The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

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00:01:16.880 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

00:01:21.560 Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression

00:01:27.040 and anxiety. We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a

00:01:32.820 moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling. With decades of experience helping

00:01:37.440 patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new

00:01:42.680 series. He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely

00:01:48.680 possible to find your way forward. If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's

00:01:54.460 hope and there's a path to feeling better. Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan

00:02:00.480 B. Peterson on depression and anxiety. Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.

00:02:09.520 Welcome to episode 238 of the JVP podcast. I'm Michaela Peterson. Dad just finished his show

00:02:17.800 in Norfolk, Virginia. The tour is still going great. Today's guest on Dad's podcast is Greg Ellis.

00:02:25.360 He came on to discuss divorce and family law in the US. Unfortunately, Greg's long and grueling

00:02:31.720 experience through the divorce system makes him an excellent guest to discuss something that affects

00:02:36.300 about 50% of marriages. Greg's recent work, The Respondent, is a multimedia project that mixes

00:02:42.720 personal experience with systemic criticism. Check it out in the links below. He and Dad talked about

00:02:48.620 divorce statistics, the redistribution of assets after divorce, presumption of innocence, signs of

00:02:55.760 trouble in a marriage, Greg's non-profit, the relationship between forgiveness and the autonomic

00:03:01.780 nervous system, and more. If you enjoy this episode, or at least learn something, please subscribe.

00:03:07.000 And if you don't want to hear me read ads, please visit jordanbpeterson.supercast.com and sign up

00:03:12.960 there. It'll auto switch you to the ad free version of this podcast. Plus you get exclusive content like

00:03:19.040 AMAs. It's fast and easy and just $10 a month. I hope you enjoy this episode.

00:03:37.000 Hello everyone. I'm here today with Mr. Greg Ellis, a best-selling author, TV director,

00:03:49.180 Annie Award-nominated voice artist, and Emmy Award-nominated actor. He's appeared in Oscar-winning

00:03:54.960 movies, directed Hollywood superstars, produced and written television shows, starred in Broadway musicals,

00:04:01.060 and voiced animated characters for movies, television series, cartoons, and more than 120 video games.

00:04:08.240 His major motion picture film credits include the Pirates of the Caribbean series, Titanic,

00:04:14.800 Star Trek, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and Beowulf. His television credits include 24, X-Files, CSI,

00:04:22.300 Dexter, NCIS, and Hawaii Five-O. With his production company, Monkey Toes, Mr. Ellis has written and

00:04:29.160 directed projects for Kiefer Sutherland and Stephen Fry, who's been on this podcast. He's also the host of

00:04:36.300 several popular video podcasts, and he additionally founded the child advocacy program, The Respondent,

00:04:43.800 which inspires family champions through his non-profit CPU, Children and Parents United. His book,

00:04:51.800 which we're going to concentrate on today, at least to some degree, is The Respondent,

00:04:57.120 exposing the cartel of family law. It's a call to action, and a necessary one, to reform the one

00:05:04.900 branch of our legal system that does not provide the presumption of innocence, family law. Yeah,

00:05:12.200 well, that's quite a claim that that branch of family law, that branch of law does not provide

00:05:16.840 the presumption of innocence. So maybe we could start by exactly what you mean by that, and why you

00:05:22.520 would make that claim. Well, yeah, through personal experience. First of all, thank you for having me

00:05:28.580 on, Jordan. It's great to be on your show. I've been looking forward to this for a while. Yeah,

00:05:33.040 family law, the only branch of our legal system where there's no presumption of innocence.

00:05:38.240 Murderers, rapists, terrorists, pedophiles, all get more legal rights than law-abiding citizens. And

00:05:43.900 the silver bullet, as I call it, the silver bullet playbook or paradigm of high-conflict divorce,

00:05:49.500 the smoking gun of this corrupt legal system. That's become the go-to strategy for divorce lawyers

00:05:56.220 that guarantees victory. And they encourage the petitioners and the respondents to use,

00:06:02.360 usually petitioners, to utilize this strategy, usually the false allegation of domestic violence,

00:06:08.180 to win in court, to get the cash and prizes, for want of a better phrase.

00:06:13.560 And, you know, I had no idea of the words family law before what happened to me happened to me in

00:06:21.820 2015. And once I started investigating through experience and through talking with other experts

00:06:30.040 in the system, outside the system, it became clear to me that we have a real issue here. And if we can

00:06:36.840 improve or reform the family court or the family law system, expose the cartel of family law, as I call it,

00:06:43.560 because it is like a crime syndicate, these quasi-kangaroo courts that they have. You don't

00:06:49.440 get the presumption of innocence. You don't get your rights read to you. I've spoken with fathers

00:06:54.080 in particular who've been in, who've been ended up in court with false allegations of domestic

00:06:58.760 violence. One, one told me a story about, he put his wrists up and said, your honor, arrest me,

00:07:03.280 have the bailiff arrest me. And the judge said, are you crazy? And the gentleman said, no, if I'm arrested,

00:07:09.700 I'll get the rights that a criminal has, Miranda rights, access to an attorney, et cetera, et cetera.

00:07:15.500 And of course, those who are suffering the most are the people who don't have the wherewithal or the

00:07:19.720 financial resources to be able to have representation. And even those who do, if you are the respondent,

00:07:26.860 you are behind the curve. It is the presumption is that you as the accused have to prove your

00:07:34.760 innocence rather than the accused, which is Western jurisprudence, has to prove their case.

00:07:41.500 And so it seems like in our society, in a lot of strange ways, the accuser now seems to have

00:07:48.140 almost an untrammeled right to be believed. And there's an increasing insistence on that in our

00:07:55.660 culture as well, which is, for example, there was a, this is a bit far afield, but German chemistry

00:08:00.960 journal the other day, scientific journal, published their new guidelines for authors in

00:08:05.620 the aftermath of a scandalous chemistry paper they published, which hypothetically offended

00:08:12.020 some people, that now authors have to be, what would you say, governed by the realization that

00:08:20.460 their words will be interpreted by those who read them and that they have the final say,

00:08:25.440 those who read them. And so online too, you can be accused of virtually anything and then mobbed

00:08:33.140 for virtually anything. And it's virtually impossible to defend yourself. And this notion that

00:08:39.720 merely because someone says they've been offended, let's say, in the mildest of cases,

00:08:46.400 that that means you have definitively done something wrong is, well, there's a pervasive

00:08:50.820 and broad scale move in that direction in our culture. And so what happened in your case,

00:08:58.520 you were the respondent in a divorce case, which you didn't see coming. Is that, is that's correct?

00:09:03.620 I've read your book. It was a while back. So I'm pulling all the bits of it back into my memory, but

00:09:08.100 let's go through the story exactly. And sure. And just, just very briefly to that point,

00:09:13.520 yes, victimhood has become the new social currency. Its economy is booming and where victimhood is

00:09:19.160 rewarded. Responsibility never follows. So it's part of the reason I call the book, the respondent.

00:09:23.940 It's the defendant in a family law case. And the, um, the petitioner is that person who actually

00:09:30.760 instigates the proceedings. So, um, you know, uh, what happened to me in the span of, I'd say around

00:09:36.440 eight hours, uh, I'd been married for 20 years, two children, two boys, the, the meaning of my life.

00:09:43.700 Uh, we did everything together. I was that engaged, loving, present father. Family was my everything.

00:09:52.320 How old were your boys at that point?

00:09:54.760 10 years old and eight years old at the time.

