314 - Why 86% Of Americans Want 50-50 Custody

86% of Americans agree on something that family court still treats like a fight to the death: equal shared parenting should be the default when parents separate. We unpack why that number matters, why it signals real bipartisan momentum, and how the old “every other weekend” model became a legal trap that sidelines fit fathers through early status quo and financial pressure. If you’re staring down a custody dispute, you’ll hear exactly where the system is finally bending and where it still resists.

We walk through the most important legislative signals right now, including Florida Senate Bill 1128 pushing a mandatory parenting time hearing within 30 days, similar momentum in Pennsylvania House Bill 1499, and why Kentucky’s 2018 equal parenting presumption remains the blueprint other states keep copying. We also talk results: Kentucky’s divorce rate drop and how removing winner-take-all incentives can reduce scorched-earth custody warfare before it starts.

Then we go “ground level” with a major practical win: Colorado House Bill 25-1159 eliminating the notorious 93 overnight cliff in child support guidelines. We explain how the old cliff turned one overnight into thousands of dollars and created the war over Tuesdays, and how a graduated credit model finally makes every overnight count. From there, we follow the money and the lobbying pressure that tries to kill 50/50 custody bills, including the incentives inside the family law litigation industry and the tactics used to keep proof standards low enough to weaponize allegations.

We close with a dad-focused strategy you can use immediately: how to document your historical involvement, how to build objective proof with calendars, school and medical logs, work records, and photo metadata, and why you can’t wait until papers are filed to protect your role. If this helped, subscribe, share it with a dad who needs it, and leave a rating or review so more fathers can find the show.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hello, dads, and welcome to the show. And this week's briefing, we're going to be talking about some really good news this week. I know most weeks I'm bringing you some serious, serious stuff. And we're going to talk about some serious stuff today as well, but but some some good news out of the family court systems. And I know if you're navigating a dispute right now in family court, or if you're preparing to step into that, it probably feels like you're fighting a solitary, solitary war, uh, if you will. But just know that uh you're not alone. There's lots of us, and that's why this podcast is around. Uh, and I know that you felt like the the system's default settings are permanent, immovable, and designed to sideline you, which for the most part many of them uh are, but uh some things are slowly shifting,

Good News For Dads In Court

SPEAKER_01 0:52

and that's what that's what I wanted to talk about today and give you some good news. Just last week, last Sunday, the June, uh June 21st, there was a widely shared opinion piece that ran in the national media framing shared and equal parenting as one of the rarest, most resilient issues with genuine deep-seated bipartisan momentum in modern politics. Now, that's a lot, right? Particularly in our society these days and how everything is polarized. But this piece cited national polling showing that a staggering, and this is a staggering number, 86% of Americans across every political, demographic, and socioeconomic line support equal physical custody and equal decision

The 86% Consensus On Equal Custody

SPEAKER_01 1:47

making as the standard default starting point when parents separate. Now that's huge. Think about that number. 86%. I don't know, I don't know anything else that we can get anybody to agree on. 86% these days, right? So this is not, and you've heard Robert on the show, Robert Garza, you've heard me talking about the coercive control bills. This equal parenting is not a fringe movement, it is a cultural and societal consensus. And I think anybody that you talk to that is in a healthy, rational mental state will agree on this. And so the good news is that the consensus is rapidly transforming. I don't know, and I don't maybe rapidly is a little bit of a strong word, but it is it is starting to transform into law. And and just this year, we're seeing multiple state bills moving through legislators, uh legislatures, and it and it and they're picking up speed, actually. Uh in Florida, Senate Bill 1128 is uh moving to force a mandatory parenting time hearing within 30 days of a divorce filing. And this is a massive tactical victory, dads, because it targets the the critical window of time between your filing and your first hearing, where that negative status quo you've you hear me talk about is most likely to set in while you are waiting for a court date. And so if you can force a parenting time hearing in those 30 days, you stop that gatekeeping before it has time to become your permanent legal reality, right? Also in Pennsylvania, House Bill 1499 is is has some similar momentum. And then the they have continued follow-up

