In short
Skeptical Sunday episode debunking claims that U.S. family court is a “man-hating kangaroo court” where judges rubber-stamp maternal custody and men have no rights. It argues custody decisions are gender-neutral in law, driven by “best interests of the child,” and require evidence to deprive parental rights.
Guest backgrounds
Nick Pell, writer/researcher and “family court veteran,” describes about two years in divorce proceedings in Arizona and a later return of the ex-wife to court. He also draws on interviews with other people who went through family court.
Key claims
Every state has gender-neutral custody laws; 50-50 is not the default, but “best interests of the child” is. Judges generally need “receipts” (corroboration) for abuse/neglect claims; accusations alone are often discounted. Courts aim to keep children with parents and avoid unnecessary disruption. Social media amplifies worst anecdotes and bias narratives.
Notable examples
A lawyer he spoke to described a case where a “Coke dealer” received 50-50 custody. Pell recounts an Arizona custody evaluation process involving forensic psychiatrists (~$20k), and an example where extreme home hazards (e.g., human feces) were needed before the court took a mental-health claim seriously. He also cites that Arizona is among the hardest states to deprive parental rights and that child preferences are often given little weight in practice.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOFamily Court Myths and Realities
2:28 to 4:14
Explore the common perceptions and realities of family court for men.
“he's going to tell you it's a grim, shadowy kangaroo court run by man-hating judges seeking the destruction of the nuclear family and his home especially.”
Custody and Allegations in Family Court
4:14 to 6:46
Discuss how accusations affect custody decisions and court perceptions.
“Anytime some guy has a horror story, I'm just like, dude, who was your lawyer?”
Understanding Best Interests of the Child
6:46 to 8:31
Learn what 'best interests of the child' means in custody cases.
“And if it's just an accusation without any corroborating evidence, he probably doesn't care.”
State-Specific Custody Variations
8:31 to 10:36
Examine how different states approach custody and parenting roles.
“in many jurisdictions, best interests of the child does not automatically mean a presumption of joint legal or physical custody.”
Factors Influencing Custody Decisions
10:36 to 14:00
Discover what factors judges consider when making custody determinations.
“Not the collection of states you were expecting.”
Understanding Child Custody Decisions
14:00 to 19:14
Learn about how child custody decisions are made and factors considered by judges.
“It depends on the age and the child's maturity.”
Understanding Child Custody Decisions
20:58 to 21:08
Learn about how child custody decisions are made and factors considered by judges.
“Cut your wireless bill to$15 a month at mintmobile.com.jhs.”
Navigating Mental Health in Custody Cases
21:08 to 28:00
Explore the impact of mental health on custody evaluations and parental rights.
“Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy.”
Perceptions of Fatherhood in Divorce
28:00 to 38:18
Explore the evolving dynamics of fatherhood and parenting post-divorce as discussed by the hosts.
“It wasn't, oh, who's going to live with their dad?”
Perceptions of Fatherhood in Divorce
39:36 to 40:30
Explore the evolving dynamics of fatherhood and parenting post-divorce as discussed by the hosts.
“And right now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Jordan.”
Show all 20 chapters
Understanding Family Court Bias
40:30 to 42:00
Delve into the nuances of perceived biases in family court and the emotional impact on parents.
“You can talk about the show, get some dank memes, joke around a little bit, get to know other show fans.”
Evaluating Custody Evaluations
42:00 to 43:13
Learn about custody evaluations and the factors that influence their outcomes.
“and Cook County, Illinois, which is where Chicago is, parts of downstate New York.”
Navigating the Evaluation Process
43:13 to 45:56
Discover tips on navigating the custody evaluation process with fairness.
“Custody evaluation is when a custody evaluator evaluates whether or not you can have custody.”
Challenges of Family Court Dynamics
45:56 to 48:38
Understand the psychological and financial challenges in family court cases.
“But I think that's also a tactic that gets used a lot in family court.”
The Divorce Industry Exposed
48:38 to 54:16
Explore the financial motivations behind the divorce industry and its impact.
“And also we just kind of wanted to bleed her.”
Equal Parenting Rights Discussion
54:16 to 58:56
Examine the movement for equal parenting rights and its implications.
“It's your right to pursue this in court.”
Family Court Reform Issues
59:43 to 1:10:00
Examine the implications and controversies surrounding family court reform movements.
“Please consider supporting those who support the show.”
Understanding Family Court Dynamics
1:10:00 to 1:10:44
Learn about the complexities and nuances of family court proceedings.
“With that said, there can be variations from state to state and county to county.”
The Nature of Accents and Language
1:11:42 to 1:12:21
Explore how accents influence perceptions of language and identity.
“You may think you don't have an accent, which is exactly what your accent wants you to think.”
Cognitive Processing and Language Learning
1:12:21 to 1:13:27
Discover the cognitive demands of understanding foreign accents.
“is that they're using differences at many levels of linguistics, not just sound.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This episode is sponsored in part by LinkedIn. Running a small business means every hire matters. A bad hire can cost you time, money, and momentum. A good hire that can help you grow your business. This gives me flashbacks to a nightmare hire in my previous company that really stunted the business. And even talking about it now makes my blood pressure go up. But the right hire is the exact opposite. Somebody who takes ownership, solves problems, and helps the business grow faster. And when you're small, that kind of impact is massive. But finding great talent isn't easy, especially when you don't have the time or resources to sift through piles of resumes to find the right fit.
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1:29Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today, I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host, writer and researcher Nick Pell. On the Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker. During the week, we have long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers and performers. On Sundays, though, it's Skeptical Sunday.
1:56A rotating guest co-host and I will break down a topic you may have never thought about and debunk common misconceptions about that topic, such as targeted advertising, internet porn, hypnosis, homeopathy, the death industry, weddings. If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion and negotiations, psychology, disinformation, junk science, crime and cults, and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. So just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started.
2:27Today on the show, if you ask the average guy what family court is like for men, he's going to tell you it's a grim, shadowy kangaroo court run by man-hating judges seeking the destruction of the nuclear family and his home especially. It's a persistent idea that the mom always wins and walks away with half of what the man owns in custody of the kids. If he's lucky, he's going to get every other weekend and a couple of weeks during the summer for a trip to Disneyland. But how true is this in 2026? Is this a caricature based on the truth or an outdated stereotype that bears no resemblance to reality today?
2:59And if gender bias is gone from our nation's family courts, why are some activists seemingly intent on bringing it back? Here today to help us take custody of the truth is writer, researcher and family court veteran Nick Pell. Nick, you spent, well, a lot of time in family court. I'll just leave it there. Yeah, it was about two years just on my divorce, and then my ex-wife came back three months later. I'm only legally allowed to talk so much about my specific case. Obviously, my sole experience isn't what we're here to talk about today, but I think my experience is fairly typical. Okay, how so?
3:35I know everyone probably expects me to be like, oh man, family court sucks. They just soak these poor guys dry and then take their kids away. that was not my experience at all. Part of this is a function of living in Arizona, but my experience, as we'll learn, is going to be much more typical than the horror stories you might have heard. So just to highlight this, Nick, you got divorced in Arizona, so this is the state that you have direct experience with, but you've also researched other states, and the usual disclaimer applies here. None of this is legal advice. You got to talk to a lawyer for your state, for your situation, et cetera.
4:13Yeah. Anytime some guy has a horror story, I'm just like, dude, who was your lawyer? I mean, one of the lawyers I spoke to, but didn't hire, she got 50, 50 custody for a Coke dealer. You've told me this before. And that's kind of crazy to me because of course I'm thinking about the stereotypes as well. Like, oh, the mom usually gets custody and it's like, nope, this was a dad. He was a Coke dealer and he got 50, 50 custody. How does that happen? The courts decided that for whatever reason, him being a Coke dealer wasn't compelling evidence that he was an unfit father. I'm guessing like he was selling eight balls at the bar or something, you know, like maybe I don't think I don't think this guy was Scarface.