00:09:58.120 Okay. And you said you've had quite a stellar career and, and obviously we're very busy doing

00:10:03.320 that. So in what sense was your family at the center of your life?

00:10:07.320 That's a great question. Yeah. I think my, my now ex-wife and I were, we, we drifted somewhat to

00:10:15.580 become a well-oiled marriage machine. Um, the avoidant in her and the anxious in me couldn't

00:10:21.400 quite get close enough. I think, uh, Pia Melody calls it the, uh, co-addicted love tango, uh, where

00:10:28.160 we were kind of swaying back and forth, trying to get closer, but drifting apart. I would be out of

00:10:33.540 town filming a movie and return and she go out of town because she wanted to work. And I supported

00:10:38.260 that. I would have preferred she stayed home, but she wanted to work. So I was like, great. So we

00:10:42.580 worked our schedules out that we could be present. And much of my work was, was in town in Hollywood,

00:10:48.340 um, at one of the studios. So, you know, I had a, I had a busy career and, but my, I would still say

00:10:56.680 as you did that my family was the center of my life. If I had to choose existentially between my

00:11:03.440 family life and my career, I would have chosen my family life. And, but I was busy and working and

00:11:08.480 well, you have to be busy and working to actually support a family. So, but it's, it's a, it's a

00:11:13.980 strange claim in some sense, right? If you have a career that's really moving forward at a rapid rate,

00:11:18.900 how you can claim simultaneously that your family is still the most important thing to you.

00:11:23.580 It means partly because part of the reason you have a career, if you have any sense is so that

00:11:28.260 you can bring stability and opportunity to your family. And that means in some sense,

00:11:34.220 you can't be with them all the time, but they don't need that anyways, because they should have

00:11:38.560 some autonomy. So, okay. So, but now you said to your marriage, you said you drifted apart a bit with

00:11:44.920 your wife. And so when this happened, this eight hour period that you're describing, did you think

00:11:51.400 afterwards, oh my God, I should have seen this coming, or I did see this coming, or has it

00:11:55.720 remained a, has it remained a shock to you? And then what do you think about the fact that it was

00:12:01.760 a shock? I mean, because obviously the thing to wonder is, well, were, were you willfully blind and

00:12:07.220 should have you seen this coming? And I'm not claiming that you were, I'm, these are, you know,

00:12:12.280 they're genuine questions, but people are going to wonder, obviously.

00:12:15.720 Yeah. Well, look, in the, in the span of eight hours, I was ushered from my home in handcuffs

00:12:22.460 at the behest I later discovered of my ex-wife. Um, I was committed to a mental institution

00:12:30.040 against my will, the first of five incarcerations. Uh, there was also an incarceration in, and I called

00:12:36.700 it solitary confinement, but it was a singular jail cell, uh, subjected to a temporary restraining

00:12:42.160 order in divorce court on the basis of a false allegation that eventually was disproven some

00:12:47.760 six months later. But by then, of course, the reputation savaging had been done and, um, it was

00:12:54.140 all over by the shouting. I became homeless and almost destitute overnight, uh, and, and lost, uh, my,

00:13:01.440 you know, my, my professional reputation, I wouldn't say it was irretrievably destroyed, but, you know,

00:13:06.940 in the small close knit community that I lived in, in Hollywood, close to, uh, close to the studios,

00:13:12.240 um, it certainly took a big dent and, uh, the- Everybody lives in a small close knit community

00:13:18.600 like that if they're working. I mean, the immediate people that you are in contact with and working

00:13:24.420 with intensely tends to be a quite a small number. And it's quite interesting when you get tarred and

00:13:29.680 feathered, the, the people around you get afraid of the contamination real, real quickly. And that's

00:13:36.460 partly because they look at what happened to you. And then they also think, well, you know,

00:13:40.740 we don't really know what went on in the marriage and people are capable of terrible things. And

00:13:45.380 maybe there were things that we don't know about. And then they're split because they knew you and

00:13:49.020 your wife. And, and so it gets complicated instantly. And then it's easier for people just

00:13:54.060 not to have that much to do with you because they also have choices, right? Because they know

00:13:58.140 a reasonable number of people. And it's then maybe you fall from number one or number two on their

00:14:04.200 list of people to invite to like number 15 and they only ever invite the top 10. And so people

00:14:10.220 don't even have to turn their backs on you that much in order for you to be, well, friendless. And so

00:14:17.020 these, these, and the allegation, what exactly was the allegation and why do you think that your wife

00:14:24.120 felt compelled to, to make it? And how do you think she rationalized that to herself if it wasn't true?

00:14:29.680 Hmm. That's a great question. Uh, she had been diagnosed with panic disorder. She wasn't taking

00:14:37.400 her medication. She was out of town. Um, and she had called the police on this particular day,

00:14:43.660 March 5th, 2015. And she'd asked them to come to the house. I was, I'd actually taken the afternoon

00:14:49.160 off. I was at home with my sons playing in the playroom with them. And she asked them to come to the

00:14:54.480 house and said that I was confused. And the dispatch said, we can't go to the house if he's

00:15:00.000 confused. She said, well, what do you need to hear? And they said, we need to hear he's a threat to

00:15:05.440 himself or the children. And then allegedly sometime later, I think 45 seconds later, she, uh, she called

00:15:12.840 them back and said, uh, she said, my husband's just told me, quote, I'm sick of this shit. I'm gonna harm

00:15:21.060 the children. End quote. And those 10 words, that 10 word lie was, was the basis of law enforcement

00:15:29.680 coming first. It was two to my front door. Then it was three, then it was five and a sergeant and

00:15:34.300 the massing garrison, uh, the threshold of, of my home, um, without cause, uh, without a warrant,

00:15:42.020 um, my rights were trampled. Um, the police entered a smart team from the DCFS department of children and

00:15:49.000 family services came in. I was shackled in handcuffs with a bar, uh, behind my, behind my back in a

00:15:55.660 quite affluent neighborhood, uh, with the curtains wide open on a Thursday evening.

00:16:00.480 Right. Well, that'd be a little hard on your reputation. All right.

00:16:03.840 Won't it?

00:16:04.920 Yeah, I would say so.

00:16:07.180 And then of course, you know,

00:16:08.380 what are people going to think? What are they going to think? They're going to think the whole

00:16:10.760 police system is corrupt and that this is all made out of nothing and he's actually innocent.

00:16:15.200 It's like, it's pretty damn hard for people to jump to that conclusion, uh, instantly.

00:16:21.160 Yeah, that's, that's rough.

00:16:21.740 And then, of course, what, what, what then, what then happened was, you know, I was kind

00:16:25.660 of bundled into the back of a, uh, an unmarked police car and, you know, raced off into the

00:16:31.200 building. One of the, actually one of the most heartbreaking images I remember was looking

00:16:35.620 up from the back of that police car, um, and seeing my son, my eldest boy, Charlie,

00:16:41.040 the window and, uh, who, uh, Jordan, um, seeing, seeing my son, my son's childhood at 10 was

00:16:51.300 over. I knew what was coming. Spousification, adultification, um, the, the vilification and

00:16:57.360 the erasure of me as a man, as a father, as a patriarch, as a provider. Um, and I was also

00:17:03.860 heading into a terrifying unknown, a dystopian odyssey. I talk about it as if it's some kind

00:17:09.540 of Kafka trap, but it certainly was Kafkaesque. And then, of course, the, the, the word on

00:17:15.320 the street. I mean, some of the stories I later heard back were absolutely insane. I

00:17:21.940 mean, he's armed, he's psychotic. He's the, I mean, she was telling everyone that I was

00:17:27.360 psychotic and I was bipolar. All of these messages, messages came through my children

00:17:32.080 as well when I eventually got to see them. And there was no end in sight. It was just down

00:17:37.280 the rabbit hole we go. And of course I thought I would get justice. Uh, no, yeah.

