they're going to breathe what they're going to breathe. She knows every little detail about them and that's why she should have primary custody. So the dad pays the maximum amount of child support because he doesn't know anything and he's a bad dad. And then we get into the loop of well, okay, why is he a bad dad? Cause he never spends any time with the kids. Okay, can he have more time with the kids? No, why? Cause he's a bad dad.
Speaker 2:And that becomes the loop and it's like wait a second, you just stop, let's, let's get this out of the way.
Speaker 1:So do you think that? So do you think I'm sorry, just let me stop you real quick do you think that then the basic, basically the, the traditional gender roles, that that happen, when, I would say, the majority of families right out there, where the dad's the brand winner, the mother's taking care of the, the, the, the kiddos, or has the primary responsibility of that, and you know, those things are discounted in the, the court's mind, and the court has has failed to catch up with the times and how things are actually happening in the real world, where dads are continuing to do that but they don't have as much responsibility that they think that they should be involved, but they're not involved, but they're actually out working. What is the disconnect between the courts and actually what's happening with families?
Speaker 2:So we've got two things we have to start with there. You have to remember that of 100% of cases of families that fall apart, probably 80% of them never really get to court in any significant way.
Speaker 2:Like 80% of them, they just work it out. And so what we're really talking about is 20% of families that are breaking up have to go to court, and those are sort of medium to high conflict cases. So now we're in a different world. We're in the world of okay, we've got somebody who probably has a personality defect. Right, if we look at it, usually there's one party who's going to have some issue Past trauma, substance, substance abuse, personality issues now have the courts caught up with? That depends on the judge, because one of the problems in family court is judges tend to cycle through pretty quickly. So they're on the bench for two, three, three, maybe four years and then they're off to go do civil cases. They want to go on bankruptcy where it's nice and quiet. They want to go to probate where it's super quiet.
Speaker 2:In family court you've got judges who don't necessarily have any psychological training. They don't have any sociological training. They're told here's the law, go apply it. Sociological training. They're told here's the law, go apply it. And now you've got one party who's coming in, who's a personality defect person, who's just arguing to argue who's making this case for whether an awesome person while the other one's not good and you've got dad coming in going like I'm a good dad, I just want time with my kids.
Speaker 2:And so, on the one hand, we've got an issue of what are the gender roles and are both parties working, and how are we handling family finances and how are we handling child custody based on the kid's schedule and the practical logistics of family life, which all of that has to be dealt with by a person who has no training in any of it. Judges get training on the law and they get lots of training on victimhood by domestic violence victims. Who is that? Is that men or is that women? Well, that's the female domestic violence lobby that's pushing an agenda. Well, that's the female domestic violence lobby that's pushing an agenda. No-transcript a lot of big issues playing in here and then, when we're talking about how do we deal with what's best for the kid, a judge is looking at all this information coming in from this side and this little dribble from dad saying I'm a great dad so unless he's coming into court, you know, with a plan, with a battle plan, with something idealized in terms of custody, logistics, transportation, how our holiday is going to operate.
Speaker 2:he's already, of course, he's going to be at a deficit. He's got to start taking more of an active role in this and saying your honor, she has to work full-time. I have to work full-time. The kid's in daycare. There's no reason why I can't have daycare, why we can't split the time for child support, why we can't split the time for child support, why we can't split the time for child custody. And then the issue really becomes age appropriateness right.
Speaker 1:I want to point one thing out that that you touched on was that they're not they are not up to speed on personality disorders, mental, emotional issues, stuff like that, but what they do count on is court quote unquote court experts that are, that is, a whole cottage industry of people that know each other, that work with each other and these attorneys that are recommended by these attorneys and are not necessarily the top of their profession, if you will, and they automatically get this business from being in this cottage industry and in this system that automatically gives them business that there's no check or balance to the quality of work that they're doing. They spit this stuff out. It's oftentimes an opinion that then the judge, who has no background in this or understanding of this, takes as fact, and then the dad or whomever is stuck with this and it's on a record, it is uh used and and codified as your uh, your divorce decree, and then you have to deal with this for however long the duration of the co-parenting time with your kids.
