Introduction I NEVER WANTED TO write this book. Although my experiences with judges, lawyers, and court-ordered therapists during my own high conflict divorce proceedings left me outraged over the injustices I believe are endemic to the family law system in our society, I had no desire to revisit them. The pain I suffered, the fear of and anger I felt toward nearly all of the principals involved, and the inescapable sense of helplessness and isolation exhausted me. However, to live inside the divorce matrix, to be engaged in that battle, ultimately means to be poised to tell your story, to make your point, to argue your side at a moment's notice. It is a fire that is constantly burning. These feelings moved me to share my own experiences with nearly any kindred spirit who broached the subject. In restaurants, ticket lines, airplanes, men's locker rooms, wherever I might be, when that particular conversation started, the facts of my own case would spill out in a torrent. Other times I would sit and listen for hours, grateful for the opportunity to allow someone else to unburden themselves.
I could never tell my story urgently enough, and I never tired of the subject of divorce's iniquities. I believed that a book on the subject would write itself. Eventually, that would change. The passion I had for this issue dried up. The ideas and stories, once so fresh in my mind that I thought they would pour out of me and onto the page like a Pollock painting, began to fade. For three years I had told my story, each recitation as fresh as the first. But any normal human being has a limited capacity for ongoing conflict, and I believed I had reached mine. I have heard people use terms like spent and hollowed out to describe the ultimate result of protracted divorce litigation.
Sadly, I have learned that little of this is hyperbole. Divorce litigation becomes like the island of Dr. Moreau in H. G. Wells's novel. The abused and horrified litigants want to row their boat away from that island at any cost. I was no different. I wanted nothing more than to put this entire experience behind me and get on with my life.
I had grown weary of writing this book, until I would meet another man who had suffered the same way I had. Suddenly, the old passion to address these issues would return. DIVORCE LITIGATION IS A UNIQUE phenomenon in our culture. When someone is sick, our society usually offers some means of care. Often that care extends to their families as well. The sick individual reaches out to professionals who arrive with their skills and training at the ready, prepared to solve the problem. When illness afflicts a marriage, however, the professionals who arrive on the scene often are there to prolong the bleeding, not to stop it. To be pulled into the American family law system in most states is like being tied to the back of a pickup truck and dragged down a gravel road late at night.
No one can hear your cries and complaints, and it is not over until they say it is over. Early in my own divorce proceedings I came upon men who told me that the corrosiveness and complexity of their divorces had forced them to give up. They "wrote off" not only their first marriages, but their children as well. Many went on to remarry. The chance to "make things right" meant starting another family. I could never, ever comprehend how a man could abandon his child in this way. However, as my own proceedings went on, and the recriminations became more severe, I began to appreciate these men, and some women as well, better than I imagined possible. I have sat with men whose hearts are filled with love for their children.
Before their divorce there had never been any doubt of that love or their abilities as parents. Then divorce lawyers entered the picture to do what many of them do best: destroy an innocent parent's reputation and their bond with their children. Therefore, lawyers, along with ineffectual judges who do little to curb such destructive forces in American family law, are a principal focus of this book. Family law in most states has become its own preserve, one in which litigants come and go while the principal players remain the same. Those players, not the families whose fates are determined by this system, are the ones who profit from protecting the status quo. We have, I believe, a system designed to line the pockets of these principals. Anything that results in effective conflict resolution, protection of both parents' rights, and, most important, a healthy environment for the children of divorce is a happy accident. The problem lies not only with antagonistic lawyers who perpetuate conflict but also with the judges who sit idly by and do nothing to rein them in.
However, this book is not a blanket indictment of all attorneys and the legal profession. I will cite by name some of the truly constructive and decent men and women I have encountered during my own proceedings. (Unfortunately, under the current system, decency and humanity often work against family law attorneys.) Nor do I mean to imply that a legal divorce is always an unsafe option when a relationship has degenerated beyond repair. There are times when dissolving a marriage is the best decision a couple can make. American taxpayers, however, continue to fund a system that turns a sensitive and private decision into a destructive process that leaves few unscathed. If getting out of your marriage is good for both you and your estranged spouse, it ought to be easier to achieve. The truth is that we maintain a system in which destroying one's ex-spouse, not effectively resolving conflict, is the order of the day.
WHAT FOLLOWS WILL DISAPPOINT those who hoped to find a gossipy, salacious tale of a show business marriage gone bad. Tabloid publications have already put out enough such stories about my protracted divorce and ensuing custody battle. I do not feel compelled to set that record straight. Think what you will. What stories someone's own imagination can come up with will be far more satisfying, in that regard, than the truth. Necessity demands that I include some of the particulars of my own case, but only those germane to the book's purpose. However, you will come away disappointed if you hope to find a bitter, angry attack against my ex-wife. When I write of my own experience, I present my side of the story and interpretation of what occurred.
As all divorce litigants should eventually realize, attacking the other party is not in anyone's interest, especially when children are involved. It does no good for a parent to bury their ex-spouse on the pages of a book, so I reserve my attacks for the family law system, specifically the Los Angeles County system where my own case was adjudicated. Most important, this book is not an attempt to escape responsibility for my own actions. I do not ask anyone to believe that this is all someone else's fault. Much of the trouble I found myself in came about as the result of a series of mistakes and bad judgments I made throughout both my marriage and divorce. Knowing what I do now about myself and my ex-wife, about our approaches to life, our personalities, what makes us happy, even something as simple as where we wanted to live, it might have been in everyone's best interest if we'd never married. But that kind of thinking is pointless. We did marry, and in the process we, like so many others, ignored signs of what lay ahead.
I made choices that led to the place where I am now. In the pages that follow I accept full responsibility for them. Because of the scope of the problem this book explores, the issues raised could never be fully articulated through my own case alone. Therefore I have chosen three men to share their own stories and perspectives. All of them have changed their names and the specifics of their identities. One of the subjects is an amalgam of different individuals' stories. Although I believe that to omit the particulars of my own case would be counterproductive to the book's purpose, it has never been my goal to embarrass anyone in the process. Adding some of my own experiences to those of my contributors proved to be the most effective way to explore key issues while leaving everyone's dignity largely intact.
MANY READERS, ESPECIALLY the attorneys and other professionals who play integral roles in the family law system, will automatically dismiss this book as nothing more than the grumblings of a bitter and angry man. Rather than falling prey to a corrupt system, they will say I am the victim of my own poor choices and brought all this on myself by marrying the wrong woman, hiring the wrong lawyer, or through my own boorish behavior. After all, I should have known I stood a good chance of ending up inside a divorce court. Half of all marriages end in divorce, and Hollywood marriages fare even worse. My time of being chained behind the pickup truck of the legal system was my own bad luck. Everyone knows little good ever comes out of our legal system, usually varying degrees of bad. I should have had the good sense to avoid it at all costs. Besides, my situation is, in these critics' eyes, an anomaly.
It is the exception, not the rule. I could have chosen a course that would have shortened the legal process and lessened my pain. I could have given up. Caved. Others have. I should have as well. Instead, these same critics would say my persistence only made things worse for myself. I agree that I did make things worse for myself.
Foolishly, I walked into a courtroom with the expectation that I would be given some equitable rights regarding my daughter. I ignored the less than subtle message that tells noncustodial parents, especially fathers, to abandon such hopes and face the realities of this system. Walk away, we're told. Accept your fate as your penance for the poor ch.