New State Bills Gaining Speed

SPEAKER_01 3:35

reforms going on in in Kentucky as well. And and Kentucky, if if you haven't listened to previous episodes, is the the state that's truly trailblazed this 50-50 and pioneered the the equal parenting presumption back in 2018. And actually, this presumption isn't wasn't started in 2018 in Kentucky. This is actually as as Robert, if you listen to our anniversary episode, I think it was uh 312, 311, 312, something like that, Robert Garza describes that it was always supposed to be 50-50, and the floor was supposed to be that every other weekend, like at the worst case scenario in the worst case situations. But that is what ended up becoming standard, right? So we're really just trying to get back to what the intention always was, which was 50-50. But let's let's look briefly at the Kentucky. I don't even want to call it an experiment anymore. It's uh just it's rational thinking because it's the the blueprint the rest of the come uh the rest of the country is copying. And like I said, in 2018, they became the first state in the nation to make equal shared parenting the statutory starting point for fit, willing, and able parents. So that is the starting point, and it is in state statute. So the judges have to start from that standard. Uh, before that law was passed, the standard default was the model that that you may be fighting, that lots of dads uh fight. Mom gets primary, primary time, primary parenting time, dad gets every other weekend, maybe a dinner or overnight on the on the off week. And fathers

Kentucky’s 50-50 Blueprint And Results

SPEAKER_01 5:13

were and and continue to be routinely relegated to what some people call Disneyland dads, and they're forced to cram two weeks of parenting uh into 48 hours of weekend entertainment while paying child support based on a lopsided calculation. But what happened in Kentucky, uh again, to get you up to speed, when they established this 50-50 as default, the state's divorce rate plummeted by 25% between 2016 and 2023. And that outpaced the national decline of 18%, right? So overall it's going down, which is great, but this just made it even better. And and why is that? Okay, I know like I shouldn't have to say it. It may and like I said earlier, anybody in a in a healthy mental emotional state and can think rationally can figure this one out. But it's because when you remove the winner-take all incentive, you change the human behavior of the divorce itself. In the old system, a parent was highly incentivized to fight for primary custody because the winner got the quote unquote winner, right? There's no winners, got the children and the child support check, while the loser, if you will, got the bill and the visitor pass. It was a financial and emotional reward for high conflict litigation. But when the default's 50-50, both parents walk into the room knowing that separation does not mean one parent gets to erase the other. The incentive to wage a scorched earth custody war then gets neutralized. And then parents realize that since, and this is both sides, right? I know that I'm talking to you, dads, but it happens on both sides. That's why it's a consensus, because this does happen on both sides. But parents realize that since they are going to have to share the children and remain in regular contact regardless, they might as well work out their differences or just not even get a divorce, stay together. So what the result is, the net result is custody, the custody pendulum is swinging, and the legal default of the last 40 years hopefully is starting to officially die out. And hopefully it'll be dead very soon, and we can write it's post-mortem, right? But let's let's let's talk now a little bit uh uh about how this momentum impacts your wallet and look at the some of the well, I'm gonna give you a case of the of ground level reality here in my home state of Colorado because because they just uh ch they just wrote a law. Uh it is a positive law, which is unique for Colorado. They're usually trampling constitutional rights and and everything else and making course of control bills that uh make things more difficult, which you've heard me talk about in the past, but this one actually does help and and it in and this is where the math of your fatherhood gets transformed. So in March fur on March 1st, Colorado House Bill 251159 officially eliminated what's basically