Speaker 2:This role is way out of out of line because and this is where it comes back to what I was saying about the judges, judges who are on the bench a judge, at four years of being on the bench, has a much better understanding of the players than the judge who's just coming on the bench, and partly it's because he's been educated by those experts. So depending on the quality of those experts is going to depend on the quality of those experts, is going to depend on the quality of his education right.
Speaker 1:well, and I want to point this out because oftentimes and this was my case too oftentimes we go into court I was pollyanna, right, I'm, my attorney is going to be fighting for me and he's going to be up at night thinking about my case, which I know you can't right because you've got a million people, so you're focused on it when you're doing the work for me at that time. But it's not an all-encompassing thing, in that the judge is going to see and be fair and impartial and that, most of all, these experts are going to be looking at this stuff and they're going to say, yes, this is a problem and this is not right and this needs to get fixed. And this absolutely does not happen because they're not going to piss off anybody on one side or the other so that they don't ever get any work again. They're going to play it to the middle as much as they possibly can. These quote unquote court experts I've seen this so many times. They're not going to go way out on a limb unless it's egregious.
Speaker 2:I'm going to disagree with you on that one.
Speaker 1:Really Okay why.
Speaker 2:Like the retained experts. When I retain an expert expert, I'm hiring them because I know what their preference is. I'm hiring somebody that I know is going to be either really, really honest and really come down and say like this is what's going on. Mom's got some personality defects, dad's got some flaws. Here's what has to happen. I'm tending to hire people that are really good.
Speaker 1:Um okay, but you're not always, you don't always have control oh I'm sorry market.
Speaker 2:There's 12 million people in la county. I have an almost endless supply of experts right. So I'm unique and I realize that so, but here, here's the here's.
Speaker 1:the thing that I question, though, is you don't always get to make that decision as to who gets hired, so if the courts if you're disagreeing on that, you got to bring three and then you got to.
Speaker 1:If you can't agree on three, the court is going to pick one. Court's going to pick one. Typically, the three are going to be in most, most parts, so most parts aren't. La County, with so many people, are going to have a handful of people, and even here in a major metropolis in Colorado, there's the.
Speaker 1:I see and hear the same names from all the guys coming through our, through our groups that are doing the, that are doing the PREs and that are doing the CFI investigations, that are doing the doing the re the PREs and that are doing the CFI investigations, that are doing the doing the reintegration therapy and whatnot. And some of them are great, don't get me wrong, but a ton of them are terrible. Yeah, absolutely so. I just want the guys to be aware of that. That it's not. They're not. They're not there. They still have to stay in business. They still have to feed their families. They're not there. They're not there advocating for you. They're not there. They still have to stay in business. They still have to feed their families. They're not there advocating for you. They're going to look at this stuff from as much of an impartial lens as possible, but they're not going to really go out and they're not fighting for you is really, I guess, what I'm getting to.
Speaker 2:They're fighting for the kid in theory, and that's what they'm getting to Well, in theory. They're fighting for the kid In theory and that's what they should be doing. They should be balancing the roles of both mother and father and pointing out her issues and his issues and coming up with a strategy and what's going to work best for the kid, which is frequently frustrated by whoever's got the personality defect Right. And usually in these cases, it's been my experience that primarily, what we're dealing with is a borderline mom. Because, as I like to say, why are you in family court fighting? Because of bad moms? Because bad moms keep good dads away from kids. It's not good moms that are the problem here. Good moms are in the 80, good moms are working out with dad and we're not even seeing them in family court for the most part.
Speaker 2:Maybe one time, Come up with a plan, sign it. We're done for 15 years, Right, exactly, Bad moms, that these dads are fighting and they've got to understand that they're dealing with a borderline personality usually and that's craziness.
Speaker 1:And they're very manipulative.
Speaker 2:They're very convincing. I mean, think about why were you? Why did you fall in love with this person? What was so attractive about them? They did something to seduce you. This is the classic seduction story. They're brilliant at that. Well, if they're brilliant at it, good enough for you. They're probably going to be able to play that with the judge, a therapist, social worker, the, the bailiff. They're going to play the victim brilliantly, and so you've got to be aware of that going in. So, yes, I'm not saying you're wrong about the experts, but you also have to look at the number of borderline personalities that are in these cases and most men.