4:53Yeah, he's not a cartel Sicario that happens to sell Coke on the side. Right. OK. No, but you generally have to prove in family court that somebody is an unfit parent. That's the standard if you want to deprive them of their parental rights. Now, what constitutes unfit, that varies from state to state. And there are still some pockets where, yeah, it's possible maybe men are getting a raw deal. But for the most part, no, this is just not the case. So we'll get down into the nitty gritty here because I know that this is a persistent claim, especially online. I see it all the time. Men simply have no rights in family court.
5:30The judges always side with the moms. They rubber stamp maternal custody. They make you pay for the privilege. Yeah, I do see conflicting accounts, but usually when someone's ranting about it, it's that. Well, when someone's ranting, it's usually something negative. But this is a completely false caricature of family court in virtually every jurisdiction in the United States today. There's a sense among men that any allegation against them in family court is just going to be taken at face value. Here's the thing, and I figured this out very early on. And every single man I have ever spoken to who's been through family court has had allegations of some unseemly quality or another thrown at them.
6:09That's such a what a coincidence. Yeah. So I think there's definitely an impulse with some women to just start throwing accusations of abuse at men once they're in family court. Anecdotally, this is particularly true in cases where men initiate the divorce, which is not, I think it's about 30 % of divorces are initiated by men. But here's the thing. This is not the first time, not the first time this year, not the first time this week, probably not even the first time today that a judge has heard these accusations. And if it's just an accusation without any corroborating evidence, he probably doesn't care.
6:52I think there's a tendency among people to think that their divorce or their custody battle is very special. It's very unique. It's totally different than any other one. In reality, they're all just they're pretty similar. Yeah, there's not a lot of variation. Women go into court and say, my ex-husband is an asshole. That's probably why you guys are getting divorced. Yeah. Yeah, not a lot of people like the person they're divorcing at the moment they're divorcing them. On the men's side, what I've seen is that sadly a lot of them give up because they just accept these myths about family court at face value.
7:23The alleged bias against men, the ease with which accusations are entered in as evidence, the notion that you only get joint custody when the mother agrees. So what do the actual laws look like? Every state in the union has gender neutral custody laws. That does not mean that they default to 50-50 custody. 50-50 is not the default. So what is the default? Best interests of the child, which all things being equal, includes both parents and probably with 50-50 shared custody. That's super vague, like a lot of legalese, to give judges wide discretion, I would imagine. So what does best interests of the child mean?
8:03This is more or less what you're going to see in every state, by the way, best interest of the child. There are some rare exceptions. Florida gives some leeway to single mothers until the fathers pursue parental rights, and that starts with the confirmation of paternity. But for the most part, this is it, coast to coast. Best interest of the child is the North Star in all 50 states. What that means, however, that is what varies from place to place. in many jurisdictions, best interests of the child does not automatically mean a presumption of joint legal or physical custody. So joint legal custody that pertains to decision making and joint physical custody is about where the child is physically present for people who don't know.
8:48So the legal legal is like, what can we send him to school here? Can I get him this doctor? Physical custody is where is he spending the weekends? Where is he spending the week? Arizona, which again, where my divorce took place, is generally considered the hardest 50-50 parenting state in the country. They don't really deviate from this unless somebody doesn't want a parent or one parent is very, very clearly unfit. Joint custody is a starting point, but judges do have leeway to change that based on circumstances. In Arizona, it is extremely Extremely difficult to deprive someone of their parental rights.
9:27Anything short of abuse or neglect probably isn't going to fly. So why did your divorce take so long? I felt like it just lasted forever. Boy, you thought it lasted forever. I was the one going through it. It was really hard on me, Nick, your divorce. It was hard on your wallet, but I paid you back. That's right. Lawyers is the main reason. Like, lawyers. We'll get into the specifics of that kind of later on. But yeah, I mean, lawyers. What's wrong with this country, Jordan? Lawyers. Yeah, exactly. No, I'm kidding. I love my lawyer. What are other states like? What's the story about how we get from the 80s where, I don't know, every divorced kid ended up with mom and now where parents share parenting duties even after they split up?
10:06I mean, how did that happen? Kentucky was the first state to assume 50-50 was in the best interest of the child. Utah, likewise, has very father-friendly states, which is why it's being targeted by activists. Again, we'll get a little deeper into that later. Minnesota is another state that has very strong presumptions of equal and shared parenting time and rights as best for the child. And what's on the other end of the spectrum? Alabama, Tennessee and New York are places. Yeah. Not the collection of states you were expecting. No, no. Don't usually hear those three states mentioned together. No.
10:45These are the places where you're most likely to find judges who want to give custody to moms. But again, their laws are gender neutral. So this is a judge discretion thing like you talked about earlier. This all comes from the Jackman law firm, and it seems kind of semi anecdotal, but it squares with what I've heard in my experience. there's a deference in some states to more traditional parenting arrangements which could mean that judges are going to tend to put younger kids with the moms which is where the whole best interest of the child part can mean just about anything are there any factors which are used to determine what that actually means though or is it just like hey this judge is in a good mood today.
11:35Everybody's getting custody. It needs to be kind of repeated constantly that different jurisdictions, even maybe within the same state, are going to have different criteria and that they weigh differently. So of the stuff I'm going to talk about, some of these mattered in Arizona. Most of them didn't, though. Arizona is like if your child is fed, clothed, bathed, and not abused in some way, you're getting your kid if you want them. But in any event, factors such as emotional ties and relationships, that's going to refer to the nature and strength of the child's emotional ties with each parent, siblings, or any other significant individuals who may affect the child's best interests.
12:20So like step parents or I don't know, a live-in girlfriend or something like that? Sure. Maybe grandparents, aunts and uncles, if they're close, you know, stuff like that. Then there's your actual ability and willingness to feed clothing care for the child and provide them with a stable, loving home. Stability is very important to family court judges, and they want the kid living in the same place, going to the same school, engaged in the same community. The more established the child is, the less likely the courts are going to be to disrupt that routine. That makes sense. You've told me that courts generally hate changing anything about a parenting agreement, at least as it pertains to the kids?
13:02Yeah. So in Arizona, where I, again, got divorced, courts just don't make changes. Okay. And that's, you know, a common theme in many states. If something's working, the courts don't want to change it because what they change it to might not work. That makes sense. So what about what the child wants? What age are they kind of like, hey, the kid can say something or, you know, because I know if a kid's little, it's like, we don't ask which parent they like most because they don't know what they're talking about. It's whoever was nice to them that morning or whatever. And they can't really make a mature decision and they're getting pressured.
13:37But at some age, right, they're like, hey, where do you feel most comfortable? You're almost an adult. It's unfair to a child to ask them to pick between their parents, you know? I agree with you. I mean, my lawyer was like, your worst case scenario is that the judge takes your kid into chambers and says, hey, what do you think of your parents? And he says, I like my dad. I dislike my mom, but like, yeah, I like my dad. What are they going to do? It depends on the age and the child's maturity. Again, it varies from state to state. I think in Arizona, it's like 12 is when they start having some kind of say, but anecdotally, because I'm on a lot of forums where people gripe and moan about their family court judge.
14:21That's in theory. In practice, at least my judge and the judges in my county, they do not give a shit what your kid wants. They don't care at all. It's too easy to manipulate one of them. My kid was five, so they certainly weren't going to ask them. Kids that young can be very easily manipulated. A 14-year-old's like, oh yeah, dad gives me no bedtime and lets me drink beer and the, and you know, my friends on the weekend, I want to go live with them and judges aren't stupid. Right. Right. They know that asking a 16 year old who they want to live with could very well result in like dad lets me do donuts on the front lawn.
