Chapter 2 — Don't Move Out Without a Plan

Consider this scenario. Terrence left to keep the peace. His wife asked him to, his pastor thought it was the mature thing, and the arguing in front of the kids had gotten bad. He took a duffel bag to a friend’s apartment “for a couple of weeks.” He saw the kids when it worked out, which turned out to be Wednesday dinners and most Saturdays.

Six weeks later there was a hearing on temporary orders. Her attorney described the children’s “established routine” at the marital home with their mother and asked that it continue, with the father having “reasonable visitation.” The judge, who had never met either of them, did what judges usually do with an established routine. Terrence had been a fifty-percent parent on a Tuesday in March. By the end of April he was an every-other-weekend father, and it took him most of a year to get back what he’d given away by walking out the door with a duffel bag.