00:17:41.200 Don't be thinking the justice. No, no. The justice system is mostly there to stop people

00:17:46.780 who can't reconcile their differences from wreaking social havoc. That's basically what

00:17:51.460 it's there for. To think if you're, do you think you're going to go to the justice system

00:17:55.400 and get justice? It's like, you'll be lucky if it doesn't destroy you once you're tangled

00:18:00.800 up in it. So near it nearly did. It nearly destroyed me. I mean, it didn't. It's amazing

00:18:06.720 that it didn't and that you managed to, to get through this. And so, okay, so this happened

00:18:11.600 and then you're off to the police station. And the thing is the police are going to view

00:18:15.880 themselves in a situation like that as white knights, right? Because they've come in and

00:18:20.220 you can understand that they've come in at the behest of a woman and the God only knows

00:18:23.800 how abused she's been because women do get abused and that's for sure. And so, and of

00:18:29.380 course the guilty act, innocent, just like the innocent act, innocent, probably the guilty

00:18:34.100 are even better at it. And so, and then you're going to be viewed with suspicion because men

00:18:38.940 are going to be viewed with suspicion in a situation like this for sure, where there's

00:18:42.540 allegations of abuse. And that's because there are a handful of bad men and then bad impulses

00:18:47.340 in all of us that, you know, that can be dragged out one way or another. And so, okay. So why

00:18:54.940 did your wife double down on it? Do you think?

00:18:58.160 I think there's a, I think there are probably a few possible reasons. One, I think is shame.

00:19:07.020 The, the emotion or, you know, we talk psychology, it's an extremely powerful emotion. And I think

00:19:14.400 once she'd let Pandora out of the box, if you will, I think the only thing left was hope. Um,

00:19:19.500 and it was hope for her existence. I think there was fear and panic that instilled in herself

00:19:25.820 about that suddenly after 20 years of living a great life together and building a great life and a

00:19:31.640 great home and a great family, which is, you know, is so important. It's my primary reason for being,

00:19:37.320 um, uh, that she perhaps was unaware somewhat of the system and how the system comes in and forces.

00:19:49.800 I mean, you know, when I found out that the states get reimbursed $6,000 for every child, um, that they

00:19:57.780 place into foster care and 4,000 children a day lose a parent in family law. Um, there are financial

00:20:05.120 incentives in place. Um, and the adoption and safe families act of 1974 offers financial incentives

00:20:11.480 to the states that increase these foster or adoption numbers. Um, and to receive these incentives

00:20:17.380 and bonuses, local, uh, child protection services must have more children. They must have more quote

00:20:23.200 merchandise to sell. Uh, funding is available when a child is placed in a foster home with strangers

00:20:29.800 or placed in a mental health facility or medicated as it's called, usually against the parent's

00:20:34.720 wishes. So, um, I think she was also her family system, system of origin, her mother, Appalachian

00:20:42.480 woman, um, very proud woman, twice married, twice divorced. She was, she came in strong, moved into

00:20:50.660 the family home straight away the same night. She actually got back. She got to the family home before

00:20:56.100 my ex-wife returned when I was incarcerated. And it was that, um, psychological, uh, kind of hammering

00:21:04.220 home that you need to do this. You need to do that. And when the CPS came in and said,

00:21:09.120 you know, you need to, uh, uh, you need to start with divorce proceedings. Uh, you need to, uh,

00:21:14.860 file for divorce. You need to file for a restraining order. Otherwise your children will go into foster

00:21:20.720 care. Um, that threat I'm sure must've been terrifying for her as well. So having opened the,

00:21:26.480 why did they threaten her specifically? That was the child protection services. Why did they threaten her

00:21:30.880 with having the children go into foster care? Was it because she was hypothetically unable to

00:21:35.300 protect them from you? If she didn't take certain actions, what, what was the reason?

00:21:39.800 It's my understanding that this is what they do. This is the modus operandi of the CPS because they

00:21:44.580 need to, like traffic wardens need to have enough tickets. The CPS need to meet me to quote her.

00:21:50.100 God help you if you ever get tangled up with child protective services.

00:21:54.220 Oof. That's, that's. I, Jordan, I got, I got a few months later, I managed to get the report

00:21:59.680 that the CPS, this woman, this, this social worker for the CPS who came in and ruined,

00:22:06.420 you know, played a large part in ruining my family with the system and removing my son from

00:22:10.980 having a father. Yeah, well, social worker training is corrupt beyond belief too. It's

00:22:13.700 politically correct, right to the bloody roots. And, and so the, I, you know, the, the,

00:22:18.160 many social workers will come into a situation with that, like that armed to the teeth with

00:22:23.180 the presumption that the whole system is a patriarchal oppressive system. It's based on

00:22:28.140 the exploitation of women and children. And they just need the tiniest bit of evidence to make sure

00:22:32.560 that you're one of those patriarchal oppressors who they're going to take care of. And so that's

00:22:37.540 drummed into them like mad right from day one in social work training and, and increasingly social

00:22:43.840 work as a profession is completely permeated by ideologues of exactly that type. It's God help you

00:22:49.220 if you fall into their hands. Yeah, I, I couldn't agree with you more. I've learned this through

00:22:53.820 my experience and look, my, my sons were, they led a privileged life. It was an earned privileged

00:22:59.960 life. You know, I had to work hard to get out of my small little town in England and, you know,

00:23:05.420 go to London and, you know, I, I want to get into the whole earned and unearned privilege,

00:23:09.800 but that's why I'm a believer in just the same as offenses and given it's only taken. If you choose

00:23:13.800 to take it, go ahead. Um, look, we all have our privileges and our disadvantages and, you know,

00:23:20.960 and some of them are earned and some of them aren't earned. And hopefully we pay for the ones

00:23:25.440 that aren't earned by trying to be good people and by taking the responsibility of that unearned

00:23:30.000 privilege forward. But it's only a fool and an ideologue who goes after someone for their unearned

00:23:35.280 privilege, because the same question can be asked very quickly and very effectively precisely of

00:23:40.720 them. No, I went to this Hollywood, I don't know what to call it meeting on someone's lawn once

00:23:46.920 where everyone there was talking about the 1%. And this was in like Beverly Hills and it was in the,

00:23:54.200 it was on the lawn and a mansion. And I thought, well, I got up and said, you people might not be in

00:23:59.820 the 1% by North American standards. Cause you're not, you don't have a hundred million dollars, but

00:24:04.540 you're in the 1% by global and historical standards. It's like, so who the hell exactly are we

00:24:09.140 talking about here with this unearned privilege nonsense? So a little of that goes a long ways

00:24:13.980 too. You know, I mean, yeah, I agree. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to quickly say, you know,

00:24:21.220 my sons, uh, you know, they, they, they led a, a, a privileged existence. Um, but they were connected

00:24:31.520 to their mother and their father, their biological mother and biological father. We had a family

00:24:35.900 unit. Um, and to, to see, I mean, you know, a member of the country club and I would take the

00:24:44.320 golfing every Sunday and family, at least family dinner, cause we were both out working, but we

00:24:49.840 would all, that was my thing. We, we come together as a family, um, if we can every day and definitely

00:24:56.400 on Sunday for the traditional roast dinner that we do in England. And then to read that report,

00:25:02.060 Jordan, four months later, after I'd been in the fire, a 53 page page report from the,