14:58So I want to go live with him, you know? So if you go to your state's website and you're thinking like, Oh man, when my kid's 14, they get to say where they want to live. No, in theory, they have some kind of input but in practice i think you're going to be hard-pressed to find a judge who's going to care much what your teenager thinks about where they're living yeah unless it's like dad doesn't get me to school right or yeah mom's new boyfriends always try to get into my room at night some stuff like that yeah or mom's new boyfriend's an asshole right yeah you know who's smoking pot all the time which is legal here but like you know i'm trying to study and he's blasting his REO Speedwagon at 2 in the morning.
15:40You know what I mean? Stuff like that, but just like, oh yeah, I want to go live with mom. They don't care. They don't give this a lot of weight because kids are too easy to manipulate and kind of the whole thing with children is that they don't know what's best for them. So you'll probably be familiar with this turn of judges. I'll give that due consideration. Yeah, right, right. It's kind of like noted, be quiet now. I'll put this in the pay no mind file. Yes. Yeah. So the big thing is courts want to see if the parents are cooperating if one parent isn't that's a big deal that's a way bigger deal than what the kids want if one parent is just constantly stonewalling or being a problem or communicating with foul language or being sarcastic all the time they're not gonna like that this is all relative and the courts understand that the parents in the middle of a custody battle may not be on their best behavior surprise surprise right no this is not Again, your divorce is not special.
16:40You're maybe on your third. You're probably just on your first. They see 50 a week. So it's just, they're not, it takes a lot to impress them positively or negatively. Mental and physical health matters. When you say mental and physical health, so that's like of the parents, right? So if somebody is, I don't know. Could also be the kid if the kid has mental health. Yeah, the reason I wanted to stop you is because I meant what? So it's like if you obviously look, if you suffer from a little bit of depression or something or you have bipolar, they're not going to take your kid away, I suppose. But if it's like, yeah, dad goes in his room and doesn't come out for weeks at a time and I have to clean the house, feed myself, get to school on time and basically parent myself until he goes back on his medication like that's going to be a problem.
17:24And not that this was you, but I know that your mental health was a thing in your case or your ex tried to make it like a really big deal. Is that accurate? Yeah, she did. She did. It was a whole it was a whole thing. Arizona courts anyway, and I suspect a lot of other states, they do not care about, you know, mom spent half a day in bed because she's depressed. They don't care unless you're at the level of like, I have ninjas living in my attic and they steal my thoughts and you can't see them because they hide every time you come by. You know, there was a guy that I found via a forum who was like, do not be afraid of your custody evaluation because my ex-wife is schizophrenic and she passed one of them.
18:08And then I had to have one of my older children smuggle an iPhone into her house and be like, look, this is a pile of garbage so high in the house that if it falls over, it's going to injure one of the children. that was when the court said oh well we're going to take a closer look here you know I mean there's literal human feces on the wall at this guy's ex-wife's house that's really sad that's horrible it is horrible but that's what it took to get them to take a look and I think people aren't really going to like this when I first say it but they'll maybe understand when I explain a little this is kind of as it should be because you should have to document actual dangers to a child's safety or welfare to remove someone's parental rights.
18:54It should not be, oh, mom gets kind of bummed out sometimes, or, you know, sometimes mom gets a little agitated or something, or dad, or whatever. Divorce court is messy, emotional, and wildly expensive, but at least when this next thing drains your bank account, you actually get something useful out of it. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by CookUnity. I've been craving Kung Pao chicken lately, that spicy, savory sauce and peanut crunch, but restaurant hopping adds up. Cook Unity brings that satisfaction home for less. I like my meals protein forward, so their high protein options caught my attention.
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21:35Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. What we don't want is mom's got a prescription for Prozac, so that must mean she's an unfit mother, so don't let her see her kids anymore. That's what we don't want. We don't want this person's been in therapy for five years, so where there's smoke, there's fire. Take his kids away. That's what we don't want. Yes. In the case of the schizophrenic woman with poop on the walls, like, no. Yeah, supervised visitation and the kids shouldn't live there. Yeah. Yeah, that's all I'm saying is, like, it should not be easy to take people's kids away. What about things like drug abuse or just abuse in general?
22:07I mean, certainly we don't want kids in a house where people are doing meth or beating the kids up, right? Well, physical abuse is always going to be you're getting supervised visitation. There was, you know, I talked to a lawyer who had who had seen some fairly extreme child abuse with one of her clients. And she got the guy supervised visitation. I don't know. Is that good or bad? I don't know. I don't think that's going to be a deal breaker. Yeah. Drug abuse. Maybe the court needs evidence that you're an active addiction. And this is kind of the more important part of the sentence, and that it's interfering with your ability to parent.
22:44Is the judge going to let you have your kids if you're like, oh, we do heroin when the kids aren't here? Okay, maybe not. I don't know. They might, is all I'm saying. I'm not saying they will. I'm saying they might. My judge gave a woman her kids back after she completed a treatment program, and she was on heroin. so judges at least again at least in arizona where i live they want to see kids with their parents which gets to this whole idea like family court judges just hate families all they want to do is this and that and it's like my experience in family court is that judges really really really want to keep kids and parents together yeah so they need receipts they need receipts for all this stuff right i mean i talked about how every man i ever spoken to has been through family court they've experienced some accusation or another, some kind of accusations of abuse, you know, but they do.
23:37They need the receipts. Judges generally don't care if it's the first time it's ever come up is during a custody battle. I mean, abuse allegations, right? If it's, yeah, we got divorced and, oh, he was abusive. It's like, okay, well, you were married for 15 years and there's nothing. There's no police calls. There's no statements. There's nothing. I mean, this is understandable that judges will discard stuff like that because the timing is just very suspect, which is unfortunate for people who have just been enabling their partner, because if they are abusive and they never said anything, now it's going to bite you in the butt.
24:08But is there anything else on the list of what makes for the best interest of the child? The last thing is your prior caregiving roles. If one parent is basically not a parent, that can be an issue. That's super hard to document, though. Yeah, yeah. You'd have to prove that they were gone 25 days a month or something working on an oil rig that's exactly you have proof they're gone i mean like i've seen examples or have been told of examples where it's like you know guys are getting divorced and mom wants to get into like what percentage of diaper changing they were doing we're talking about did dad take off for three months yeah you know that's what they're talking about that makes sense these all sound like reasonable criteria at least in theory and i'm curious about how they get enforced in practice from one jurisdiction to another.
24:52In the Western United States courts, and I'm speaking in very broad terms here, in the Western United States courts tend to be more inclined towards 50-50 without serious compelling evidence to the contrary. And further east, they tend to assume this less. But every court is different, every judge is different, every case is different. There are, I can say definitively, with the exception of the thing we talked about in Florida with single moms, there are no states where women have a legal upper hand in court. I know we're going to get a zillion comments about how I got screwed. And it's like, OK, well, did you fight your case?
Read the full transcript
25:34Did you have a good lawyer? Did you just roll over because you bought into these horror stories about how you weren't going to get anything in court? Did you just roll over because you wanted to run off to Vegas and chase tail? And this made for a very convenient, ready-made excuse for you to do that. And I am sure that that happens, by the way. I'm sure it happens, too. Here's what I predict. We're going to get a few of those comments, but we're going to get even more comments from divorced women who are like, oh, yeah, no, my ex-husband says he got raked over the coals in court. But here's what really happened.
26:08I offered him custody of the kids and he didn't respond to any of this and he didn't respond to any of that. And he did all of these other things that were horrible. and then when we finally got divorced he turned around after not fighting any of this and not doing any of the parenting stuff that the judge wanted us to do and then turns around and says oh she took my kids away and half my income i've seen a lot of that online too where a guy will rant like on a reddit forum and someone's like you sound like my dad who did all of these other horrible things and now says these exact same things and it's like no reply from the original poster.
