Before you read
Important notice
This book provides general information and the author’s perspective for educational purposes only. It is not legal advice, financial advice, or mental-health treatment, and reading it does not create an attorney-client, therapist-client, or any other professional relationship with the author or publisher.
The author is a licensed clinical social worker, not an attorney. Laws, court rules, and procedures about divorce, custody, support, protective orders, evidence, and privacy vary by state and county and change over time, and may have changed since this book was written. Nothing here describes the law of any particular place. Before acting on anything in this book that could affect your legal rights or your case, consult a licensed attorney where you live.
The stories in this book are illustrative scenarios, not accounts of real clients or cases. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.
The author and publisher make no warranties that this information is complete or suited to your situation, and disclaim liability for any loss or harm arising from its use. Your decisions are your own.
If you or anyone else is in danger, call 911. If you are thinking about suicide or are in crisis, call or text 988 in the United States.
A note before you start
The stories in this book are illustrative scenarios. Some combine patterns I’ve encountered repeatedly in clinical and family-court work; others are fictionalized examples written to show those patterns. None portrays an identifiable client. If you think you recognize yourself, that’s because the patterns repeat. That’s the point of the book.
Nothing here is legal advice. Divorce and custody laws differ by state, sometimes by county, and they change. This book deliberately doesn’t describe any one state’s law; where the answer depends on where you live, it tells you to ask. Where I say “ask your attorney,” I mean it literally. Where I describe what courts tend to do, I’m describing patterns I’ve seen, not rules you can rely on.
I write “she” and “her” for your co-parent because this book is addressed to fathers whose co-parent is the children’s mother, which describes most of the men who have sat in my office. If your family is built differently, the principles hold. Change the pronouns.
If there is violence, stalking, or coercive control
Read this before anything else in the book. Much of the advice here assumes two parents who are angry but safe. If either of you has hit, threatened, stalked, controlled the money or the phone to dominate, or made the other afraid, several chapters change:
- Staying in the home (Chapter 2): safety comes before the status quo. If you or the children are in immediate danger, get to safety and call 911. Talk to a domestic-violence advocate and an attorney about the safest way to handle the home and the parenting schedule.
- Exchanges (Chapter 11): use a supervised exchange center, a third party, or a public safe-exchange location, not a parking lot conversation.
- Communication (Chapter 5): use only the channel a court order allows, often an app or the attorneys. If a protective order bars contact, there is no “quick text about the kids.”
- Mediation (Chapter 3): many programs screen for abuse, and joint mediation may be inappropriate. Tell your attorney and the mediator the truth.
- Recordings and documentation (Chapter 6): ask your attorney what’s lawful and what protects you; the rules can differ when safety is at stake.
- Shared-parenting presumptions, where they exist, often have domestic-violence exceptions.
If a protective order is in place, in either direction, follow it to the letter. If you’re in danger, call 911. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233, and it serves men too. If you’re the one who has frightened your family, a batterer-intervention program and an honest conversation with your attorney are the first steps, and they’re far better than the alternative.
And if at any point in these 90 days you find yourself thinking your kids would be better off without you, stop reading and call or text 988. Your children need you present far more than they need you to win.
If you were never married
This book says “divorce” because most of the fathers who’ve sat in my office were married. If you weren’t, almost everything here still applies: the Never List, the texts, the logbook, the second home, the kids. One thing comes first for you, and it’s urgent.
In many states, an unmarried father’s rights to custody and parenting time aren’t fully established until paternity is legally established, by a signed acknowledgment at the hospital, a court order, or both. Until then, the child’s mother may effectively decide when you see your child, and you may have no order to point to when she says no. Even a signed acknowledgment doesn’t always create a parenting-time schedule; that usually takes a court filing.
So in your first week: find out exactly what’s on file about your paternity, and talk to a family-law attorney or your courthouse self-help center about filing for custody and parenting time. Then do everything else in this book. The status-quo principle in Chapter 2 hits unmarried fathers harder, not softer, because there’s often no house to stay in and no existing order. The pattern you build in these 90 days, in writing, is the evidence you’ll have.