00:25:09.260 from the DCFS and the social worker, I wept. I wept as I read, you know, the questions asked to

00:25:17.240 my sons, has daddy ever touched your penis? Has he ever put a needle in your arm? I mean,

00:25:22.480 the questions that my sons were just, and I was still, well, you think about what questions like

00:25:28.220 that do to kids? It's like, okay, first of all, you're telling the kids that there are adults that

00:25:34.760 do this to children. So that's the first thing you're doing with the questions. And that's a bit

00:25:38.780 of a revelation to the average child who's say eight or 10, who's really not being privy to such

00:25:44.840 treatment. So you're confronting them with the idea of malevolence itself. Correct. And you're a

00:25:49.960 stranger and you're asking them these weird questions that about like deep malevolence. And so what's up

00:25:56.100 with the institutions, you might say, and then you're implying that their father did this. And

00:26:01.800 if you're the typical, too typical social worker trained in this sort of nonsense, there's the kind

00:26:09.760 of insinuation that goes along with that, that's likely to produce nightmares in the children and

00:26:15.140 phobia. And there's a big documented literature on that. It's like the, what do they call that?

00:26:19.980 It's the false memory syndrome, essentially. Like if you get into the hands of a bad therapist and

00:26:24.320 they start poking around in your memory structure, or, or they can elicit stories from children.

00:26:29.400 There's great documentation of all the daycare. Remember the satanic abuse scandals in the 1980s?

00:26:35.700 My God, you read about what the, the social worker types and police too, what they did to children by

00:26:41.040 asking them these leading questions. It's just absolutely pathological. And then you'd get kids

00:26:46.660 coming up with these fantasies about what happened that were just, well, and then egged on by the police

00:26:53.300 and the social workers until there was a satanic nightmare at the bottom of it. And none of it ever

00:26:57.640 happened. One of the proudest moments I have, uh, uh, have of my sons at eight and 10, getting to page

00:27:05.420 51 or 52 in that report. And they were asked about, um, me as a father and how they rated me having

00:27:12.740 rated their mother. And it was a plus plus plus they, they could so easily to your point have been led

00:27:20.420 down the psychological garden path, uh, to arrive at answers that were just fantasies and not real.

00:27:26.840 Um, but, um, that lasting impression that was left on them, one of the, one of the saddest, I, I, my, I, I was,

00:27:36.180 I was forced to visit with my sons, um, which the very notion of, I remember one father in family court who was

00:27:43.400 told by a judge, you know, visitation. And he said, I will never visit my children. They are my children.

00:27:49.460 And he turned and walked out. And I'll never forget that. I remember looking back years down the line

00:27:54.320 of visitation where that led, um, because the visitation monitor happened to be, he had seven

00:28:00.020 AKAs, used to be a woman, had a criminal record. Um, and he drove around in, you know, a car with,

00:28:08.260 with, you know, stickers of guns and NRA. And not that that's an issue, but just it all added up and

00:28:13.780 there was nothing I could do. And I was getting blackmailed and there was no one I could go to. He was the

00:28:18.340 only conduit. And then I found out that he was there to supervise your visits.

00:28:23.200 Right. To basically let, you know, by, by presence, let my sons know that I was dangerous to be around

00:28:29.740 or to be a feared, which I never had been. And every piece of documentation in the visitation reports,

00:28:35.340 at least for the first 18 months, um, was we love you, dad. We want to live with you, dad. Can't we

00:28:41.400 see you and mom? Why can't, why is mom doing this? Uh, the first visit was, uh, dad, mom says to not get in

00:28:47.460 the car with you because you're going to kidnap us and you have biopolar. I mean, these, these kinds

00:28:52.080 of things were just harrowing to me to hear, but there wasn't, there wasn't really anything. There's

00:28:57.140 no, there's nowhere to go. There's nothing to, there's no one to speak to. But my eight year old,

00:29:02.980 I remember one visit, I think it was maybe my second visit. My eight year old not only had suicidal

00:29:08.960 ideations at eight years old, my beautiful, innocent, playful lad. And he talked out loud about how he was

00:29:17.320 going to kill himself. And I had to listen to that as this monitor listened to it and didn't even

00:29:23.580 consider it a critical incident to report it. And anyway, who's he going to report it to? And what

00:29:30.500 are they going to do? They'd have probably said, he's had that guilt. There you go. Yeah, absolutely,

00:29:36.940 man. Absolutely. So this is, this is why Jordan, you know, I, I came back like a Phoenix from the

00:29:42.580 flames. I was dead and buried. I mean, I literally got to that edge of existential terror.

00:29:49.380 And that's a long way out there, that edge. Whoa. Have you visited?

00:29:55.760 Yeah, I've been there for quite a while. Yeah. For about two years. So

00:30:00.680 I feel for you. And while I'm interested, you know, we could talk more about my story,

00:30:09.000 but I'm interested on how we teeter on that long edge, how we, well, I was fortunate,

00:30:15.720 you know, I was fortunate maybe in contrast to your situation, because what happened to me

00:30:22.080 didn't happen in a manner that severed my closest intimate relationships.

00:30:27.080 Yes. They were still intact. And so when I got very ill, and was also being attacked constantly,

00:30:33.540 my friends and my family were like rocks. And so thank God for that. But so I didn't lose that. And,

00:30:40.260 you know, I don't think I would have lived if I would have lost that too. And so.

00:30:44.780 Yeah, I remember talking when Kayla came on my show, the respondent, and we talked about,

00:30:48.760 you know, that whole situation. I again, I was moved to tears, the podcast you did with her,

00:30:53.300 when you came back and just your struggle and what you've given to society and humanity,

00:30:59.600 and the outrageous attacks from cowards who, who are, you know, the cowards think they have

00:31:09.080 courage and they're, they're, they're placed on the pedestals of, of social media and, and they're,

00:31:16.060 they're not. And, and, and with, with, with what happened to me and my boys,

00:31:22.240 that led me on a journey. I, I, I, I guess the, the big pinnacle moment for me, and I didn't read

00:31:30.500 that much at school. I only read scripts as I went through my career, you know, whether it be

00:31:36.740 screenplays or doing voiceovers, it was, it was 2016. Um, I went right to the edge and I, and I,

00:31:46.180 and I came back from the edge and I don't know where this came from, but I asked myself

00:31:50.660 the meaningful question, who am I? And I opened up my iPhone and I did a deep dive dialectical of

00:31:57.700 meaningful question and meaningful answer of the thesis, antithesis synthesis. And, um, I got over

00:32:04.780 1000, uh, answers and questions. I still have them. And, um, and that led me through to learn a little

00:32:12.100 about, uh, philosophy, phenomenology, affect theory, um, and, uh, just epistemology in general and how I

00:32:22.780 could ritualize my way back to, back to be on my feet again, because I was fetal. Um, my, I think

00:32:30.840 my parasympathetic nervous system was just shaking and I was, and I, the blinds were closed. I couldn't

00:32:36.260 see or hear another human being because there was probably going to be a child laughing, which would

00:32:40.500 remind me of the devastation of losing my sons, the meaning of my life. And so I had to, I had to

00:32:47.120 really get in that, that deep conversation with self, um, me self and the third eye of perception

00:32:54.260 and, and really get the walking going again and the talking going again and trying to get more precise

00:33:02.680 with the words I was thinking and expressing and rebuild and reform and restore, um, not

00:33:10.160 the same life. You know, I say we have two lives and the second life begins the moment we realize we

00:33:18.120 have only one, uh, but that new chapter, that new episode and how to self-author, if you will, um,