26:43And it's like, yeah, yeah, we nailed it, didn't we? Because I think it would be it's convenient for guys to go, oh, yeah, I kind of want to have my freedom. This isn't really a house that I paid for. She had it before we got married. So I'm going to go on record as saying, oh, she screwed me and she took the house and she took the kids. I just have to go move to Florida and, you know, go date girls that are 20 years younger than me. It's like there's going to be a lot of those comments too i think we're gonna hear a lot of that yeah and ladies i'm aware that this guy exists okay i don't want to make it sound like i'm just like oh guys guys just get accused of everything and they're just these innocent saints like no there's there's definitely like guys who are like whoo cool i get to see my kids three times a year and and date 19 year old girls in florida a hundred percent yes there's a lot of guys like that so so i i'm expecting to actually see more of that than guys saying they actually got screwed well i don't know maybe it'll be 50 50 50 we'll see well 50 50 we'll see um there's some statistics about how many dads get custody versus how many dads fight for them but it's junk okay i'm not even gonna get into it why because what we just talked about tons of dads give up because they think it's pointless or they can't handle the heat i think that that motivates a lot of it they believe these myths or the second that they start getting accused of stuff they're just like whoa now i'm toast i'm out or i don't want to deal with being cross-examined in court or whatever it is it's like dude you're you're almost certainly not going to go to court anyway but this is going to get settled they all almost all of them get settled judges do not want to hold a trial there was a quote from frederick that helped me through my trial not trials like in the sense of you know difficulties i didn't actually trials and tribulations more like yes okay and the quote is he who has a why to live for can bear almost anyhow yeah and there was like nothing i wasn't going to do to be a parent to my son yeah you said that a lot of why men think the cards are stacked against them is based on like you said bad or outdated information back in the 80s when parents got divorced i know from my friends who got divorced in the 80s it was just everyone was like oh okay so when are you going to see your dad?
28:58It wasn't, oh, who's going to live with their dad? It was, I don't even remember any dads in my neighborhood. I knew a lot of divorced kids, right? It was the eighties and nineties. They all lived with their mom and they all saw their dad on weekends. And it was just a thing. It was every Friday. It was like, what are you going to do? I'm going to my dad's. Oh, cool. Yeah. Cause their dad lived near the other person's dad. So it was like, we can hang out. You're going to your dad's. Cause it was like, yeah, he lives across town where your dad lives. It was just, there was that whole Friday, like who's going to their dads.
29:23And a bunch of my friends did that. And it would be like, oh, okay. Who's going to still be in the neighborhood on friday night this half of the neighborhood's gone so i gotta hang out with andy today that's just how it was and it seems like that's my whole childhood you know it's interesting that we were talking about earlier about dads just not wanting to parent their kids post-divorce because all the divorce house kids in my neighborhood growing up there was never i'm going to dads oh really at all never yikes yeah i mean there was like there was like a crew of like five of us and two of them had divorced parents and the two with divorced parents one of them i don't think ever saw their dad oh yeah well there was some of that and the other one i think saw him like a couple times a year and it was not because they you know and i know enough about the situation it was 100 the like cool i'm a divorced dad now yeah i don't got a parent anymore so very real phenomenon there were kids that had stepdads and it was like i never see your dad at any of these games and stuff and it was like oh he lives in Florida and it was like oh okay like there was a few of those too I remember those in the 80s yeah I mean it was the standard in the 80s that mom got the kids you know who it was that changed that wasn't men yeah it was women because I think partly because they were like my kid needs his dad in his life somehow even if it's just a couple weekends a month my kid needs to see his dad and i think that yeah they were tired of their ex-husbands buying their way out of parenting their children yeah and they have to take on all this additional responsibility and you get to write a check and party with girls half your age i can see how they didn't like that yeah there was a whole doctrine right it was like the tender years doctrine yeah and dual income households it's obsolete okay there's no stay-at-home moms anymore i mean there are, but like how many are there now as compared to when we were kids?
31:19Sure. Yeah. It's fewer for sure. When we were kids, that's when that started to change. Family courts also got way more professional. So in the eighties and nineties, you start seeing guardians ad litem evaluators, standardized custody guidelines. It's not like this vibes based thing where mom usually wins anymore. And then from 2008 to 2020, most family court systems get totally overhauled to the point where, as we're talking about 50-50, it's effectively the law of the land nationwide, even if we don't call it that, even if there's some pockets where the old ways may still prevail. I'd imagine technology also plays a role in this.
32:03We're kind of past the days of he said, she said. There's all kinds of ways to document everything. And those methods just didn't exist prior to the mass adoption of the smartphone. Like now you can get videos of this. You can get a recorded conversation of that. There's parenting apps where people can do things more easily with one another, where before it was like, yeah, okay, we're going to make you meet up with the guy who terrorized your whole family and just hope that everything goes well. It's like, no, no, no. It's all scheduled in the app. It's filmed in the app. You and I were talking about this offline a couple days ago.
32:33There were some custody cases. This ended tragically. This was recent. But when they had the drop off, they had to park five parking spaces away or something, and they weren't allowed to talk to each other during the drop off. I mean, there's this was all arranged by the court, I think. So that couldn't have worked before, because how are you going to document that somebody said something to you in the parking lot? It would have been impossible. Bring a micro cassette recorder. Exactly. Yeah, maybe something like that. I mean, there was tons of text messages thrown both ways in my divorce. person is a bit of free legal advice.
33:08If you're going to go to court and talk about what a bad parent your ex-husband is, don't send him text messages saying that he's your kid's hero. Yeah, yeah. He loves you. You're his hero. Oh, yeah. And then during the trial, he's terrible. He's an absentee. Now the judge knows you're lying, which can't be good. I also think that anytime a man loses, or a woman for that matter, they're just going to see it as court's bias. I mean, and it might be a mistake, but I assume that anytime you get handed something in court that you don't like, you're going to default to, I got screwed, or this is biased.
33:38My wife, as in the woman that I'm currently married to, is in a Facebook group where women just gripe about divorce court. Okay. And she's in it for the shit show of it all. Yeah, women are no less guilty than the men of thinking that any ruling they don't like is evidence of bias. But divorce court, family court is a really super emotionally raw area, to say the least. I'm sure everyone feels justified. So when the court says something you don't like, you know, it's not that you didn't understand the law or the law wasn't on your side. You've been cheated in some way. And that's why a lot of these myths still persist because there's these horror stories about guys usually getting royally screwed in family court and they have way more staying power than stories like mine.
34:28my divorce was very tough it was very contentious it dragged on forever it was so emotionally draining but at the end of the day i got 50 50 joint custody 50 50 they it's called effective 50 50 parenting because it's like okay well maybe maybe the calendar works out that somebody gets a day or two yeah of course holidays and stuff but like yeah it's called effective 50 50 and i get child support i know you get child support but i also know that a lot of listeners are going to be shocked by this, right? Like a man's getting child support. I never heard of that. Honestly, that sounds antiquated.
35:02But when you told me that I was also kind of surprised. She makes way more money than I do. It's a simple mathematical formula. The courts are not there to lecture me on how I need to man up and earn more money. They run a formula. Everyone gets what's coming to them. So let me get this straight. Me not paying you more resulted in you getting a check every month from your ex-wife. You're welcome, Nick. You're welcome. Maybe the craziest thing is, is if me and my current wife have kids, my child support goes up. Wait, how does that work? The child tax credit, because my taxable income goes down.
35:38Is that an Arizona thing? I don't pay any attention to this kind of stuff. I don't do my own finances. I probably shouldn't admit that, but here we are. Every state in the union has a gender neutral formula for calculating child support okay wow gender neutral laws it's coast to coast so this is another like god to pay her child support sure and it's like yeah man your ex-wife was a stay-at-home mom for 12 years and it sucks that you got to pay her money because she wants a divorce but if she hasn't worked in 12 years and she has no outside income and you've been busy plugging it away at your career you just have more earning potential.