Speaker 2:In my experience, I have to spend somewhere between 20 minutes and two hours convincing them that their ex is a bad mom. Yeah, I literally had this phone conversation yesterday. He spent 10 minutes telling me how she's an alcoholic, abusive, violating the children, abusing the kids, horrible person, but she's a good mom. And I'm like dude, how do you, how do you recognize those two things at the same time? It makes no sense to me. I don't get it right. It took me 20 minutes or two hours to like, get him to like, finally see, like. Oh, I actually have to step up and and treat her no longer as the mother of my children, but as the person I'm competing for to protect my children.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, that's a good point, and maybe that's. I just wanted to make the point about the system and the experts that myself and a lot of us think that it's going to be this, it's going to be fair, it's going to be, it's going to work in your favor. People are going to be advocating for what's best and it's just not the real world.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that's 100%.
Speaker 1:There's people like you, there's people like me. I mean, there's good people. It's not to say that there's bad people in this, it's just you got to be aware that it's a challenge. You're going into a challenge like you just described and you've got to take this mindset. That is a lot different, especially if you're in a high conflict that you are, and I think you hit it on the head, which is the same way I approach it. You need to step up to protect your children because, whether you are in love with this person obviously you wanted to spend your life with them there's emotions that go into it. If that person has mental, emotional issues, then your children are at risk and it is incumbent upon you, as a father, to then step up and do something about. That is emotionally difficult and challenging, as that is and maybe that's what we can talk about is the first step in trying to start to level that playing field is like doing the work on yourself and figuring out what you got to figure out.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent. A hundred percent. You've got to start changing your mindset, because the mindset has to be that I am protecting my kids at all costs, and that cost may be. Oh, I have to change careers.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:In order for me to see my kids as much as I want, I can't do the job I've been doing for the last 10 years. I had that case where the guy is like we're going into court and he's like she's abusive. Here are the videos, and the videos are excruciating. To watch the way she was treating her children to the point where the judge literally directed me, ordered me, Mr Pizarro, call child protective services, turn her in.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I go into court. I'm like your honor, we want custody change. Okay, what do you want? My guy doesn't want to take full custody because it's going to impact his job.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Dude, I don't care. Take your kids, go do something different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I agree with you 100% and I think there's a couple of things that tie into that. One, guys derive much of their identity through what they do, and so trying to have to change that and do a full-scale career change or make a pivot or whatever it might be, is very difficult. The other is fear of what's going to happen financially, because it's just a math problem that you're going to have two households from one. So that's already scary, but if you're changing jobs, you don't know how much money. But I want to emphasize that that's a huge point that you make that when you had kids and you became a father, that became your number one priority in your life. And I know and I'm probably preaching to the choir, the guys that are listening on this show, but there's, but if I want to make the point to, to, to work through that fear so that you can do that because you, it would be the same I make.
Speaker 1:I make the same argument because oftentimes and maybe you can touch on this a little bit we I get some other quote unquote experts that that talk about the, the, the mothers that are alienating their kids and they say well, you know, you don't make it more adversarial, Don't make it more confrontational. Just let things be and work around the fringes and the edges and then just be there and ready, when the kids are ready, to come back. And I say to that if somebody was physically abusing your kid and you're standing outside looking at that, would you just say, well, I'm just going to wait till it's done and then I'm going to help them heal all the physical ailments from being abused and beat up by somebody. It's an insane proposition that is out there.
Speaker 2:You're 100% right in that.
Speaker 2:And there's another element to this, and that is it's so easy for a mom to alienate dad from the kids these days and the allegations of narcissism and domestic violence that have become so prevalent in almost every case that we're seeing in family court, it's one or both of those issues that's alienating the kids from dad that if it's not stopped right away which is very difficult you are already down that path.
Speaker 2:So much of that alienation that was a foregone conclusion by who you picked to have kids with Right, and that's a hard thing for men to hear, because the reality is when a woman walks into court and she starts talking about how, how hard it is to be a single mom and you don't understand how abusive he's been. He's terrorizing me, I'm afraid of him and he's just destroying us and he's terrorizing the kids and joey is afraid of his father and it's sad. I want him to have a really great relationship with his dad, but his dad's so bad and judges just fucking melted that stuff, dude. And it's horrible to watch because my guy generally does not have the cojones to let me go after her full bore. Let me attack her. The judges don'tones to let me go after her full bore.