Colorado Kills The 93-Overnight Cliff

SPEAKER_01 8:26

the notorious 93 overnight cliff. And if you if you're in another state that has this, you know what I'm talking about. You know if you know, you know, right? So but and and to understand why this is a massive victory for dads, you have to understand the absolute kid damaging absurdity of this old system. So let me let me explain. Under the old child support guidelines, here in Colorado, and there's some other states too, there was a literal cliff at 93 overnights, just an arbitrary number, right? If you as a father exercised 92 overnights a year with your children, the state calculated child support under what was called quote unquote so physical care rules. This meant the calculator assumed you had the kids for zero nights. So let me say that again. I know. If even if you had them for 92 nights, the calculator of child support assumed you had them for zero nights. So so you can feel the absolute insanity of this. 92 overnights with your kids, feeding them, putting them in the bed, taking them to school, running a home for them, was treated by the child support calculator exactly the same as if you had never seen them a single night of the year. But the very second you cross that line to 93 overnights, the system switched you to what was quote unquote shared physical care rules. And then the calculator took a massive abrupt and violent drop, right? So that changes everything, moving from 92 to 93, and that completely changed the father's monthly child support obligations by by thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, depending on where you live, in what state you live, and what your income is. So if you think about the the physiological and litigation environment that that Cliff created, it was literally a recipe for high conflict war. For the mother, her attorney, and I coach lots of guys that that either are in this battle or have been in this uh battle and lost and are trying to fix this. But for a mother, her attorney would look at the calculator and realize that if the father hit 93 nights, her monthly child support check would drop significantly, right? It would go the 93 was the bottom, it would go to zero immediately. And 93, we're gonna, I'm gonna give you the calculations here in a sec. So, so anyway, she was highly incentivized to gatekeep, basically. She'd fight tooth and nail, uh, or or does fight tooth and nail, and this still happens, to keep the father at 92 overnights or fewer, refusing a single extra overnight or canceling visits, fabricating schedules just to protect that 93 night clip. And for dads, and this is the big one, dads, that you need to listen to, and and and what a lot of you are dealing with, and some of you who are just getting into this need to be aware of that you're you might have this battle in whatever state or jurisdiction you're in. You're forced to desperately to fight desperately for that 93rd night. And and not because not just because you want to see your kids, but because your financial survival depends on crossing this arbitrary crazy line. And so it's you know, it's just it's children's lives, their schedules, their stability, all of this is is reduced to a high-stakes transaction over just some nights, uh, three nights, uh, maybe an extra weekend a year. And so it's I could I I dub it the the war over Tuesdays, right? Which is like Tuesday overnights on those off nights, which might get you past that threshold. It's one of the most destructive mass this has been and is one of the most destructive mechanisms in the entire family court system, in addition to that, to the 50-50 parenting time not being the standard uh place from which you start. But so the good news here in Colorado, at least, and I'm so thrilled, like I live here and I always seem to have bad news from the legislature, but the good news, at least here in Colorado, is that cliff is dead, so it's done. And some other states have been quietly moving away from these cliffs as well. Past several years, states across the country have realized that these arbitrary cutoffs do nothing but fuel litigation. And ultimately, they're just harming kids. And so we're seeing a slow, steady national. I would like to call it a national trend. I don't think it is quite a national trend. I think people are paying more attention to it now. But I mean, let's call it a national trend and let's hope that it continues to be a national trend, all right? But we're seeing this trend where state guidelines are being rewritten to recognize that that parenting costs are graduated, not bare, not binary. And so that's what Kyra's new house bill does is that the child support calculator has transitioned to a graduated credit model. So now every single overnight counts, starting from the very first one, and there's no all or nothing threshold anymore. So one night gets a certain certain calculation. And let's look at the actual math of how the the graduated credit's structured. If you have 73 overnights with your kids, which is exactly 20% of the year, you receive approximately an 8.9% credit toward your uh your child poor your child support obligation. If you have 122 overnights, which is about 33% of the year, you receive a 22.5% credit. And if you have equal parenting time, 182.5 overnights, you receive a full 50% credit. So so think about how this completely resets uh the

Graduated Child Support Credit Explained

SPEAKER_01 14:23

negotiation table when you're going through this process. Under the old rules, if your ex was offering you 85 overnights, her lawyer would tell her to hold a line at all costs to prevent you from reaching 93, right? It had nothing to do with the best interests of the kids. You're forced to refuse the and then and then you were forced to refuse the offer because 85 nights meant you were financially penalized as if you had zero nights. So it didn't matter. 85 nights or zero nights, you that you were gonna get zero. Or you're gonna get credit towards child support as if you were zero. But now if you're negotiating a parenting plan and the offer is 85 overnights, you don't have to fight a scorched earth war over a three, you know, over uh over an eight night margin. Your your attorney can run the calculator, show those 85 nights, earns you a graduated credit proportional to the actual time you're parenting, and this financial cliff is now gone. It's dismantled, right? So you remove this winner take all child support drop that that the state has you know incentivized uh for gatekeeping and has taken a weapon now out of the attorney's hands or her attorney's hands. And high conflict spouses can no longer use the child support guidelines uh as a tool to starve you out of the legal process simply by keeping your kids away from you for a weekend or or more weekends. The math's caught up with the reality of active fatherhood, if you will. But all of this said, we do have to address the fact that there is a dark underbelly of this entire legislative battle. And you need to know this too, because once you get through it, or if you're listening to this and you are through it, I need you to send the ladder back down. If 93 overnight cliffs are so obviously destructive to children, and if 86% of Americans support equal parenting as the default, you have to ask yourself a very serious question. Why is this such a brutal fight? Why has a default 50-50 custody bill been repeatedly proposed in many states, but in my state of Colorado here, and in and and only to be killed in committee year after year? Same thing in some of the other states that's that that

