How Your Ex-Wife Can Legally Keep Your Kids From You
High-conflict divorces are often followed by varying degrees of custodial interference combined with false allegations of abuse.
A vengeful ex-wife may deny a father telephone access to his children, interfere with a dad’s participation in their children’s sports events or school activities, or thwart a dad’s pre-arranged parenting time by refusing visitation.
One tried-and-true tactic used in keeping the children away from their father – many times permanently – is filing a false report of abuse.
The mother’s refusal to grant the father access to his children is because her children are allegedly at risk of imminent harm. She is keeping them away from their father for their protection. Some mothers will go as far as coercing and intimidating the children into lying about their father.
In instances such as these, a father’s custody rights, his reputation, his finances, and even his freedom are automatically put in jeopardy. It is her word against his.
An accusation of abuse is enough to strip a father of his custody rights and trigger a criminal investigation. Erring on the side of caution, authorities will deny the father access to his children until after the investigation.
The misuse of orders of protection by women when going through a divorce is one of the more prevalent and unfortunate trends in family law. A system that was designed to protect against abuse is itself being abused.
These protective orders are called tactical nuclear weapons by fathers rights attorney and Cordell & Cordell CEO Joseph Cordell. Once the nuclear bomb is dropped, the battle turns into full-on war.
Mr. Cordell made this chilling statement in his column on HuffingtonPost.com:
“A Stop Abusive and Violent Environments report published earlier this year estimated that 85% of protective orders are entered against men. I believe that upwards of 90% of those orders are products of tactical divorce considerations.
In fact, many people are encouraged by their lawyers to seek this protection without cause because of the beneficial position gained by this strategic move. These orders are easy to obtain — all a woman has to do is say that she is in reasonable fear for her safety. Documented evidence of abuse is not required.”
Why are a father’s constitutional civil rights abandoned by the judicial system? The burden of proof rests on the accused, when it is supposed to be the state’s burden.
This is especially tragic when you think of how many innocent fathers have permanently been removed from the lives of their children because of false allegations.
In the article “Are There Laws To Protect A Man From An Ex-Wife’s False Report?” there is a case example of a woman serving a 14-year sentence for filing false allegations. Read that story of a man who fought for years against her false allegations and eventually won.
Need To Enforce Your Rights? Contact Cordell & Cordell
Author Julie Garrison has been writing articles and short stories for the past 10 years and has appeared in several magazines and e-zines.
I too suffered this abuse from my ex wife, lost my job financial freedom and even respect of my own family because of lies. It’s been 7 years since I have held my son in my arms.i could write a book and im Sure it would be a best seller
I just went through this in North Carolina. My wife filed false allegations against me that I “shoved her with force” and that I was sexually abusing my 2.5 year old daughter. However, I beat the charges in court in a 3 day hearing. However, I was removed from my home, was denied access to my children for over 2.5 weeks before the court hearing. The motivation of this was that my wife hates the USA and was, I believe, trying to get ful custody of the children so that she could move back to Mexico.
I remembered through all of this that God is in control.
I have been with my children everyday since last Tuesday and they cry and have fits every time I have to leave from dropping them off with their mother. And NO, I never talk bad about her to them, EVER! That is child abuse in my opinion. It is a selfish coward that uses their innocent children as a pawn against the other parent. It is unacceptable!
How I ensured my win? I carried for weeks a personal digital voice recorder every time I went home. I date and time stamped the beginning of each recording and the same near the middle and the end, with a summary in anything happened that needed to be listened to.
Though we didn’t need to use the recordings to win, I had them to show there was no contact between us, her vicious attitude toward me, and weeks of constant verbal downgrading, humiliation, and abuse toward me.
Amen that I won, but how do I feel safe taking my kids anywhere if she can just file charges again at any later date?
Brilliantly done – I’m in a similar situation now … So brutal .
L.Price
I am going thru the same thing more after going thru dialysis. Kicked out the house and always threaten with getting a PFA as a weapon. Harrassed by words . I have 15 year old daughter that she has custody of. No rights for men.
I went through this about 12 years ago and haven’t seen my son since. I was in the military so she had lots of time and resources to everything together so when I returned I was dealt a nuke so devasting that I couldn’t even care for my other son who lived with me.
a man has no rights in wv,my exwife even changed my childs last name,my exwife cheated me out of my daughters life,try’ed to get help but thats not going to happen because state of wv take’s all of your money and you cant afford a lawyer.dont know about you people’s state’s but thats the way it is here in wv.THE FATHER HAS NO RIGHTS,would make a good book