Almost unthinkable for you moms out there. How can a mom lose custody of her
child? I've got an expert here to discuss that with me today. It's about time we
took this one on, Sid. -Yeah, it is. -That you'll remember perhaps from other
videos, Sid Unrau who's licensed attorney here in the state of Utah. And
also, a certified Live On Purpose coach. -Absolutely. -Which is why we like to have conversations a
lot. -Yes. With the experience that we've both had in child custody cases. Sid,
you've noticed some things that are risky especially when it comes to
today's topic. How can a mother moves custody of her child? Tell us where
you're coming from on this Sid because I know that you've had some recent
experiences that have taught you the 4 points that we're going to share in
just a minute. -Yeah. I had a recent experience. I have a client who's a man
who wanted custody from his ex-wife. And at first I thought, this is going to be
pretty impossible. Usually the court isn't going to go there. The court is going to
say, "Well, let's see if we can rehabilitate mom. Let's see if we can
just fix things." And it's mostly an enforcement issue not to change custody
issue. Because changing custody frankly is dramatic on the child. It's traumatic.
-Right. -And it's... It can be very difficult. And the transition from one household to
the other can just be horrid. But the reasons that custody gets changed all
came out. And I just want to mention, I realized as I was preparing for this and
looking at this case that I just recently had that I'd had one about 20
years ago. Something like that where a mother lost custody and she was my
client. And I was doing everything I could to help her keep custody. And I
realized that she had done exactly what this mother that we just beat in court
had done. And that's why former client lost custody. And that's why my
new client, the man won custody for my mother. I'm not trying to say that I
think mothers are better than fathers as far as raising children are
concerned. But once the children are sad, it's usually in the best interest of the
children to keep them where they are. Because it's so traumatic to change. -Well,
that's the Trender the what we would expect to see. -Yeah. -Basically in the
courts. And I used to do child custody evaluations for the court. I've seen this
from the psychological side. And so, I'm curious to see what these 4 points
are that you came up with because you said that they're consistent in both of
these cases. -Yeah. And let me start out by just saying this is sort of a point zero
of the 4. It's best if parents can just get along and co-parent. Or even they
can't co-parent, if they can parallel parent. So that they aren't infringing on
each other's rights, that they're supporting each other. That they're not
putting the child in the middle of those kinds of things. It seems so simple.
That's what we do when we're married, right? We deal with our children and we
don't always agree on everything. But we overall agree. And our children have some
kind of healthy opportunity to thrive. -I'm glad you mentioned that, Sid. Because
we've done some other videos here on the channel. You can go look them up. In fact,
there's one that you and I did about winning child custody cases. It's
something along those lines. But there's a link right up there in that corner of
the video. Cue that up to watch next and then you'll see some others in our
custody playlist here on the channel. So, you can go cruise around there. And we
did one on co-parenting too. -Right. -So, those resources are there for you. Tell
us what you've learned about how a mother can can lose custody? -Well, the
first thing that just sticks out is that the mother is hyper focused on the
father. Instead of being focused on her own needs, on her own behavior,
she's focused on the father's behavior. And she absolutely exaggerated what's
bad about dad. And actually exaggerate what's good about her. And that's just
really horrible. And this sort of bleeds into another point. Kids pick up on this.
They aren't neutral in this. The kids can tell when mom hates dad. And the kids can
tell when dad hates mom. The kids can also tell when mom's trying to get along
with dad. So, focusing on dad and focusing on the negative. And this bleeds over. And
it gets back to dad. And if dad had no idea that things were bad, then I would
have not been get into this case. -Right. -So, that's what happens. So, in this
particular case it was actually so extreme. Mom called DCFS on my guy.
I think 7 or 8 times. And it was actually the eighth time DCFS said, "Hey,
there's something weird here." So, they actually started going after mom.
Which was helpful. But well the point is though that if mom keeps focusing on dad
so much and she can't see her own faults, then that's a problem. -Right.
Now, Sid. You could tell that it was exaggerated. -Oh, yeah. -I can tell that it's
exaggerated. The judge can tell that it's exaggerated. This does not bode well for
someone to have such an inflated and negative opinion of the other parent. And
can I just add also as a child custody evaluator, this is something that I
looked for a lot. Those children are going to struggle more if there are
strong negative opinions held by either parent about the other parent. -Right.
Exactly. -And so, you're saying this factor that has been consistent in the cases
you've seen is an over or a hyper focus on the other parent and it tends to be
negative. -Right. And this sort of leads to another point. This is about feedback in
general. It took me a while to get this. But I was in a training one time when
someone said... Someone called me a "jerk". And I had to think about it.
"I'm a jerk?" And I thought, "Yeah, you know. I can buy that. I'm a jerk." Now... And
then our trainer in that point said, "You know, if I hear that I'm a jerk from one
person..." Well, whatever. But if I keep hearing it from different people
including people I just barely met, well maybe there's something to it and I
should look inside. What happened with both my client, the old client that
we lost custody with and this new client where I win custody from a mother. The
court had told this mother over and over again. "You need to improve. There's
something wrong." She did not buy that feedback. The caseworkers, her friend...
-Because she was so focused on the other parent? -So focused on my guy. So, the point
number 2 is the mothers can this custody by not noticing and not
accepting that they're not perfect. And we can all improve by listening to
our feedback. And seeing where we can improve. If the mother had just listened
to the court the first 6 or 7 times, we were at court,
maybe my client wouldn't have won custody from her. -So, she'd been humble
enough to be open to the feedback about the improvements that she needed to make
personally? -Right. -That would have been far more productive than focusing on all
of the perceived flaws of her ex-husband. -And I don't like to exaggerate but I
would say a million times more protective. -A million!? -If she had simply...