Why Equal Parenting Is Still A Fight

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Robert Garza is working in, and that uh some of the guys that are involved in our community are are working in. I hear it over and over again. So to understand why, though, we have to follow the money. Oh, that's a big surprise. Have to look at the powerful, high organized interest groups that lobby to keep the system exactly as tilted as it currently is.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

There's two groups. I'll give you a minute. See if you can guess them. Write them down.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

I won't give you a minute, I'll give you five seconds. First group opposed opposing equal parenting laws is the matrimonial bar, specifically the state bar associations and their family law sections. And so let's be entirely real about the business model of family law. And this is just the way it is, not slamming. And it's uh it is a multi-billion dollar industry, and it thrives on only one thing. There's only one thing that determines whether it is making more money or making less money, and that is conflict. You have a father and a mother separate, and the law says the default starting point is 50-50 custody. What is there left? That's the number one priority for for every dad that comes into our community. Uh, and I think every every parent.

How Family Law Profits From Conflict

SPEAKER_01 18:12

So what's left to mitigate, what's left to litigate, there's other stuff, and sometimes there's there's assets and and and whatnot. Most of the dads, most of the most of the dads that that come into our community, that's that's secondary, third, fourth, fifth on the on the list of of stuff. So really number one is is is child is is child parenting time. So the parenting schedule is largely set by default if you've got this 50-50, and then the child support calculation is already automated. And if we're getting rid of now this 93%, 93-day uh cliff, then this makes it less likely to have any kind of stuff to litigate. So then there's no more custody evaluation. Like now here's the cascading effect: no more custody evaluations, no more child and family investigators, and no more parenting coordinators, and that multi-day trial cost of fifty thousand dollars a piece. Well, guess that goes away, right? So, right there, there's uh you know, per per high conflict divorce, that's hundreds of thousands of dollars that that go away per per case, right? So when a bar association is lobbying against uh uh an equal parenting presumption, they're not walking in the Capitol and saying, hey, we're fighting this because it will cut our members' billable hours by 60%, right? Naturally. Instead, what they're doing, and you need to be aware of this, they're wrapping themselves in the language of child advocacy. We heard it in Colorado this week, even though, or this year, even though over 100 people showed up at the state capitol in support of the the equal parenting time. But they're gonna but the the the bar stands up, and there's there's their side was arguing that a 50-50 default undermines judicial distress discretion and ignores the unique individualized needs of every child. They claim that the one size fits all standard places a dangerous strait jacket on the courts and treats children like suitcase kids who are constantly jostled between households. But if you look at the reality of their quote unquote discretionary system, in the absence of a default standard, the court's discretion almost always defaults to the status quo, right? Which is what I warn you about all the time. It almost always defaults to the mother. And we have the statistic the statistics that that tell us that 80% of women are the custodial or the custodial parent, right? Uh, this means that to get even basic 50-50 access, a father is forced to litigate. You have to litigate. You have to litigate past that night, those 93 days. You're forced to pay a lawyer $400 at least an hour to file motions, hire experts, prepare for hearings just to prove that you are a fit parent. This discretion that they're describing, they're protecting, or this discretion that they're protecting is the very mechanism that forces you to spend your life savings just to retain your role as a father. So the bar associations oppose equal parenting because an equal parenting presumption is a financial disaster for the litigation industry. That's the bottom line. When the starting point is equal, uh the incentive to fight disappears, and when the conflict disappears, the billable hours go down with it. And we've seen that happen in Kentucky. Now, the second group. Little more quietly. Maybe not, because they're going on the offensive with these coercive control bills. So maybe not as quietly. But the second group actively lobbying to kill these equal parenting bills is the Domestic Violence Coalition Network. That's what I'm calling. DV Coalition Network, because it is. And they are powerful, state-funded organizations that advocate for victims of abuse. And again, let's be clear. Protecting actual victims of domestic violence is a noble and an absolutely necessary goal. Nobody questions that. I think there's there's one male domestic abuse or domestic violence abuse shelter in the entire United States, right? Which is insane. And all of these