00:33:26.320 you know, life is remembered backwards and lived forwards. Well, how can I redraft that floppy disk in

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00:36:21.120 Do you think? I mean, was, you know, because I, look, you tell a story in The Respondent of,

00:36:30.420 well, it's not just an encounter, what would I say? It's an encounter with arbitrary,

00:36:36.080 with the arbitrariest form of authority and, and then that reputation savaging. You're accused of

00:36:41.200 doing something terrible. It's so terrible that it's very difficult for people not to view you with

00:36:46.580 tremendous suspicion as soon as you're accused of that. And so then everything you have is stripped

00:36:51.420 away from you. Well, not everything. That's the issues. Like what isn't stripped away from you? And

00:36:57.360 why did you decide to continue? I mean, you, you lost your career, you lost your reputation,

00:37:02.980 you lost your family, and then you're being pilloried constantly. And that's also really hard

00:37:08.060 psychologically because there must've been part of you during all this that was thinking,

00:37:11.360 well, I must've done something wrong. I mean, how can this, like, what did I do wrong so that

00:37:17.820 this occurred? You know, all these people are after me and they're making these accusations of

00:37:21.900 malevolence and, you know, who's the crazy person here exactly? Is it this weird situation where it's

00:37:27.960 everyone but not me? It's like, that sounds crazy. So how do you withstand that? And, and I mean,

00:37:35.840 it must partly, I guess the positive responses to your sons must've been heartening under those

00:37:41.160 conditions. The fact that when you did see them, you could still see that they loved you and that

00:37:46.360 that bond was still there. And so that's definitely a touchstone. It was for a while, for a long while,

00:37:54.380 but under the unrelenting inescapability of the trauma, you know, trauma resides in the body and the

00:37:59.520 body keeps the score. And going through this, I could see the trauma that was being enacted on them,

00:38:04.540 their loss, their grief, their living grief. I talk about suicide by living grief. I, you know,

00:38:09.880 some of the fathers, many fathers, some mothers too, who are, who are no longer with us because of

00:38:15.120 that suicide by living grief, the, the inescapability that there isn't a finality to the grief. There

00:38:20.940 isn't a finality to the mourning process to be able to memorialize and lay to rest. That last chapter

00:38:27.080 of my book, I think it's chapter 17, a funeral for my sons was, I had to find some way to make

00:38:34.420 meaning in that moment, uh, to, to lay to rest the childhoods that had been stolen from them and that

00:38:43.980 sense of fatherhood and being that, uh, father to them. Um, so that, that was, and then of course I had

00:38:52.900 to find a way to make, to sense make through this and, and, and find a way to help and give back.

00:38:59.800 I think, you know, the, there was part of me that, uh, throughout my career had always been,

00:39:07.200 what can I get? What role can I get? And we're always living to the next, to the next projected

00:39:12.320 moment of, you know, if, if you're on tour, I'm playing this venue, can I get to a bigger venue

00:39:18.040 next year? Can I play to more people, make more money? And that's the continuing cycle of projecting

00:39:24.160 into the next moment, not living in the now moment. And that's, what can I get? And where I moved to

00:39:29.400 was what can I give? How can I give, you know, he who has a why can bear any how? Well, I got to the

00:39:35.380 how and, and, and for me, it was working through, uh, some kind of story within my own story, which

00:39:43.060 made it more, more traumatic because even writing the book, I hadn't really authored a book before.

00:39:48.760 So I was having to revisit the trauma of the experience and then read the audio book and

00:39:54.060 talk about it. So it's this perpetual cycle, but fueling being able to help people, being able to

00:40:00.260 at least when, when it happened to me, Jordan, I looked, I looked online, um, you know, for,

00:40:07.100 I was the black sheep looking online for some kind of help and hope. And the only thing available were,

00:40:12.620 um, 1-800 numbers for attorneys and law firms in family law to make money and books written by women

00:40:20.120 for women on how to ruin your husband and get the cash and prizes, the silver bullets. Um,

00:40:27.660 the only book I found was Alec Baldwin's book, A Promise to Ourselves. And I could only get 15 pages

00:40:33.380 into that because they, and he emailed me and said, this is the best I can offer right now. Read my book.

00:40:39.100 His is literally, it starts in the star chamber of family law. Whereas my story, as you know, it,

00:40:45.540 it kind of, that's the second, it's in three parts. Part one is fear. Part two is loathing. Part three is

00:40:50.280 redemption. And it moves into the second part into the system and the systematic, uh, institutionalized,

00:40:57.460 um, uh, bias of, of how courts perceive how individuals within the court system, judges,

00:41:05.840 child psychologists perceive men and fathers, um, and the family unit. Um, and this, you know,

00:41:15.060 the neo-feminist kind of radical fourth way of feminism that does, that devalues the patriarchy.

00:41:22.040 I don't want to go, go too down that, um, um, discussion.

00:41:26.280 Yeah, but, well, it's worth, it's worth, well, you know, if, if the idea that marriage itself is a

00:41:34.620 patriarchal and oppressive institution isn't far removed from the idea that the nuclear family,

00:41:39.820 especially a two-parent nuclear family, is not to be preferred, say, over a one-parent nuclear family,

00:41:45.640 so what the hell difference does it make if you break one up? And how do you know the father isn't

00:41:49.940 just an oppressive, what would you say, exploiter? Because that goes along with the entire rest of

00:41:56.020 your philosophy. And then you might say, well, that's just philosophy. Who cares? It's like,

00:41:59.600 yeah, you wait till it gets all your leg. You'll find out who cares real soon, because it's going

00:42:03.740 to be you. And you think that's not philosophy. It's like, hmm, you're going to find out real

00:42:09.140 different real soon, and you're not going to like a bit of it. Yeah, too true. And when, and when I,

00:42:14.600 you know, when I, when I looked into the stats, when I looked, when I found out that the world

00:42:20.300 leader in children growing up in single-parent households was America, when I found out that

00:42:24.780 43% of American children live without their father, 63% of youth suicides from dad-deprived

00:42:31.100 homes, I know you've had Dr. Warren Farrell on your show talking about this dad deprivation.

00:42:36.060 Yeah, the noted men's right fascist, you know, him, the guy used to be on the National Organization

00:42:40.860 of women. And yeah, he's a real fascist, old Warren Farrell.

00:42:44.920 But it's like, where have all the mentors gone? Well, there's no surprise we don't,

00:42:48.220 we don't have many men or as many men stepping in. Well, we're, we're okay sending them off to war.

00:42:54.560 But, you know, in terms of like stepping into the public conversation, because, you know,

00:43:00.140 because patriarchy, because smashing, because believe all, we should listen. Yes. But believe

00:43:06.680 all women, no. Time's up, good riddance. Um, glad they're gone, done. Uh, we look at organizations

00:43:13.540 like, you know, once great storied organizations like the ACLU. Yeah. Um, you know, gone, done,

00:43:20.460 over, um, can't be trusted. Um, you know, for me.

00:43:24.320 Then there's the Southern Poverty Law Center. There are lots of fun too.

00:43:28.240 Yeah. Aren't they? They're just a barrel of laughs.

00:43:30.620 Yeah, they are. They're just a blast, those people.