36:15Yeah. And that's fair. I mean, come on. Yeah, that's fair. That's not man-hating courts. That's a totally reasonable way of doing child support. Parents who have had to put their career on hold should not be expected to have the same earning potential as a mid-career spouse who spent the same period of time focusing on their career. Yeah, exactly. That sounds reasonable, especially given that a stay-at-home dad is going to have the same expectations. I mean, there's so many more stay at home dads now. I know a few of them myself. And it's like they were doing some sort of, I don't know, a job that either they had a small company that they stopped working or a job that didn't quite their trajectories change and their wife is like a partner at a law firm.
36:57Yeah. OK. Nobody would say that's unfair. Right. The guy has to go back to work. OK, well, you've been shelved for 12 years. But yeah, guys will never stop complaining about this. No, but it's totally fair. I mean, everybody's working and everybody's focusing on their career, which that happens a lot in marriages too, like, you know, then it's like, you're just going on people's income. When the stay at home mom or dad goes back to work, the judge doesn't just go, well, you made$0 for the last 12 years. Uh, I guess that's your income. Yeah. You owe blah, blah, blah. No, they're going to impute your income.
37:29They're going to say, what are you going to do? I'm going to go be a teacher. Okay. Teachers make in this County, I don't know what a teacher makes, but 50 grand a year. I really don't know. Yeah. I don't know. I was going to say 50 grand a year, but like in today's dollars, isn't that like what you make for working at McDonald's? That's a skeptical Sunday right there, too. Yeah. I think there's plenty of people that are teachers that probably make slightly more than somebody working minimum wage. Disgustingly. Yeah. So they get like, you know, they're going to impute your income to something.
37:57And then that's like, OK, well, you better start making that at least. They imputed my income. It was like it was totally reasonable. But yeah, I mean, men should just stop rolling over and letting courts take their kids away because they read some story on the Internet. Now for something that won't ruin your life. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Zenni. Jen wore the same glasses for five years. The arms were loose. The lenses were scratched. She kept putting up with them because she didn't want to spend a bunch on a replacement. Then she ordered from Zenni and found these really fun heart-shaped frames starting at$35.95.
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39:03And Zenni has over 150 ,000 five-star reviews. Jen wears hers all the time now, and people keep complimenting the heart shape. I love that she found something with a little personality at a price that she actually felt good about. That scratched-up pair has done its job. Upgrade today with Zenni. Go to zenni.com slash podcast and use code podcast15 for a 15 % off your first order, plus free shipping on all U.S. orders over$65. The style sellout, so don't sit out. that's z-e-n-n-i dot com slash podcast promo code podcast 15 this episode is also sponsored by zip recruiter if i've got a business call that doesn't require a screen i'm heading outside i can talk things through get closer to my daily step goal two things checked off and a break from my desk yes please i'm looking for ways to make the most of my time we all have our own time saving hacks for everyday life but if you're a business owner how do you save time hiring zip recruiter zip recruiter has a new feature that quickly lets you see the most interested most qualified candidates first, so you save time by meeting the right people faster.
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40:32You can interact with show fans. Me and Gabriel are in there. You can talk about the show, get some dank memes, joke around a little bit, get to know other show fans. It's kind of a fun time in there, most of the time anyway. That's the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. Social media also has a tendency to amplify the most horrifying anecdotes or concepts in any story. I mean, you see people complain a lot on social media, and I personally kind of go, well, what's the rest of this? Where's the rest of the, where's the real details of this story? The other thing is, you know, if you're convinced that the system hates men, you're going to constantly find information that confirms this.
41:10I was convinced of this, and then I talked to a lawyer who was like, why are you rolling over for your wife? You have PTSD and you use steroids. Like, this is not a reason for you to let your wife take your kid from you. Yeah, I'm glad someone was able to talk sense to you because, yeah, I remember the early days when you were just convinced you were never going to see your kid. It was really sad and you were super stressed out about it. And I didn't have any way to sort of aswage your concerns, because what do I know? I mean, I'm like a former real estate lawyer from the early finance guy. Like, I don't know anything about this.
41:46And it just seems like if you're going to buy into that, a lot of people, maybe they never get that wake up call. OK, so you mentioned that there are some pockets where there might still be a bias against men. Where are those places and what's the evidence for that? Some people say the Bay Area in California, parts of Massachusetts and Cook County, Illinois, which is where Chicago is, parts of downstate New York. But this is all totally anecdotal. I couldn't find any like evidence for it, but it would be it would be hard to gather data about that. But that's kind of like people who can see that there are places where men may be getting a raw deal still who aren't lunatics are like, oh, yeah, these are the places.
42:27Surprise the Bay Area. This place is pretty woke. Yeah. I'm pretty surprised that it's anti-father as far as the courtroom is concerned, I guess. But again, data, citations needed. Yeah. Citations are definitely needed on that. Massachusetts has some like dad unfriendly laws, but I like couldn't find out what specifically they were supposed to be. It could be court rules or I don't know. I couldn't find anything, but that's what I read on lawyers' websites, basically. Yeah, or it's scare propaganda to get people to hire an attorney that wrote the copy on that website. Because, yeah, if the stats don't bear that out, that's different.
43:03So you had to get a custody evaluation, but I remember you were also surprisingly unworried about that. What would you say to somebody who has to deal with a custody evaluation? First of all, what is a custody evaluation? Custody evaluation is when a custody evaluator evaluates whether or not you can have custody. I see. So this is like a social worker that comes over and says, your house is dangerous. There's holes in the floor and dirty needles everywhere. You can't have your kids. Oh, no, no, no, no. This is a forensic psychiatrist who's going to conduct all kinds of interviews. Okay. They're talking to you.
43:35They're maybe talking to witnesses. and some of them I think probably will say whatever the person cutting the check wants them to say. They're not cheap. 20 grand to get started. Wow, 20 grand. That's got to be an insanely involved process. Either that or those people make a truckload of money doing this. I don't really believe that that's possible. I don't think so. The forensic psychs, which at least in Arizona, that's the only type of psychiatrist who can testify in court as an expert witness. So it's like kind of a red flag when my ex wanted my kid to see a forensic psychiatrist for alleged mental health problems.
44:13That was two hours away. I see. So what exactly is a forensic psychiatrist? What are they doing? Forensics. They do tons of interviews, psychological evaluations. Their home visits are part of it. And they just kind of see how all the pieces fit together. So if there are inconsistencies, that's generally going to be a much bigger deal than just being honest about, yeah, you know, I did and said some things at the end of my marriage that I wasn't very proud of, you know? Yeah. I thought this was just a social worker who showed up to the house to make sure, yeah, again, it's not full of cockroaches with loaded guns on the table or something.
44:49The first person my ex-wife wanted to evaluate did have the reputation of being a hatchet man for hire. Whoa. So how did you get out of having a hostile evaluator? We told them to pick somebody else. Oh, really? So it's that simple? Yeah, you have to agree on the evaluator. And if it's not obvious, you can't just say no to everybody that they suggest. Sure, yeah. On the other hand, your opposing counsel doesn't just get to pull whoever they want out of their behind and force you to be evaluated by them. I do think her attorneys thought that the evaluator we ended up using was going to be on her side.
45:24but you know what? She wasn't. She was super fair. At absolutely no point did I feel like she was out to get me. I didn't feel like there was any gotcha stuff, anything like that. The sense I got was that she had seen kids in actually dangerous situations and recognized pretty quickly that my kid was not in a dangerous situation and then went through the process of verifying that for the courts, which is her job. Yes, exactly. So how did your evaluation turn out? It was kind of one of several examples of my ex-wife backing out when she realized that I wasn't scared. But I think that's also a tactic that gets used a lot in family court.