DV Lobby Tactics And Proof Standards

SPEAKER_01 22:58

DVs operate on an ideological framework that views custody litigation through a lens of gendered conflict. They lobby aggressively to kill these equal parenting presumptions because they argue that a 50-50 default forces victims of abuse to co-parent with their abusers and puts children in harm's way. Even though Kentucky, in the eight years that we've seen it, has not demonstrated that. So that's not been the case in Kentucky. So they're just making stuff up, is what it what it comes down to what it comes down to. But their argument is a deliberate tactical misrepresentative misrepresentation of how these bills are actually written. Because when we talked to Robert Garza, he's explained this in pretty intimate detail. And I recommend if you guys haven't uh listened to any of the podcast episodes with him, there's two or three I've had now with him. He lays these out in pretty pretty clearly. But but they're but but the DVs will misrepresent these. These bills, every and every single one of them, the the equal parenting bill proposed, uh including Kentucky's one, contains explicit automatic exclusion for documented abuse. That's the difference right there. These bills already contain the explicit automatic exclusions for documented bills, not false allegations, not allegations of abuse, right? That's this whole why this whole coercive control thing is a problem now. If there is a domestic violence protective order, an act of criminal conviction or documented child abuse, the 50-50 presumption is instantly overturned. So there's no argument for that. The judge's full discretion to protect the child is still preserved. So then you ask, okay, well, if that's already preserved, why do these DV coalitions still oppose them? They oppose them because they want to keep the standard of proof at the lowest possible level. That 51% preponderance of the evidence you hear me talk about all the time. They know that under the current system, an unproven accusation of coercive control or abuse is enough to trigger the risk engine of the court and sideline a father immediately, right? The court works on efficiency and risk mitigation. And the risk mitigation is what they want to trigger right off the bat. So in a 50-50 presumption, if a 50-50 presumption is put into law, it raises the bar. It requires actual, objective, clear, and convincing evidence, which is a 75 to 80% certainty standard, to deprive a parent of their constitutional right to raise their child or just spend time with their child. The DV lobby wants to preserve a system where subjective claims of quote unquote fear or quote unquote control, unsupported by actual evidence or police reports, can be easily weaponized during a custody dispute to gain an immediate tactical advantage. They're protecting a playbook, dads, that relies on the low civil standard to exclude fathers. And they're doing so under the guise of child safety while ignoring the devastating developmental costs to children who are systematically alienated from their fathers. And that's why this coercive control bills are terrible because it does the opposite. It immediately ices dads out until they can prove that they are innocent, which is the opposite of what the system should be doing. So, dads, this is a pincher movement facing divorcing fathers, a litigation industry that profits from your conflict and an ideological lobby that weaponizes your boundaries to brand you as an abuser. But here's where many fathers get tripped up when they look at this new graduated credit model. They ask, dude, this is great if we're already divorcing and running a schedule, but I'm currently married or I'm just separated. How am I supposed to track my overnights? Like, how am I supposed to deal with this from the marriage to prove my historical involvement? I don't have a court order or anything like that. That happens, that happens a lot. And one of the arguments is while I was the primary parent. I'm going to give you some tips. Number one, I'm going to say that in a lot of states now, they're more concerned not about what the past looked like, but more like what the future is going to look like. So if you have been in a traditional uh structure, in a relationship where you are the provider and and and your wife, soon-to-be ex-wife, is the homemaker, then that's okay. Uh, you just have to demonstrate that that was the case. And then you're gonna have to demonstrate going forward how that is going