Speaker 2:Let me attack her the judges don't want to let me attack her Right. She's got this, this sword of victimhood, right. It just cuts through everything.
Speaker 1:Right. So, along our lines of how we continue to level the play field and and mitigate this, what are? What do you do with that? What do you do to prepare, knowing that this is, this is probably coming?
Speaker 2:So, uh, one of the big things is you have to meet with and come up with a battle plan. You need to come up, you should meet with a lawyer and say, like here's the situation, what do I have to do? And then willing to implement it. Yesterday I'm on the phone with a guy and he's got. You know, they're married 15 years, they got two kids, they've got the house. There's a half a million dollars of equity in the house and she's a part-time stylist and he's a full-time union electrician.
Speaker 2:So I know exactly where this is going. I tell him you are facing a restraining order that's going to kick you out of your house because she wants the child support, because she wants the alimony, because you make a lot of money. She's going to want to have the house given to her because you're going to want to just get out, because she's going to make it so excruciating for you that you're going to walk away. And he's like there's no way. There's no way. I'm like, dude, the thing for you to do is plan your exit, have an apartment, be ready to drop the hammer on. Here's a divorce paperwork. Here's my proposed settlement. Here's how we're going to deal with the house. We're going to sell the house, liquid, liquidate the assets, split the difference, because there's no way she's going to be able to afford it. So the action was there's no way I'm letting that happen. I'm not leaving my house and I'm like, okay, you can do that. And here's what's going to happen.
Speaker 2:There will come a day where you are going to come home, there's going to be a sheriff, your bags are going to be packed on the front porch and you're going to be told to leave and you don't get to see your kids for a minimum of three weeks because it's supervised visits, because you're abusive and angry and horrible person. You know, like right, never do that to me. I'm like okay, well, you can do option a, which is my plan, and it's going to cost you somewhere between ten and fifteen000 and $15,000. And you should come in and we should get started on that, or you can wait. In two months from now you're going to call me up and be like fix it. I got kicked out of my house. I got a restraining order against me. What do I do? And I'm going to be like it's going to be $40,000.
Speaker 2:And you're going to get less than if you had actually done what I told you to do in the front place Right, and then it muddies the whole system.
Speaker 1:You're fighting a civil case, you're fighting the family law and you're doing it, so there, so you're describing what I call is the playbook. Right, there's this playbook with, with, um, uh with people, but we're talking uh with uh. We're specifically with, uh with women and and mothers that, uh, that have a personal edged or some mental, mental, emotional issues that have thought.
Speaker 2:And here's the other thing point I want to make is they've usually thought about this for a long time before things are happening years two to three years, a woman usually plans your divorce minimum two years, generally three and oftentimes, as they're walking down the aisle, right, so okay so so well, yeah, I mean there's.
Speaker 1:We can get into hypergamy and everything else, but that's a different show. But so my point to the guys then is, like the guy you just described, think of, if you plan something for two to three years, how much more of an advantage that you have, having thought through and planned this and made preparations for this. So you've got to be aware and because 70, whatever, 70, 80% of women are the ones that file that you are behind the eight ball. And what David just described is you have got. This has got to be the first thing that you start doing. This becomes the number one thing in your life behind work, social, everything else. If you want to protect your kids and make sure that you are going to have a life after divorce because this is going to impact you for if you've got kids, maybe two more decades at least, and so if you want to have a life two more decades from now, you've got to drop everything. This has got to become your primary focus. Do what David just described and you use some of the same language I do, which I appreciate.
Speaker 1:Hearing is talking about battling and wars and preparing and all that stuff, and it sounds horrible, and I know the guys that are very sensitive that I talk to are like man, I just am not comfortable with that language. But the reality is that's what it is. You are going into a war. There's going to be these small battles you have got to prepare because, just like any war or battle that you go into, if you're not, you're going to get absolutely decimated.
Speaker 1:And this decimation isn't going to be for a short period of time, gentlemen. This is going to be for a very, very long time. And so I know you get guys that come to you after the fact can you fix this and can you fix that? And I get guys that are like oh, I haven't seen my kids in two months or six months or a year, and how do I fit? Like that's, I don't want to say it's too late, but that's when you're. It's 10 times more difficult to do than making the career change in the beginning or or figuring out how to get full custody in the beginning, or whatever is, and making a plan and fighting that battle at the time that it is presented to you 100, 100%.