46:05Oh, you're going to have an evaluator. And then the people, probably more often the guy, panics and just goes, well, I'll agree to whatever. I can't deal with that. And it's like, I had nothing to worry about. It was a bluff anyway, but I went along with it. And cause I kind of didn't have a choice. My lawyer was just like, you have nothing to worry about. You were stressed though. I remember you texting me and being like, this is happening. It's coming over. And I was like, oh, okay. So, and I was worried for you. Cause I don't know. I don't know anything about this. Like, oh, he lives in a trailer.
46:37She's going to say that the kids can't live here. The trailer, she says, I did. I lived in an RV like on a five acres of desert. Yeah. Not on the side of a road near a park, like a houseless person. Yeah, no, I know. But still, like I'd be nervous about something like that. My lawyer wasn't. Well, she knows what's going on, right? We don't. No, definitely at first I was a little spooked by it. But the more like the more I got into reading about it and people's experiences with it. And again, like I didn't live in a mobile meth lab. I lived in a tiny house, basically. I had so much solar. I had air conditioning, running water and septic.
47:15Yeah. Well, didn't you have an illegal septic? I guess that doesn't preclude you from having kids. I did have an illegal septic and it does not like, it's like, this is Arizona. Do you know how many people in the, in the County I live in have unpermitted septic tanks and all kinds of like bizarre, Jerry rigged electrical systems going on in their house? Like, like this was not going to be an issue. or it may have been but I would be like I would have been shocked tons of people in Arizona live in RVs and off-grid houses and you know there's definitely like sticks and bricks homes traditional homes that are worse environments for children than my RV was but the home visit was going to be in my house that I live in now which is like a normal house so your ex-wife she just dropped the evaluation why because she run out of money I know this was super expensive.
48:09The whole thing was expensive. She kind of routinely would make these big and expensive moves and just expect me to fold. And then she would back down when I didn't because she didn't want to actually spend the money on it. By the time the home visit came, she was actually pretty eager to settle. And me and my attorney initially insisted that the evaluation continue because we felt it was going fine. and we wanted the evaluator's report to use later on. And also we just kind of wanted to bleed her. Your attorney sounds clever and maybe a little nasty, which is a compliment, I suppose. Yeah, man, I had a soulless ginger homework kid as a lawyer.
48:54She was definitely the girl in like fifth grade with multicolored highlighters, you know? She had an insane evaluator come back in a case she was working on where they asked for the evaluation and she was like she kind of told the lady like this is stupid this evaluator is not going to do anything and then the evaluator came back and was like this guy can only have supervised visitation we're going to throw cameras in his house oh my god she was just like just settle this and get on with your life yeah don't risk having somebody kooky who's having a bad day install cameras in your rv so i'm shocked that that's even a thing by the way is that real yes wow that's what they did to that guy so i thought there was about a zero percent chance of a negative evaluation coming back yeah but about zero and zero are not the same not the same thing no that's true and i love the idea of her having to continue having to pay for this far so it is like the woman's gonna get paid to drive like four hours one way to come do the evaluation and all kinds of other stuff.
49:58But anyway, yeah, to me, it was like, okay, I kind of just want to get on with my life. And I hate having strangers in my home. So my attorney, her biggest concern was that I was going to get small-towned. What's that? Like my wife was going to hire a lawyer who plays golf with a judge. I see. I don't even think that would have mattered, but she practices down in Phoenix. If she's seen it before, then it happens. Sure, but with this guy, I doubt it. I'm sure there's places where there's a good old boys network or a legal culture of old school judges who stick to the old ways. But there's there's no it sounds like there's no systematic nationwide effort to screw dads out of their kids.
50:35There's no evidence for it anyway. I mean, the people out there making life hell for other people in family court. It's not the system. It's lawyers. There's tons of people out there who get a straight talking lawyer who gives them the lay of the land. And it's not what they want to hear. So they go attorney shopping. and the new attorney's like oh yeah you got this we just gotta fight it really hard it's gonna be a lot of money but you're definitely gonna get it at the end right there's always a lawyer i mean i speak from experience unfortunately here and from the inside and the outside there's always a lawyer willing to bill you for work that does not necessarily need to be done at all i know in fact i'm going through this right now i can't say the matter um it's not important it's nothing juicy or interesting.
51:22But there is a lawyer who's like, look, I'll flat fee this for you for 12 grand and I'll give you a payment plan. In fact, I'm feeling generous. Let me cut it down to this and give you a better payment plan. And then I called another lawyer who I know and I was like, hey, let me sanity check this. And he goes, oh, you don't even need to hire a lawyer for this. Here's what's going to happen. Here's your worst case scenario. It's going to be less than my retainer. And I was like, oh, no wonder that guy was so keen on giving me a nice sweetheart deal and a payment plan. He doesn't have to do anything.
51:48Right. And it's so I look, I know a guy who spent two years in court over custody. He was the petitioner. The respondent fired their lawyer early on because they didn't like what the lawyer was telling them. And the respondent then hired a lawyer who basically said, look, you need two lawyers. Also, you need a$10 ,000 deposition. Also, you need the most invasive financial disclosure his account's ever seen in 20 years of practice. And this case ended up being settled for an almost identical settlement that was proposed by the original attorney, all of this sound and fury, it was basically just an excuse to bill an insane amount of money.
52:24And the case could have been settled in a couple months for a few grand. Instead, it was a six-figure divorce dragged out over two years, which is actually not only unethical, but like psychopathic because you're putting someone through hell and you're draining their money for an extended period of time. Just find more clients, bro. Like that's how I think as an intern. Anyway, do we know how much money is wrapped up in the divorce industry as a whole? About$50 billion a year. That's way more than I thought. Holy smokes. Yeah. Some people are making a lot of money off of divorces dragging on for as long as they possibly can.
52:57And it ain't the judges. No. Oh my God. Well, I would look, I would imagine any motivated lawyer who's a little bit crooked and those are so hard to find. Yeah. They could turn, they could turn a 10 hour case into 150 hour case pretty easily, right? Emotions are running high. It's really easy to stoke and inflame that you find some irrelevant irritation, you turn it into a cause for being unreasonable, you fight for some maximal case lost cause, you know, we should be able to do this. And then they're really going to hurt. And it's only going to be 10 grand. Oh, sorry, I'm at 60 grand. Oh, sorry, but that doesn't include my fees, right?
53:33It's just one thing after another sunk cost fallacy and soon your client is broke. It's, uh, it's icky. Yeah. Tons of cases get dragged way past their sell by date because some shady lawyer gets the ear of one of the litigants and milks them for everything they're worth. Exactly. And they don't deliver anything of value and there's no way around that. You know, it sucks, but people are allowed to pursue legal remedies in court to their own satisfaction. And I'm sure lawyers know how to stay just on the right side of that line legally. Yes. Where they're not, you know, like between you and me, I can't offer you a big cash settlement, but I'm offering you a big cash settlement.
54:12Sure. Courts have a responsibility to hear those people out. It's your right to pursue this in court. That's the flip side of it. Even if you're arguing past the law and it's not always selfishness that drives that. It could be fear. You think, you know, if I don't fight for something huge, you're going to lose everything. or you walk in with an inflated sense of expectations and the lawyer tells the person, you're just not gonna get that, but the client doesn't care. Client management is a bit, that's an art unto itself, right? You gotta figure out, am I dealing with a reasonable person or am I dealing with somebody who's never heard the word no and is willing to just pay for the privilege until the judge tells them?
54:49A good lawyer will be like, how do we settle this super quickly so that both parties are just slightly unhappy? Because you're not gonna get both parties being happy. That happens once in your career or something. But you're going to have it where both parties are only slightly unhappy and one side doesn't get actively roasted or both sides are totally screwed. The best case scenario for a divorce like this is both sides are only slightly unhappy. I was super happy with my final settlement. The process itself was a nightmare. Yes, exactly. But the settlement, I was like, hell yeah. My lawyer told me one of the reasons things turned out so well for me is because I always listened to her.