How To Prove You’re An Active Dad

SPEAKER_01 27:48

to change and how you be able to, you will be able to parent as a uh a single dad. So let's talk about that because it's a critical strategic question. And if you're starting, if you're in the starting blocks of a divorce, you don't have to have that that record or that post-separation agreement because you've been living under the roof. But you cannot walk into court empty-handed, right? If you do, she's gonna claim she's the primary caregiver. Well, you did nothing but work. You're gonna have to reconstruct the the the the status quo of your marriage, if you will, or what it or what it looked like, or what the agreements were. And to do this, you have to perform a retrospective audit of the last 12 to 24 months, and you can't guess. You and and this goes back to the whole the whole my my whole thing about documentation all the time. You have to build a forensic record of your daily presence. So first thing you do, you pull out your family calendar. And so if you're just going through this or contemplated this, you got to go back through your Apple calendar, Google calendar, whatever shared system you use during the marriage, highlight every time you were involved, what you did, took the kids to practice, handled doctor visits, went to school conferences, et cetera. If you weren't doing that, you need to start doing that now and documented it now going forward and what changes you're making to be able to do that and stay involved. Second, if you you can pull your work records, if she claims you were never home, but you but your travel expense report shows that you traveled four days in the last year, et cetera. Again, documentation. He said, she said, is only a story in court until there's documentation to prove it, and then it becomes a fact, right? So you got to have the statement supported by some sort of documentation, and then that becomes truth. Third, pull school portal logs or pediatrician sign-in sheets, school data databases and doctor office offices keep digital history of who logged in, when you logged in, who signed the forms, who attended the appointments. Pull all this documentation and and do it now, guys. Do it upfront first. Better to have it and not need it than to not than to not have it and then need it. And and so your names are on these logs. Again, that's something that's objective. It's not subjective, it's not a he said, she said. It's third party and it's verifiable proof of you being an active an active father. Fourth, download and organize your photo library. Photos, all photos these days carry metadata, time the their date stamps, timestamp uh with GPS coordinates of where the photo was taken. Create this chronological file of you making breakfast on Tuesday mornings or reading bedtime stories on Thursdays, hanging out with the kids on the weekends, any of this that gives you some visual status quo, if you will, that her narrative is not in fact true, right? Because the court works on narrative also. So you've got to create, you've got to mitigate her narrative and create your own narrative. And and do this the second the physical separation occurs, or you or the word D, look, the new standard, the word the the moment that D words have starts, you've heard it for the first time, divorce, you've got to, you've got to get on it. You've got to jump into action because it typically will mean, especially if she's bringing it up, she's been thinking about this for at least 12 to 36 months and has a huge head start on you on this. And so you need to be paying attention as soon as that, as soon as that word comes up in lexicon or it's it's been discussed seriously. The clock starts running at that time and not when the papers are filed. So don't wait. Don't wait for final trial. Don't wait. You need to do it, you need to move immediately. And then, depending on what the situation is, moving immediately for temporary orders to get something in place as soon as possible so that you don't have you know that informal, flexible schedule while you wait for court. Don't accept that. Because as we've heard, if you've heard me, you know, more

Move Fast When Divorce Is Mentioned

SPEAKER_01 32:03

than one one episode, that flexibility will disappear the moment you ask for equal time. And she'll use those months of limited access to build a maternal primary status quo that the judge will preserve.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

Excuse me. And the court loves status quo.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

The court loves to leave things how it is. The court, again, efficiency. It makes it more efficient, it's easier to get through, and less risk. It's been working, they seem fine, that's fine. They've covered themselves. Two things, you're done. But it doesn't help you. You need to demand a structured temporary parenting plan that sets your overnights in writing from day one, and then that becomes the status quo. And you treat every single overnight as a non-negotiable legal position. This is the other thing I see guys get into. Like, I'm just trying to be flexible because if you don't, every night you secure is a night that establishes, or because if you do, every night you secure is a night that establishes your long-term role as a permanent parent. If it goes the other way, it's like, well, he's not exercising his parenting time, blah, blah, blah. He doesn't know. It's hard, you know, then it becomes a he shed. She said, if you're like being flexible and yeah, okay, well, the kids don't want to, or the schedule's more difficult, it's easier this way, blah, blah, blah. I mean, there's a million different reasons that that are used for this. So don't fall for it.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

Be, you know, figure it out and and get set to it. Okay. Let's let's take it, let's, let's take it home here.

SPEAKER_01 33:40

Because uh apparently my voice is going. And let's and I want to be blunt about what we're talking about today. And and it's not a cash flow game, right, right, with that we're talking about. And it's and it's not about how you use a calculator to to save $150 a month on child support. If you're looking at your parenting time as a financial discount, you're you're in the wrong room, right? This is about your presence. This is about your parental uh authority as a dad, and it's about the future of your children and whether or not they grow up to be healthy functioning adults because they have the number one indicator of that happening in their lives, which is you. This old every other weekend model was a tragedy, and that is not an understatement for f for fathers, uh, and it was a unmitigated disaster for children. If you it force it forced you to become Disneyland