Speaker 2:These guys, they have to remember that the woman they're divorcing is not the woman they married. Yeah right, the woman you're fighting for custody is not the woman you slept with.
Speaker 1:Yeah right.
Speaker 2:Many, many clients who are like. We met at the nightclub and we had a two-week fling and I'm like great, guess what A really crazy borderline is completely capable of masking for two weeks and what you saw is not who she really was, like what? You're seeing now is what you're really we're dealing with all along, and I try and explain to some guys, like, like, like.
Speaker 2:what you saw was this cute, fluffy little like kitten that you thought was like fun to play with, and what you're really dealing with is a really mean, nasty ugly rattlesnake.
Speaker 1:Yes, right, that is now presenting itself, whether that's two years or 20 years, right? Or you're just recognizing, finally, whether it's two years or 20 years, and you finally come, or maybe slowly coming to the understanding that this is not healthy for you and for your kids. This is the big thing, right? You've got to be protecting your kiddos.
Speaker 2:You've got to be protecting your kiddos. The impact on the kids it's going to echo for generations, because what you've got are kids who are now being raised by highly dysfunctional moms, being told how they should view moms and how they should view dads, and that's going to impact their relationships going forward, both when they're boys and girls, of what their expectations are, of what their expectations are. And so now you've got, once that generation reaches the dating age and the mating age. Now they've got these old tapes, these old perspectives on what's supposed to be and those are going to play out and, oh, guess what? It's not a very true sense of reality.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I don't know how much more we can emphasize this, because we have, but this has, this has generational impacts and I can speak to that from my, my uh upbringing, uh, with uh, with a mother that had significant mental, emotional issues, and and what that does and how, in repeating what you just described, right, when you get to the dating, mating age, they're going to repeat this If you are not the person that is helping to break this cycle or this, these chains of events that are continuing to happen because despite okay, like we don't know what we we don't know, and and if we were raised in an environment like this and that became common and then we found somebody that just did it with us. But once we are cognizant of it and we have a conscious awareness and understanding of it, it is incumbent upon us as dads, to then start to fight that battle, that go to war in order to stop this, because otherwise this is going to continue and if you love your kids, you don't want them in this same situation in whatever 10, 20, 30 years with their spouse or soon to be ex-spouse. You want this to stop now and you can do that and you can have healthy relationship and you can show them that this is not normal right, that 80% that does get through the court system and has normal life. This is a minority of people.
Speaker 1:I tell my daughters this all the time. Your childhood is not the norm of what has happened. The high conflict, divorce, the fighting, all of this, all the alienation, all of this stuff is not the norm of what's going on out there, and so I just want you to know that you can have healthier relationships. I'm going to help you. I have not, you know, I screwed up in. I screwed up in, you know, going through this process and finding somebody that you know. I just perpetuated what I didn't know, and so I'm going to help you through this process so that you don't go through that too. So this is an ongoing thing.
Speaker 1:So I think we've sufficiently told guys to make sure to pay attention and that this is your primary responsibility and battle in life going forward, and I think we've talked about some of the first things of kind of what you need to do and how you start to level the playing field. Let's pivot a little bit to talk about the court system and, guys, I highly recommend tuning in and getting on David's website, unidads. He's got all kinds of resources, just like we do at the website. He's got all kinds of resources because he and I could probably talk about this for the next 10 hours and get on his website. He's got all kinds of resources that can help you to start leveling this playing field, to start preparing for what you need to do in order to get into this battle, and he can definitely help you.
Speaker 1:But what I want to spend the rest of our time, David, talking about is just a little bit about the system and what you think. How can we, what legal reforms can start to happen? Because I do have guys that have been through this, that are part of the group that they're dealing with stuff they want. This is just like this has become my life passion now. It's become your life passion. Now there's other guys that want to do something, and some of them are focused on trying to figure out how to fix the legal system. What do you see as some necessary things or fair ways that we can start going about to make this change?
Speaker 2:So I think there's two big things we need to do. One is we really need domestic violence reform like the. The train that left the station is so far afield of what domestic violence is supposed to be. It's absolutely absurd like legislators have to come back and dial it back, because it's just it's it's divorced by ambush, it's child custody by ambush, and you know, the definition of domestic violence is not physical anymore, it's not even just emotional, it's coercive control, financial coercive control, like yeah like I'm not going to have sex with you tonight unless you do the dishes.