00:43:32.760 I mean, look, when we have an industry going back to family law, when we have nearly $60

00:43:38.080 billion a year, American divorce machine, that's what the cartel makes $60 billion. It's not

00:43:44.340 incentivized to, um, to, to reform itself. Um, you know, the whole divorce industry can feast

00:43:54.280 on the accumulated wealth of a once stable family. And so obviously it's going to produce a tremendous

00:44:02.420 amount of parasitic activity. Now that leads us to a deeper question here too, is look,

00:44:08.660 many of the people in my immediate family have been divorced. And so, you know, I don't ask such

00:44:14.860 questions lightly, but we did have a notion in our society for a very, very long time that divorce was

00:44:20.620 wrong. And, and as I said, many people in my family have been divorced and they had difficulty

00:44:28.420 in their marriages. And sometimes they established much more satisfactory, let's say, second marriages,

00:44:34.480 but it isn't obvious to me at all that liberalizing the divorce statutes, especially in relationship to

00:44:42.840 no fault divorce, which was supposed to be, you know, an easy pathway forward has produced anything

00:44:49.020 but an absolute, absolute carnage in its, in its wake. And so I, obviously having lived through

00:44:56.680 these problems, you're very much inclined and motivated to find solutions. And, and what do

00:45:02.280 you think of in relationship to solutions? I mean, I think I didn't believe this when I was younger,

00:45:08.200 but I think 50, 50 custody should be the default in every divorce case. And that both parties should

00:45:13.920 have to argue against that rather than the presumption being that the children, especially

00:45:18.940 when young are better off with their mother. And I don't say that lightly because I know that

00:45:24.120 particularly for children under nine months old, that maternal care is really primary, but the fact

00:45:30.500 that the default position is custody with the mother puts men in an unbelievably bad situation. And so,

00:45:37.480 and the children as well.

00:45:38.540 I couldn't agree with you more on 50, 50 default shared parenting. There have been two states who've

00:45:45.640 passed it, Kentucky and Arkansas, Kentucky, interestingly enough, they passed 50, 50 shared

00:45:51.140 parenting in a large part, because I believe it's illegal for, for the legal industry to lobby politicians

00:45:59.620 there. And that's the challenge is that when you have a such, such a huge, very wealthy lobbying group,

00:46:07.100 the state bar associations who write their own family law codes in the wild west of family law,

00:46:12.440 they write the codes and they spend money at the last couple of weeks before, you know, a bill has

00:46:18.980 dropped and they lie and they skew the statistics and people believe them and bills don't pass. But

00:46:25.300 Kentucky did pass. Arkansas passed. I'm really excited to say.

00:46:29.660 When was that?

00:46:30.760 That was a, I believe Kentucky was 2019. Arkansas was more recent, but just, I literally just heard

00:46:37.360 a week ago that Senator, not Senator, Representative Rodney Creech in Ohio. This is a bipartisan bill.

00:46:46.720 Normally these bills, when they're put through, they usually have about 10 to 15 co-sponsors.

00:46:51.920 We now on that bill, I have, I think we have 68 co-sponsors for an equal shared parenting bill in Ohio.

00:46:57.400 So this is fantastic news for Ohioans, for families, for parents and for children.

00:47:03.460 I think if we can improve the system and at least through 50-50 shared parenting,

00:47:07.920 we can ease the burden on the mental health system, the physical health system, incarceration rates,

00:47:13.480 dropouts from school, drug rates, child porn addiction, child online porn addiction.

00:47:19.360 One of the stunning issues of our time, I would say, is that the statistics that two parent

00:47:26.240 families are better for children are absolutely overwhelming.

00:47:30.320 Yep.

00:47:30.780 And so it's quite the mystery that it's ignored. And I think part of the reason that that fact

00:47:35.640 is ignored is because of this pervasive anti-patriarchal philosophy, let's call it that,

00:47:41.640 that because that particular fact sticks so badly in the craw of that philosophy that it has to be

00:47:47.360 ignored. And so, yes, but then you ask yourself, well, who are we for here? Are we for the kids

00:47:53.260 or for the adults? Because if we were for the kids, we'd be pushing two parent families. And then

00:47:57.220 that's rough too, because if you say two parent families are optimal, let's say you're, you're

00:48:04.000 faced with the necessity in some sense of having to discriminate against one parent families, because

00:48:09.180 if two is better than one is worse. And, you know, then you point to the single mother

00:48:15.360 struggling valiantly against all odds to do a credible job with your kids. And it's not like

00:48:20.000 people like that don't exist. And then you're such a son of a bitch for daring to compare her

00:48:25.080 horrible struggle to what's optimal. But, well, what's the alternative?

00:48:31.140 Yeah, no, it's a really good point. And I think, you know, given the way the system of government

00:48:35.280 is set up, it's very challenging. The system has got so big that we almost need to blow it up and

00:48:39.860 start again. I think, um, you know, there's no shortage of people working on that at the

00:48:44.420 moment. Not so much to start it again, but definitely to blow it all up.

00:48:49.480 Yeah. But in terms of improvements for family law, I think, look, you know, I'd mentioned

00:48:53.560 the presumption of innocence, jurors prudence. You know, I talked with Professor Robbie McCormick

00:48:59.340 on my show, and we talked about jurors prudence and family and family law and the burden of

00:49:03.740 proof that must be on the accuser and not the accused. You know, we're in family law,

00:49:08.740 we're in the Salem witch trials, we're in the Spanish Inquisition. 50-50 shared parenting,

00:49:12.940 obviously a divorce must start with the default presumption that what is in the best interests

00:49:17.980 of the children is for both parents to equally share in the parenting. Uh, we saw with Brad

00:49:23.320 Pitt's divorce from Angie Jolie and the silver bullet that was used against him. And then

00:49:27.640 he worked tirelessly through the retired judge and he won a victory, quote unquote, of 50-50

00:49:33.020 shared parenting. That should have been the default starting position. I think false allegations

00:49:37.780 of DV is something domestic violence. Okay. Let me push back on that a moment. Okay. Because

00:49:43.420 this is what stopped me for years in relationship to, I suppose it was some intrinsic sympathy for

00:49:50.720 the mother-infant bond and some realization that the maternal role is particularly important in the

00:49:57.640 earliest years of childhood development. So what do you do with infants exactly? Do you go,

00:50:03.360 do you go for 50-50 custody there as well? And then hope that the men have enough sense to,

00:50:09.000 to what exactly? It's pretty hard to find a substitute for a breastfeeding mother, you know?

00:50:14.040 I mean, now lots of breastfeeding mothers go back to work. And so obviously that can be negotiated.

00:50:19.960 And maybe the issue is that it should be 50-50 regardless of the age of the child.

00:50:24.000 And what do men do then when they have, you know, custody of a six-month-old infant? That's a real

00:50:32.800 tough question. Yeah. That's a really good question. I hadn't actually thought about that.

00:50:37.200 You know, Brad and Angie's situation, they didn't have infants, but obviously case by case. But the

00:50:42.360 point being that it starts from the 50-50 and then immediately there can be an order if there is an

00:50:47.860 infant, that mother has, you know, primary custody 99% of the time or whatever that might be, but then

00:50:55.480 a scale. It should be negotiated away from the 50-50 baseline. Exactly. There's two things you'd

00:51:01.100 really like to see change. One is the notion of the presumption of innocence has to be brought within

00:51:06.400 the rubric of the family courts and implemented stringently and efficiently. And the second is we

00:51:13.140 start from the default proposition that it's 50-50 split. What happened to your assets? Let's talk

00:51:19.700 about that. So you had, well, we know that your career was terribly disrupted, but you'd built up,

00:51:27.080 I would presume, a reasonable degree of wealth by that point. And so what happened on that front?

