What silver lining?

Here are words that could only be written by someone who has been through it. And even in reading them and recognizing so much of it from my own personal experience, it still cries out how even the best words can only cast a fuzzy shadow of the true experience.

Just another disenfranchised father: What silver lining?

As my old friend said to me, "I talked to your parents and hear that you've been to hell and back", I responded, "I'm not back yet".

In his fourth paragraph "Personally, I think...", the author attacks two common notions, "standard visitation" and "glass half empty". The first time I heard of "standard visitation" was during my wife's surprise alternative to the mediator's suggestion for shared parenting. I couldn't believe it, "every other weekend, I see my son daily, that's my standard, who the hell came up with this standard?"

I think we should try an experiment, because words have not worked. For all current inflexible custody situations, we should switch custodial roles for a month and give the custodial parent the "standard visitation" or the substandard version their ex currently "enjoys" and give the non-custodial parent what their ex enjoyed. Do you think that might meet with some loud complaints? Why?

Also, just strike the placating line "half empty, half full" from your vocabulary. I excelled in math at an early age and there is nothing "half" in this screwed up equation. Not even close. The author is so much closer with his 15% full and empty glass discussion. It's not pessimism it's math.

Now here's the tough part, starting in paragraph six "There's a more subtle obstacle..." and going though paragraph 8 ending with "...finding a silver lining.", the author describes the most unbelievable insidious evil part of this whole process. The more you fight, the harder it gets. The system has a perverse need to dominate you and bring you under their control. Like a living organism with a primitive self preservation mechanism it fights back against it's unwilling victims. No where else have I seen the status quo so strongly fought for. Oh they'll spew rhetoric and circular arguments, but they're thinner than paper.

You may recognize this in what the court has criticized me as being a "poor litigant". I first heard this from the Guardian who is charged with the task of finding the "good parent", instead she talked about me being a "poor litigant". The judge even suggested that my "substandard" visitation was good (considering my "poor litigant" status). It was a big compromise from what the Plaintiff wanted. Who cares what she wanted, she's completely unreasonable even by the biased visitation standards?

I was the one given a private reprimand by the court for not wanting to cave into every unreasonable demand, for pointing out the multiple $5K errors in math, for complaining that the Plaintiff had not followed court rules and gotten away with it. All the while opposition counsel was buzzing around with new threats and demands. So when I caved, when I "gave the judge what he wanted" was that the end I had been promised. Hell No! The opposition continued to flaunt her will, despite the court's directive to settle and I once again am being asked to cave in some more.

In paragraphs 9-14 "So what am I talking about?..." ending in "...weakness in oneself.", the author discusses trite lesssons, fighting oppression, and the difference it makes when it is access to your children that is the subject of the fight. The classic "build a new life" just doesn't seem to go along with "without your children because you lost the court possession".

Continuing the fight is at odds with being a parent. In my early days, the fight was tolerable, and I was hopeful. In the middle, hope wained, and the battle took its toll on me and on my attention to my son. When I realized that, I reorganized the fight and tried as best I could to insulate my time with him from the ill effects of the fight. No calls, mail, legal work before visitation.

How can anyone give up the fight for their children and how can this not destroy them? The author points out there may times when the fight is idled, to allow one to regain their strength.

The author's discussion of "that which does not kill you makes you strong" in the last three paragraphs is interesting. The court and screwed up system would just be arrogant enough to claim credit for making you stronger, credit they surely don't deserve.


Sometimes I think, how could this be happening? It's unbelievable that it could be happening that often, on such a widespread scale, and still be allowed to occur. When I read a post like the link above, I realize that my worst nightmare is indeed true, it's not just me, it's not an accident, it is spread like a terrible cancer throughout our legal system even throughout the world. I wonder how many more disenfranchised parents will it take to overthrow the corrupt system? We must recruit allies from all corners. We can't wait for 51% of the families to reach this status.

What can you do?

• Be aware of the problem.
  
• Be an informed voter.
  
• Inform others.
  
• Correct ignorance when you hear it.

Every little bit helps, not just the disenfranchised parents, but the next generation of children deprived of their love.

Links: I have three internal links in this post, which should be easier to see because I modified my template, if you have trouble seeing them in your browser, please comment or email details. In my template, unvisited links appear as underlined maroon and visited links appear as blue that are change to underlined maroon when you hover over them.

Status: Second Draft Updated 05/19/07 at 8:30 am EST