Speaker 2:Like that's coercive control, giving you what you want to get what I want, right. So we've got. Those issues of that needs to be dealt with and the other thing that needs to be happening is 50-50 co-parenting. That should be the presumption out the gate. There should be an age-appropriate division of custody, because the way that you're going to divide custody of a 2 or 3-year-old is certainly different than what you're going to do with a 6-year-old or 12. Those are different developmental levels. They need different things. But that doesn't mean that we couldn't have 50-50 and that one parent should have primary custody and the other parent should be relegated to every other weekend and a Wednesday night pizza dinner, because that's just not fair.
Speaker 2:It's not fair to the kid, it's not fair to the parent, it's not good for anybody except the one parent who usually ends up with primary custody because that impacts their child support.
Speaker 1:That's what's good for them, right? So baseline things need to start at 50-50, but there's some states that do that, but there's a lot that don't Right. And so you're saying legislation it needs to start to happen, because I know that there's movement out there to get that in all and statute in each and every state is 50-50 baseline start and then from there, if there's issues or special circumstances that things get that change, but other than that it's flat 50-50.
Speaker 2:Correct. And the guy who's doing the most in that arena right now is a man named Mark Ludwig. He's out of Missouri. Okay, he has a course where he teaches dads everybody how to be more effective as lobbyists, how to talk to your politicians, how to talk to your representatives so that they hear you and so that you actually start making progress and getting these laws changed. His course, I think, is I don't know 200 bucks or something somewhere around there to help you become more effective.
Speaker 2:Because what often happens is this an angry dad who's hurt and had a lot of emotion, goes in and talks to their legislator and says we have to change this. An angry dad who's hurt and had a lot of emotion, goes in and talks to their legislator and says we have to change this. It's just wrong, it's not fair, it's inappropriate. You got to do something about this. And what ends up happening is it's such an onslaught of emotion that the legislator shuts down because you get pegged as you're that crazy guy.
Speaker 2:Because you get pegged as you're that crazy guy and with lobbying you generally have to come in and be very, very surgical in what you say, how you say it. You want to come in with a clear set of objectives and a clear benefit to the legislature. So if you're just coming in and you're just full of anger and energy, it's like an octopus on an ice rink there's a lot of motion but nothing gets done. But if you come in very slowly, like a chameleon climbing up a tree, and you just take one step at a time, you're going to be much more effective and that's why I highly recommend mark's course and anything you can do to get in touch with mark and his I think it's amer Americans for Equal, shared Parenting is his organization and they've been very, very effective. They helped in Florida, they helped in Kansas, they helped in Missouri and I want to say Iowa, indiana, maybe One of the high states, I think, but he's making great progress.
Speaker 1:We'll put that in the show notes. I have a question. We'll put that in the show notes. My question I have a question. If there is such a high percentage of attorneys or former attorneys in the legislature.
Speaker 2:Why are they not doing anything about this?
Speaker 1:Jude basic rule of life, follow the money, okay.
Speaker 2:Women have domestic violence, shelters, who get federal grants, who get state grants, who hire lobbyists Hmm, what do men have?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:How hard is it for you to keep a man energized about this more than a year? Right, most men get in this. They get destroyed financially, they get destroyed emotionally, they get destroyed spiritually. They're like we've got to do something to change this, we've got to fix it. And then they get custody orders and then their life settles back down and then they're like I'm moving on, I don't, I don't know the bandwidth, I can't do it right, and they're just barely trying to survive right, right, that's part of the problem that men have like and we run into this.
Speaker 2:Whether it's working with ncf, the national coalition for men, who does great work for men's rights, whether we're talking about what I'm trying to do to get people to go see Mark Ludwig to make change, to get things done, it's just keeping them involved. The father's rights movement seven years ago had half a million members pretty active on their Facebook page. I don't even know if they've got a 10th of that these days. Really, the nature of the process is men cycle through because they get burned out. Then it's like okay, well, I can't fight this battle anymore. It's never going to change. I just want to go enjoy what little life I have left.