55:27There was one time where I overruled her and it was, it was the right move. And she told me, well, this, this is a gamble, but it could work. But if she'd said, absolutely not, this is the stupidest idea you've ever had. I wouldn't have told her to do it. She gave you an honest evaluation of whether or not this dice roll was likely to end up neutral or positive, right? As opposed to saying, yeah, so that's fair. Look, if there's a, if there's a villain in family court, it's not anti-father bias it's billable hours so okay who wants to actively roll things back to the days before equal parenting rights you kind of touched on this on the top of the show i mean the equal parenting rights thing it just seems like a no-brainer to me especially in an era where men and women both have jobs outside the home a lot of the time both share at least in theory something resembling equal parenting responsibility i know a lot of women are like a lot of men are probably like that too i think a lot of guys are too yeah i think but back compared to back in the day where guys would be like, I never changed a single diaper puffs on cigar.
56:26It's not really like that anymore. I don't know any guys like that anymore that are under the age of 60. So the main driver behind this movement is a woman named Tina Swithin. She runs a website called One Mom's Battle. The short version is that this movement wants to begin treating all allegations as true and valid until proven otherwise. They want to limit custody for men, and I suppose women too, but it mostly seems very, very focused on men who are accused of abuse, you know, of course, for the safety of the children. Yeah. Well, that's not how any of this works. There's a million problems with that.
57:06By the way, does anyone, do you find it weird that there are divorce influencers? Because that's essentially what this person is, right? She's like an influencer of the divorce category. That's bizarre to me, but I guess it makes sense. I find it weird because she's trying to change the law to something I find retrograde, but the idea of there being somebody on TikTok that you can turn to who's just going to be like, it's okay, your life's not over. This is what divorce court actually looks like. That woman, the dadvocate, like she does some kind of stuff from the other side. Is she an attorney?
57:39No, she's not. Oh, okay. But yeah, if they're an attorney, that makes a lot more sense. Kind of yes, kind of no. Influencers in general are just weird to me. I know it's bizarre, but I get it if a guy loves Legos and he's a Lego influencer, but a divorce influencer, this is not something I would want to make my entire personality. You know, like once mine is over, I'd be like, okay, I've got 18 months where I'm willing to talk about this and then I want to freaking move on. Maybe not even 18, maybe six. Anyway. The problem with Tina Swithin and this kind of like family court reform stuff is this is turning a thousand years of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence on its head.
58:13You are innocent until proven guilty. Accusations are not evidence. And you know what? The evidentiary bar in family court is already on the ground. It is not a criminal court. Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah, yeah. You can invoke those rules of evidence, but most people don't. You know, it's just a you don't have to prove things necessarily beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt in family court. You don't need chain of evidence, any of this stuff. But our system is built on the principle that it's genuinely better for 100 guilty men to go free than it is for one innocent man to serve a day in prison.
58:55And I think that that's correct. Even a part time Coke dealer can afford to support our sponsors. We'll be right back.
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59:43Please consider supporting those who support the show. Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. Here, we're not talking about putting people in prison. We're talking about protecting kids from potentially dangerous adults. But then again, we're also talking about depriving those adults of their parenting rights and the rights to see their kids. So there's this one case in Utah, which is an absolute tragedy, but it was the engine for kind of the one big victory. This euphemistically named movement Family Court Reform. A 16-year-old was murdered by her abusive father. Yeah, that's terrible. Yes, it is.
1:00:17But the thing is, I'm not really sure what the law they passed is trying to accomplish or does accomplish. A couple months ago, you brought this up earlier because we talked about it in private conversation. There was maybe a month ago, a mom murdered her child, which after the law was enacted, this was the one where they had to park five spots apart. Yes. So I don't know what it's doing or supposed to do that isn't already in place. Yeah, it's insane to me that people do this. I just cannot put myself into the headspace where killing yourself or your kid is the reasonable choice to deprive the other parent of custody.
1:00:57I mean, holy cow. Yeah. And like the new law, you know, I don't want to use this one tragic incident is like, well, see, it did nothing. So I don't do anything. But the new law, when you look at it, it doesn't do much. It says that the child safety has to be the first priority. And it already is. Yes. It raised evidentiary standards, which does not help the where there's smoke, there's fire crowd, which is what a lot of this is based on. It limited court order reunification, which they're opposed to that. I don't know what limited means. I'm not a lawyer, but that could mean anything. Yes. Could mean anything, everything and nothing all at the same time.
1:01:40And it defunded reunification camps. Yeah. Why does that sound terrible? I mean, anything with camps in the names sounds really sus. That is bizarre. Yeah. They make kids go to these camps where people force them to reunify with their parents. And I can see situations where like court mandated family therapy is maybe appropriate to heal breaches between parents and kids. I don't think taxpayers should be paying for it. And I really don't think that we should be sending kids to camps for it. Yeah, that is weird. Okay, but in some cases, the kids are hostile toward the parents with good reason, not because mom or dad poisoned them against the other one.
1:02:19No, absolutely. Sometimes kids hate their parents for good reasons. I hate my parents. I'm sympathetic to kids with shitty parents. Very, very sympathetic to kids who have shitty parents and don't want to be around them. And I think that, yeah, around 12, 13, 14, they should have some kind of influence over where they're going to spend most of their time. But the law, you know, it also includes like obligatory training and education, which the judges probably take about as seriously as I would take diversity training at work. Like fire up those angry emails, folks. OK, so all of this sounds totally reasonable to me.
1:02:55Do you have any issue with it? I mean, aside from the camps. No. Yeah, the camp seemed a little yucky, but no. And I'm like opposed to this movement. And I read the law. I didn't get like deep into the weeds on it because I'm not a lawyer. But it sounds so benign. It sounds like it throws a bone to really loud activists, does precisely nothing of substance other than defunding these camps. And I'm absolutely for doing that. And there's a federal version called Caden's Law. OK, so what is the issue then with these activists, Tina Swithin and others, and family court reform? Because it can't be, oh, they passed one law and it doesn't matter.
1:03:33Well, there's a lot to get into here. First of all, Swithin completely denies the concept of parental alienation. This is, you talked earlier about one parent poisoning the kid against the other parent, and they use this to usurp parental rights, such as involving enrolling your kid in therapy without informing the other parent. That is a usurpation of parental rights. If you're using the therapy as a cudgel against the other parent, that's another layer to that. But if you're communicating with teachers or other caregivers in a way that's hostile and disparaging to the other parent, that is parental alienation.
1:04:12All of this is totally real, totally happens, and totally is not good for the kids. Yes. Yeah, of course. Which is who we're supposed to care about. Are there abusive men who weaponize accusations of parental alienation to deflect from their behavior? Yes, I'm absolutely sure that's a thing. Absolutely sure that happens. But that does not mean that parental alienation does not exist. It absolutely does. What else? There's a kind of persistent narrative with the Swithin crowd where my ex-husband is an abusive narcissist, which here's another bit of free legal advice. absolutely do not accuse your ex of this in court because this your judge hears this 50 times a day this is like the go-to you know attempt to slander somebody in in family court they just sure they do not want to hear you use these words at all even if you have a serious case they're going to take you much less seriously if that's how you frame it so you need to document specifics if that's the reality.
1:05:11The Swithin thing kind of creates this frame where women, and it's almost always women, at least in this milieu, they're the hapless victims and men are evil monsters. It couldn't possibly be that people who are in failing marriages that are disintegrating behave badly. Well, that's pretty much it. I mean, I think almost everyone whose marriage is falling apart says and does things they regret. People who are about to get divorced treat each other like shit for the most part. And you know what? That's not okay. No. It's the reality of it. And the judge is generally, as I said, he's not going to be shocked by your divorce.