Why Routine Overnights Build Kids’ Stability

SPEAKER_01 34:37

dads, it squeezed a lifetime of connection, discipline, and love into 48-hour blocks of entertainment once every two weeks. You didn't have dads don't have the time to actually parent in that time. And you don't have the money the mundane, boring routine overnights where the actual real connection is built. So think about when the real parenting actually happens. It doesn't happen at the amusement park or the movie theater. It happens on that random Tuesday night. It happens when you're sitting at the kitchen table, helping them with their homework. It happens when you're making them uh eat their vegetables, even when they're complaining. It happens during the bedtime routine when you're reading a story and they ask you a quiet, serious question about your day. It happens on Wednesday morning when you're waking them up, making sure their teeth are brushed, packing their lunchbox, and walking in them to the school bus. Those mundane routine overnights are where parental authority is established. They are where your kids learn that you are a permanent, stable, reliable anchor in their lives, not an optional visitor they see for fun. The 93 night cliff was designed to keep you from those routine overnights by making them too expensive for the other side to concede. But now that cliff, hopefully, is slowly dying, and we're going to be able to write its postmortem here soon. And every single overnight you secure is a night where your kids sleep safe under your roof, where you handle the bedtime and where you run the morning routine, every overnight is a permanent deposit into their emotional stability and your lifelong bond. Gentlemen, the family court system is slowly, painfully, hopefully, catching up to what developmental psychology has proven for decades. Involved fathers to matter. But the system's not going to hand you the time on a silver platter, and it's not happening everywhere just because the laws are beginning to change. You still have to be the one to claim it because the whole system is structured for efficiency, right? You have to be the one who stops hoping for a fair outcome and starts executing a disciplined data-driven strategy. So I'll go back always. Again, if you're navigating this high conflict transition, you need to look at your own capabilities. And the first time you ever do something, you're not good at it, or you don't even know or understand the system. And think about it this way: if you if you woke up tomorrow and suddenly experienced a 40% decline in your physical ability, your ability to move, right, or your strength that that was going to permanently alter how you lived the next 20 years of your life, uh and and and how you showed up for your children for the next 20 years of your life, you wouldn't just sit on your hands and and hope it sorted itself out, right? You wouldn't try to tough it out alone. I I I wouldn't think. Like if you if you did, you're that's just crazy. I don't know anybody that that would. Or just read a self-help book, how to physically get myself self-better. You would you would consult a specialist. You would go to a doctor, you go to a physical therapist, you'd rehabilitate your body so that you could get back to work, so you could get back to parenting, so that you could get back to normal life. That's the same thing that is happening with your high conflict divorce. You're under this crushing stress. Your your nervous system is reacting to it. It's biological, it's just the way that it happens. Your brain experiencing this exact that exact same 40% decline in its cognitive and decision-making abilities. So, right now, you are functionally impaired by the cortisol and adrenaline that floods your system at the precise moment you're being forced to make these high-stakes legal and financial decisions that are going to dictate literally the rest of your life, if not at the very least, the next two decades of your life. So do not navigate this cognitive fog on your own, uh, just like you wouldn't the physical challenges. You cannot afford to make permanent compromises when your brain's running unlimited

Don’t Make Decisions In Cognitive Fog

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processing power. You need someone who knows this legal and psychological battlefield to walk you through this high-stakes window and protect your you and your kids' future. So get involved at our community at thedivorced advocate.com. Take the weekend visitor risk assessment to see where you're at in this process. Schedule a consultation with me at talkwithdude.com. It's completely complimentary. We'll be able to triage what you've got going on and where where you need to go next and what your next steps need to be, need to be. But let's be clear the fog, analyze your timeline and build a strategy that ensures your temporary cognizant deficit does not become your permanent legal reality, right? Because if it does, then you're stuck for a very, very long time. Your children don't need you to be a nice guy who got processed out of their lives because you were too afraid of conflict to lead. They need a father who is clear, disciplined, and prepared. So claim that role, dads. Build your defense, and stay strong and stay in this battle if you're in one. Thank you so much for listening again this week. I sincerely appreciate it. If you found some value, as usual, please leave us a comment somewhere. That is really helpful on whatever platform you're listening. Uh at the very least, a star rating or go to social media. We're starting to gain some really great traction on social media. So find us on Instagram, find us on Facebook, find us on Link, LinkedIn, and give us comments there. Give us thumbs up there, do all that social media fun stuff if uh if you're on that. But it helps to get other dads into the fold to start looking at our stuff and getting the help that they deserve as well. Thank you so much. God bless, and we'll talk to you next week.