Speaker 1:Right, which is it's terrible and it's brutal, yeah, and it's, it's an awful thing for our uh, for our little, our sons, to see and for our kids to see.
Speaker 2:And that's the hard part is is it's going unless? Unless today's dads step up and do something different, tomorrow's grandfathers and fathers are going to have more of the same.
Speaker 1:Amaro's grandfathers and fathers are going to have more of the same. Yeah, it's awful man, it's sad and it's disconcerting, and so, yeah, I hate ending it on kind of a negative note, but I think that's just the reality of the situation, of what we're in in the battle Again we go back to some of this language is we as men, have abdicated some of this, this battle and this responsibility in our, in our society, and it's incumbent upon us to really turn this around and step up and have to do something. And that means, even if you are demoralized, even if you are struggling and barely hanging on that you are doing something, even if it is a little bit of something, to to change the course, maybe even just a percentage with, if it's just your family, to to make some change.
Speaker 2:And so there's two things that men can do about that. There's one you can take Mark's course and go learn how to talk to legislatures and legislators and try and make change on a societal level. Absolutely, you can do it yourself. You can like.
Speaker 2:Go take dad's law school. It's $97 a month and it's going to teach you how to represent yourself in family court, how to write your declaration, how to start arguing for yourself, how to prove to the judge that you're a great dad, and the goal there is you're educating the judge on what good dads look like. Just like we said earlier, the judges learn from all these experts. You come in at year one and then at year four. Hopefully, they've had good experts and learned to get better.
Speaker 2:If the judges are starting to see more dads show up on a regular basis with good declarations showing what they're doing, the judges' perceptions of men are going to change. Fighting for yourself is fighting for everyone else. It's fighting for tomorrow's dads. It's fighting for your grandkids. That's why they need to do this, and when they get into dad's law school and they come to our group and they come to our meetups and they come to our whatsapp group and they start sharing what they find is the emotional support that allows them to do the battle to get more time with their kids.
Speaker 1:that's the whole point of dad's law school well said so, david, I know you've got a boot camp coming up. Tell us a little bit about that. I don't know if it's too late for guys to get involved with that, and then also where else that they can get involved with you and reach you.
Speaker 2:Sure, the Dad's Badass Boot Camp is a one-day event where we're teaching dads how to do exactly what I said how to show up, gather your evidence, argue to the court. In one day I'm going to show you the things you need to do so that you can go in and represent yourself in a much stronger position. The best place to learn how to do that is at dadslawschoolcom. Very top. We've got a big red bar. Just click on that. Next bootcamp's coming up is March 22nd, and then we're looking to do February, probably September. We're looking to do Florida September, october.
Speaker 1:Okay, awesome. So check that out, gentlemen. Get connected with David. Take the bootcamp, even if you've got an attorney and I tell guys this all the time you've got to get up to speed on the process, the system, the statutes so that you can have intelligent conversations with your attorney, and not all attorneys are as great as David. Get up to speed on the process, the system, the statute so that you can have intelligent conversations with your attorney, and not all attorneys are as great as David. It's just like any profession that you need to know what's going on, so you need to get yourself educated.
Speaker 1:So even spending $97 just to know and get prepared with all of what David has will help you and help the attorney.
Speaker 1:It's actually going to save you money in the long run because you're not going to have I guarantee you that you're not going to have a third of an hour of questions for your attorney.
Speaker 1:That will pay for the $97 that it costs to be part of David's group, and so it's money that you're going to get an infinite like way more return on investment on that and it might not seem like that, I know things might be tight, but I can tell you that's going to help you immensely and it's going to be a long-term thing, guys, because if you're, especially if you're dealing with somebody that is high conflict, you're going to need to know, and that's so.
Speaker 1:I learned it all the hard way right Over almost 12 years now in being in court and doing this and going, and seven different attorneys and that stuff, because I didn't do something like I'm describing right now and there wasn't something like what David had out there for me 12 years ago to to learn. So, absolutely positively, get involved and and and get up to speed. David, thank you so much for being here. God bless you for the work that you're doing with the guys and the dads and hopefully maybe we can get together again soon and maybe do this regularly with some more advice, because you've got so many pearls of wisdom for us and we didn't even we're almost an hour in and we didn't touch on like nearly enough.
Speaker 2:So thank you. I appreciate you to come back anytime thank you take care cheers.