1:05:48There's a movement that wants to expand the meaning of abuse to something called coercive control, which we don't have the time to fully explain. This is a highly controversial concept. It's not some kind of settled science thing, but the family court reform does want to enshrine it into law. I think maybe something that needs to be said is that the purpose of family court is to find a solution that is good for the kids. It's not supposed to be a place where two people who hate each other get to drag each other through the mud for kicks or because they're high on righteous indignation. Yeah, Swithin has also inserted herself into custody paddles, defending parents who defy court orders in ways that are really problematic.
1:06:31She's being sued for defamation by a father. There's a really good deep dive into her from a woman named Christina Short, who goes by Weaponized Stepmom. It's in the show notes. It's a good read if you really want to get deep into the weeds on the Swithin thing. We just don't have the time. Yeah, I mean, also, there's a lot going on with this whole topic. That link will be in the show notes. Anyway, with all this said, why do you think more people don't enter into mediation? Because if you really just want out of the marriage and you want to bypass this crazy adversarial nature family court system, it just seems like that's a good way to do this.
1:07:05I tried this. I tried this at first with the Orit Center for Divorce Mediation. It was a nightmare. This particular place has some kind of cachet as like the place you go to mediate your divorce, which it absolutely is not. Do not go there. It was a nightmare. Two different attorneys advised me that the mediator, Michael Orit, was clearly biased against me. And they both used that exact phrase. And that's when I pulled out. The second one he told me was the lawyer that I hired. I went out of my way to not poison the well with my lawyers. The lawyers I spoke to about this, they were just like, get out of there.
1:07:41We did end up using a mediator at the end to settle our divorce. And she was great. She did not have good things to say about this place. And I mentioned it specifically because if you Google mediated divorce, a lot of times they're going to be the first thing that comes up. But is mediation itself bad? Because it seems like, you know, you had a bad experience, but not everyone's going to have that. Well, again, I would caution people against this particular mediator, but my divorce ultimately ended in mediation. Oh, wow. After all that. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah, no, I know, I know. If you want a mediated divorce, you call a lawyer, you tell them you want a mediated divorce.
1:08:21If they seem hesitant to do it, you go find another lawyer who isn't. There's no special process for mediated divorce. A mediated divorce is when two lawyers hash out the details so everyone can get over this quickly and get on with their lives with minimal damage. The lawyers look at things amicably. They try to get a resolution everyone can live with quickly. and then final details get hammered out by a mediator. Or it was kind of like overpriced therapy with paperwork. When we saw the real mediator at the end, we were never even in the same room together. I see. Wow. Because you don't need to be.
1:08:59So do you have any advice for people who are going through a divorce or might do so later? You need to lawyer up fast. Do not assume that your spouse is going to be reasonable. My biggest mistake was I was very naive about how easy the process would be If you want to have a cooperative divorce, which is kind of the better term for mediated divorce, that's fine. Get a lawyer and tell your lawyer that if they don't want to do it, go find one who does. You need to document everything you can. You never know what might be helpful later. Be involved in your kid's life. Do not get emotional when communicating.
1:09:36I know that that can be super hard, but you need to be BIF, which means brief, informative, factual and firm. Fathers regularly get 50-50 custody of their kids, even when it's not what mom wants. You have to show up and oftentimes jump through a lot of flaming hoops to make it happen. But that's just the nature of getting divorced. Every court in America is, at least in theory, gender neutral. With that said, there can be variations from state to state and county to county. The best thing to do is consult with an attorney who can give you the lay of the land. There are some people who want to turn back the clock, and these efforts should be scrutinized heavily.
1:10:13Remember, nearly everyone thinks their ex is a total jerk at the time of divorce. That's not evidence of anything. In all things being equal, it's better for kids to have involved and invested parents. Some people are bad spouses but excellent parents. Mediocre parents and even the occasional Coke dealer deserve to see their kids too. The problem today isn't that dads have no rights. It's that it's all too easy for stubborn clients or greedy lawyers to drag out what should be a relatively simple divorce. The main thing for everyone is just to stay calm and pretend to be the adults that the courts want you to be.
1:10:44Thanks again to Nick Pell for helping us achieve full legal custody of the nuances here. And thank you all for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to me, Jordan at JordanHarbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show, all at JordanHarbinger.com slash deals. I'm at JordanHarbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And this show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Tata Sidlowskis, Robert Fogerty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own.
1:11:14And I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. And I was a real estate lawyer. Don't listen to me about anything. Also, we try to get these as right as we can. Not everything is gospel, even if it's fact-checked. Consult a qualified professional before applying anything you hear on the show, especially if it's about your health and well-being. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge we doled out today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn.
1:11:41And we'll see you next time. You may think you don't have an accent, which is exactly what your accent wants you to think. Every voice carries clues about class, identity, and belonging, and why what sounds intelligent, trustworthy, or normal often has more to do with power and familiarity than language itself. Every person has an accent. But what really is driving our attitudes towards what's a beautiful language and what's not is our familiarity with that language. So the more familiar a language is or an accent is, the more we tend to like it, but also our beliefs about the speakers of those languages.
1:12:16And that is like 50 % of what drives our attitudes towards language. When we're talking about someone speaking a different dialect, what we're talking about is that they're using differences at many levels of linguistics, not just sound. So they're saying syntactic or sentence structure differences. They might be adding different endings or deleting endings. That's morphology. They might be using different vocabularies. But an accent refers to only differences at the level of sound. So when we're attending to accents, we're attending to sound differences. And with that general description of the difference, it shows you There are so many different things you have to learn when you're learning a new language.
1:12:55There is more cognitive processing power when you hear a foreign accent. You have to recruit more neurons to unpack what you're hearing because it's less familiar. So you are exerting more processing effort. A lot of people actually experience that as something more difficult and unpleasant. But in other contexts where paying attention is important, it probably actually does help you. But you are actually using more processing power. Here's a great piece of evidence of how much our speech says about us without us being aware of it. Listen to linguist Valerie Friedland on episode 1349, and you may never hear anyone, including yourself, the same way ever again.
From the publisher
Do divorced dads always lose the kids and half their stuff in court? On Skeptical Sunday, Nick Pell shares how he got 50-50 custody and child support!
Welcome to Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of The Jordan Harbinger Show where Jordan and a guest break down a topic that you may have never thought about, open things up, and debunk common misconceptions. This time around, we’re joined by writer and researcher Nick Pell!
Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1388
On This Week's Skeptical Sunday:
- Family court's rep as a kangaroo court run by man-hating judges is a relic of the '80s. Every state now has gender-neutral custody and child support laws, "best interests of the child" is the North Star, and effective 50-50 parenting is increasingly the norm — not the exception.
- Accusations aren't evidence — and judges have heard them all before, probably that very morning. Without receipts like police reports or documented incidents, divorce-day abuse claims rarely stick, and calling your ex an "abusive narcissist" may sink your credibility, not theirs.
- The real villain isn't anti-father bias — it's billable hours. A roughly $50 billion divorce industry rewards lawyers who stoke emotions and feed the sunk-cost fallacy, turning a few-grand, few-month settlement into a six-figure, two-year slog that bleeds everyone dry.
- Many dads lose before the opening bell — they swallow the horror stories, panic at a bluffed custody evaluation, and fold. Meanwhile, "family court reform" activists want allegations treated as true until proven false, flipping innocent-until-proven-guilty on its head.
- How do you stand a chance at winning? Lawyer up fast, and pick one who favors a cooperative settlement over a bloodbath. Document everything, stay involved in your kid's life, and keep communication BIFF: brief, informative, factual, firm. Courts reward the calm adult in the room, so be that adult.
- Connect with Jordan on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at jordan@jordanharbinger.com and let him know!
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