00:51:34.860 So initially what happened when I was removed from my home on March 5th and incarcerated, the first

00:51:41.640 visit from my ex-wife and her mother, they arrived with no compassion. They basically slapped pieces

00:51:49.020 of paper down and pens and said, write down the usernames and passwords for all of the financial

00:51:54.420 institutions and the bank accounts. And I trust them- And this was, you were in custody?

00:52:00.600 Yes. Yeah. I was in custody. Oh, that must have been a fun. So what in the world were you thinking

00:52:04.520 when that was happening? Go ahead. Yeah. I was incoherent. I was dealing with the terror

00:52:13.320 of being incarcerated and law enforcement and something I wasn't used to and hoping that they

00:52:21.140 were going to help and that they needed it to do things and pay bills and whatnot. And then I find

00:52:25.900 out afterwards, the accounts got siphoned. Checks were being, corporate checks were being,

00:52:31.400 my signature was being forged. And, but family law, all of this evidence didn't seem to matter.

00:52:39.060 So basically my, you know, the acquired wealth from the bank accounts and the brokerage accounts

00:52:45.840 was just disappearing. I find out later. And then the claim is made that the house, the family,

00:52:52.200 the family residence was not mine and was hers. And when we met, it's, I think it's fair to say that

00:52:59.360 my career was, was in a better position and I brought more financially to the, to the place,

00:53:05.220 to the start of the marriage. But the notion that she nearly won on that as well, uh, just would

00:53:10.980 have been devastating. I don't know if I'd, if I'd be here speaking with you, if, if I'd lost on that,

00:53:17.220 uh, on that point.

00:53:18.520 Why that one particularly?

00:53:20.640 Because, because the accumulated, well, I'd been buying and selling properties since I was 17

00:53:24.820 and started out as an actor in London. So the wealth that I'd accumulated was in the house,

00:53:30.120 um, you know, it was an expensive house. And so the sale of that house didn't really need,

00:53:34.980 there wasn't very much of tiny mortgage left on it. So that was really the, I put everything into

00:53:40.700 that house because I'm old school. I believe, you know, you own, you know, I don't want to,

00:53:44.960 I don't want to owe money to people in America. I do that. I, this whole credit system of, you know,

00:53:49.660 you have to get credit. You have to get credit where I come from. It's like, no, you just,

00:53:53.060 if you want something, you buy it and you own it. Um, and that's what I see. So you'd put your,

00:53:57.680 I see. So you put all the eggs in that particular basket. And so, and that wasn't taken away from

00:54:02.920 you completely. Not, not completely. Why not? Uh, because, um, well, the title was the title to the

00:54:14.280 house was in my name and her name. And as much as she presented in court that it was her house and I

00:54:21.880 wasn't untitled, that piece of evidence, um, was pretty crystal clear. Um, she couldn't steal

00:54:29.880 that. And was that, was that part of the basis for your ability to rebuild your, your security,

00:54:37.400 let's say? Yes. Yes. I mean, I was homeless for a while. I was homeless for a good few months. Um,

00:54:45.300 but for the kindness of a few friends who gave me sofas and floors to sleep on and a few hundred

00:54:51.600 dollars. Why did they do that? Why did, why do you think they trusted you given everything that

00:54:55.320 had collapsed around you and all the calumny that had been heaped on your name? And why those

00:55:00.460 particular people do you think? Well, it's a, that's a, that's an insightful question. That

00:55:04.540 just makes me, I, I look to what are the commonalities between those individuals. They were all men.

00:55:11.440 Uh, there was one woman. Um, so not all men, most of the men, um, they'd all been through divorces.

00:55:19.080 I see. I see. So, okay. So, so they had some sense of...

00:55:22.120 But they knew the character. They, they, they knew, they knew like there was one, one gentleman,

00:55:26.560 I mentioned him in the book, Adam Fogelson, who was the chairman of Universal Studios. He was,

00:55:30.940 he was, he knew who I was. He, I, I, my, his young, his eldest daughter and my, my son were in

00:55:38.200 pre-kindergarten together. I taught his daughter how to sing and play piano and song, right? And

00:55:42.680 so he knew that, he knew that even though I was public enemy number one on the streets and I was

00:55:48.700 being vilified, he didn't believe it. He, his integrity was so strong that when the second time,

00:55:55.160 when I, when I finally got released or discharged, he had actually employed a security team, um,

00:56:02.220 top-notch security team to track the police scanners. Cause they knew I, he knew I was going to come up

00:56:07.360 for air. And of course I did at the neighbor's house. And then that, that was when there was a

00:56:12.580 team of, I think, 10 police. This was the second time, five days later, where they just banged on

00:56:18.340 the door and I opened the door and they dragged me out and handcuffed me again. And I got dressed

00:56:23.000 down by the sergeant. And this, this gentleman just kind of stepped out from the shadows and

00:56:28.100 had a word with the sergeant and, and kind of, I got, I got unhandcuffed and I walked into what I

00:56:34.720 thought, Jordan, I thought it was homelessness. And, and he said, come with me. Someone's been

00:56:39.940 looking out for you. And he took, he walked me to Adam Fogles, Adam and Hillary Fogleson's house.

00:56:45.100 And, um, and so you did have some relationships there that withstood the test of time. You can

00:56:51.160 imagine what would happen if you lost that too, man. So I had this client, his wife, just, he was a

00:56:57.520 good guy, hyper conscientious, professional. And, uh, his wife just, she, she nailed him with

00:57:04.760 accusations of abuse and she was very attractive and charming and very manipulative and malevolent.

00:57:10.400 And white knights were riding to her aid all the time. And he wanted to, uh, get 50, 50 custody of

00:57:18.200 his kids. And she, she, first of all, with the allegations of abuse destroyed his professional

00:57:24.100 reputation. So that means he lost all his clients in his profession. And then she accused him of

00:57:29.600 hiding the money because he was having a hard time making alimony payments because he didn't,

00:57:34.320 couldn't make any money because his profession had been ruined. And so then he set himself up again,

00:57:39.020 providing healthcare to basically indiginate people on social services. And then he made a go of that.

00:57:45.720 And then she accused him again in court of having money that he was drawing on. So they froze his bank

00:57:50.460 accounts and, and, uh, and, and garnish his wages. And so that made it very difficult for anybody to

00:57:56.880 hire him. And then they could take away, he had to drive to work because he could no longer work close

00:58:02.780 to where he lived. And then they took away his driver's license because they can do that without

00:58:06.300 court in Canada. And so then he couldn't drive. And then they took away his passport because they could

00:58:11.760 do that too. And so in the meantime, to take him through court to siphon the last penny out of him

00:58:20.720 and deny him access to his children. And I went out with him and his children several times and they

00:58:25.600 were all, let's see, two, three, and five, I think three boys. We went out to this science museum,

00:58:33.120 which is a challenging thing to do with three young kids. And he showed up on time on the van and he

00:58:38.360 walked those kids through that science museum and they just had a wonderful time. And I watched him

00:58:42.160 like a hawk and he was a really good father. And, uh, she pursuing him, her father mortgaged their

00:58:49.380 house and she spent all their money at which they deserve very nicely because they had raised her to

00:58:55.300 be just exactly the way she was. And it was just a bloody disaster. I worked with him for like three

00:59:01.620 years trying to help him negotiate through this without dying, you know, just because he wanted

00:59:08.080 his kids. And I pulled out every stop to strategize and we were careful and he did what we negotiated

00:59:14.120 and, and he was really dedicated to his kids and he just got ground up, man. And then all this stuff

00:59:21.060 blew up around me and around that time. And I stopped working with him. That story, what you talk