If she had simply taken the advice and stopped calling out father every
time she could stop assuming that every time there was a bruise or
something that dad must have beaten the child. Every time the daughter had
trouble going to the bathroom, "Oh, no. Dad must have molested her." I mean, "Really!?"
It's just... I mean you and I both had kids. Things happen. We don't automatically
think, "Oh, somebody did something to my child." That's why this happened. -Can I
just reiterate also... We talked earlier about how you notice it, I notice that,
the judge notices that. If it's an exaggeration.
And that gets categorized in a place in the judges mind that you don't want to
be in. -Oh, yeah. This irritates and annoys judges. -Absolutely. -Have you noticed this?
-Yes. And social workers and anybody else involved. And probably custody evaluators. -Oh.
Yeah. So, it does not bode well for you. Anyway, I think we've made that point
probably strongly enough. What's number 3? -So, the third point... And this is
sort of it slides right in here. Don't use the children as pawns. Whether
it's one child or multiple children. The child starts becoming a communicator. And
there are 2 ways that this happens. One is directly. "Well, talked to your dad. You
have to ask your dad about that." Instead of doing the adult thing and having the
parents talk about things like visitation arrangements or exactly pick
up and drop off in exactly times and things like that. We have to let the
children be children and not be the communicators. But the other thing... The
other way that they're used as pawns is completely accidentally. And that is... I
don't know if you would agree that this is a pawn thing. But this is how I sort
of characterize it. Kids try to accommodate the feelings of the parent.
In other words, if a child hears nothing except bad about dad, then when they come
to dad's house. Either they're trying to buy into that and make it worse. And I've
seen that happen in several cases. Or they're trying to
defend. And so in that way, they're unwilling messengers or
inadvertent messengers. And either way, they're pawns from my perspective.
They're unfortunately in the position where they become the mediators, the
mitigators. They try to fix things and that's just really sad. Kids should be
allowed to be kids. And it's different. When there are little bitty kids, it's
one way. And when they're adult kids, they start getting into the argument which
also shouldn't be the case. And that can really ruin a case for a mother. If the
judge never finds out how the child feels and the judge could detect, "Hey
this child is getting this for mom." -Yes. -That's a real problem. -Sid, this can
range from the more subtle versions of that like what you've just pointed out
through very overt, very intentional alienation of the other
parent. And that's even more destructive. But I think even the subtle forms (like
you said) are going to put that child in an awkward position. And they will feel a
need to protect and champion their parent. And often, they feel a need to do
that with the parent they feel is more vulnerable. -Yeah. Exactly.
-Less stable, perhaps. Again, not a category you want to find yourself in. -No. And I
think kids want to fix things. And... Well I think we all want to fix things. That we
see that we can. The kids want to fix things. When mom says negative things
about dad or about a situation. And the kid knows "That's not exactly right." And
the child gets in the middle one way or the other either by confronting mom or
by trying to help dad out. It's just sad. You know what? If you're still watching the
video, some people turn us off by now. -Oh, yeah. -Because they don't want to hear
this. We're not going to lie to you. We're coming from decades of clinical
and legal experience in the child custody area. Please consider what we're
saying here. You're going to feel pulled into some dynamics that are not healthy
for your kids. And that's where I'm coming from as a psychologist. Sid,
something I've appreciated about you as an attorney
that you keep those kids interest in mind too. -Absolutely.
-Where some attorneys that I've worked with, they're just out to win the battle.
-Just a little comment about that. One time as I was going into court to argue,
it was a temporary custody issue. My client said "Where should we sit?" And I
said, "Oh, the good guys sit on this side." And implying you know, the bad guys sit
on that side. The commissioner was on the bench and he said, "Mr. Unrau, in my
court, the kids are the good guys." Yeah. That's true. -That schooled me. And got me to help focus.
-Now, you've got one more point that I
think we ought to make before we wrap up. -So, this is probably one of the more
basic ones. But obey court orders. This might seem like it's just the same thing
but it isn't. People who just simply ignore a court order,
it just doesn't bode well with the court. Regardless of all the other things that
you do right, if you just consistently disobey the court orders or disregard
them, I have one client who is supposed to not get out of the car when her
ex-husband comes and visits the children. And they're supposed to meet at a
certain place. Not in the police station. I hate that. But they meet at a certain
place and the kids are just supposed to go... The youngest one is 7. So, there's
no reason that kids can't just get out of the car. Oh, she always gets out of the
car and says a couple things to dad. And we've gone to court 2 or 3
times. I've warned her. This is not good. If dad... I mean dad's videotaping it. This
is not good. That's necessarily completely correspond
to any of the other things that we said. Although it does you know, that it's in
front of the children. But that's an disobedience of the court order. But
other disobediences. I mean, other things that are more subtle.
-Which is incidentally against the law. -Right, exactly.
The law is 2 ways. One is the legislature makes a line. The other way is the court
orders. And either way it's the law for you. -It is the law. And for you to ignore
that could lose your case for you. -Right. And if everything else is
going for you but you just want to bay the court order, you can lose custody. -I
hope you got those 4 points. That's going to make a huge difference as you move
forward. Take it from a couple of old experts. These things are important to
pay attention to. There's other videos in child-custody playlist here on the
channel that will give you some additional information. Share these
videos with others that you think would benefit as well. See if we can do a
better job with our kids.
hands down face lights down to the phone