00:59:25.640 about right there, I think, I think you, I think I heard you mentioned that maybe a few years ago,

00:59:29.580 that particular story. It may have been that one when you were, when you were in practice, but,

00:59:33.800 um, that speaks to, there is no escape. It's the zero sum game of, of family law. And it is a game

00:59:40.100 to these attorneys. And it's not just no escape for me, uh, as a respondent, it's no escape for the

00:59:45.580 petitioner too, like with Johnny Depp and his situation. Right. So, you know, the false allegation

00:59:51.000 of domestic violence, it's, it's, we need to remind people Johnny Depp has not been found,

00:59:55.440 not only not been found guilty of any crime, he's not been accused of any crime. Um, he's been tried

01:00:02.440 and found guilty in the court of public opinion, guilty till proven more guilty. And I think it's

01:00:07.440 that, it's those kinds of, um, you know, that inability to escape the divorce trap. There's no

01:00:14.960 trap door. There's no way out for both parties. Um, and you know, my, my ex-wife spent 1.8,

01:00:22.780 I believe it's $1.8 million on an, on an attorney, her attorney, Judy Bogan. Um, and then after four

01:00:32.500 years, this attorney just filed to the court to be released from the case. And I believe is now

01:00:37.000 suing my ex-wife for $450,000 on top of that. So the, the blatant plundering of an estate, um,

01:00:46.540 and how someone you've, you've worked your whole life, you've, you've, you've, you know, started from

01:00:54.380 not a lot and you've, you've, you've plowed your field in your career. And the notion that just

01:01:03.700 because you have a marriage contract, um, because, you know, I, I, I believe in monogamy. I believe in

01:01:11.560 family, obviously I made some missteps along the way. I mentioned those in the book. I was,

01:01:16.600 you know, flawed. One thing I wasn't was a bad, I was a great dad. I will shout that to the rooftops.

01:01:24.420 I was a brilliant father. My sons loved me and I loved them. So if it could happen to me, uh, and it

01:01:31.560 can happen to Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, it can happen. It's, it's, it's happening. And it has happened for

01:01:37.340 decades from my research to so many people. And there's a voiceless, um, growing group of people

01:01:45.420 who've had enough. Well, the, the guys, the guys that it really happened to, you don't even hear

01:01:50.680 from them. They're so done, man. Some of them are just dead. And the ones that aren't dead, they're,

01:01:55.600 they're done. They're exhausted. They're friendless. They're struggling away to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

01:02:02.780 I mean, it's like, I think I wrote about the, the, I've talked about the child support hustle,

01:02:07.800 you know, skip child support, go to jail, lose job, repeat, you know, poor, to your point,

01:02:13.800 poor non-custodial parents, many times forsaken fathers or, or the patriarch or the dad who lack

01:02:20.260 the ability to pay child support, end up in modern day debtors prisons, if you will. A person who fails

01:02:26.140 to pay child support can have their driver's license. Yeah, exactly. Professional license and

01:02:31.480 passport revoked. Um, without any, without any, yeah, yeah. And that's just, that's just in the

01:02:37.320 hands of the bureaucrats who all that's turned over to. None of that has to go through court.

01:02:41.480 It's like, you didn't pay. Okay. We'll start stripping you of that, which makes it possible

01:02:45.640 to you to make a living. So that that's really going to be helpful. You're probably hiding money

01:02:50.280 and then maybe you're working below your capacity just for revenge. And that's not acceptable either.

01:02:56.180 It's like, yeah, that's, I mean, some people might be pushed to that extreme, you know, because they

01:03:01.520 think, well, how do you be motivated when your money is being stolen out from underneath you,

01:03:06.360 no matter what you do, it's kind of going to take away a certain amount of your drive to provide,

01:03:10.860 let's say, especially if you don't have access to your kids anymore as well, turns you into a kind

01:03:15.200 of slave. Well, that's just it. It's, you know, judges can, can set a payment on presumed income.

01:03:21.960 Presumed income. Yeah. Yeah. That's a nice, that's a nice phrase. Not what the non-custodial

01:03:25.860 parent is actually making, causing fathers to enter and sometimes mothers, but mainly fathers,

01:03:31.780 a crushing cycle of incarceration. I remember talking with one father who was in prison. He

01:03:36.620 was in jail in New York and there was a bail reform and they let everyone out apart from the dads who

01:03:41.240 owe child support. And of course, while they're inside, the interest is accruing. And if they manage

01:03:47.020 to pay the debts, the fines and high interest rates charged, that money doesn't go to the

01:03:55.280 custodial parent. It's going to the state. So the state wants its pound of flesh.

01:03:59.380 Well, then there's also the additional problem here is, you know, there's going to be young men

01:04:02.540 listening to this and they're going to be thinking, oh my God, I better never get married. And so this

01:04:07.780 whole catastrophe is undermining the idea for young men that marriage is something that anybody

01:04:12.960 sensible would ever enter into. But then that doesn't really help either. Because if you live

01:04:17.900 with someone for six months or a year, you're basically common law, at least at some point

01:04:22.280 along the way. And it doesn't matter anyways. So what are you supposed to do? Just forego,

01:04:26.700 you know, permanent relationships with women altogether? Because, well, that's hardly a solution.

01:04:32.720 Although it's a solution that not so many, that a non-trivial minority of young men are seriously

01:04:37.980 considering. And there are many reasons for that, but this is one of them.

01:04:41.860 Yes. Why would you? I mean, I was talking with someone the other day through my charity about

01:04:46.300 an app they have called iDo. And it basically, it marries you and divorces you automatically. So

01:04:53.920 within a timeframe, that will save you from actually paying, you know, alimony and it's worked out by the

01:05:03.920 state that you're in. I mean, the notion that we have to contract marriage, that's where I arrived.

01:05:10.080 I believe in marriage, but the institution, no, the way it's set up, it's just, it's a fool's errand.

01:05:17.160 Had I known now what I knew then, why can't we get married in the eyes of God or the eyes of religion

01:05:22.260 or the eyes in a spiritual place of worship? Whatever you, whatever the couple decides to enact

01:05:29.300 that, that union ceremony, why does it have to be a contract with the state that the state can then

01:05:36.860 come in and negotiate without my say, without either say, they can not even only negotiate,

01:05:43.740 they could just take away what they want, when they want. So it's, it's a real, it's a real challenge.

01:05:50.100 Like where's the, where's the, um, you know, the ideological line in terms of, I believe in

01:05:56.320 marriage, but I would caution, I would caution younger people. Well, then the question then is

01:06:01.680 what exactly are you doing when you caution it? Because, you know, yes, but with caution, well,

01:06:08.620 exactly what do you mean by that? And, and the answer to that is, well, it's by, it's by no means

01:06:14.200 clear. I suppose the answer to that lack of clarity is something like, well, the laws need to be

01:06:19.740 changed. They seriously need to be changed. And so presumption of innocence would be a nice start

01:06:25.280 and default 50, 50 custody. What about splitting of assets? Like, where do you stand on that? I mean,

01:06:31.980 I can't help, but think that it's absurd in some sense that Paul McCartney's ex-wife got half of his

01:06:37.260 fortune. It's like, and perhaps that's not exactly true, but you know what I mean. And the, we are

01:06:44.520 talking about a default 50, 50 child custody arrangement. Is the right arrangement in

01:06:50.440 relationship to assets 50, 50 once the marriage takes place? And is that also true? And I'm out

01:06:57.380 of my legal depth here. Is that also true in the case of common law marriage? And should it be the

01:07:01.580 case? Yeah. Common law, I'm, I'm not too up to speed on that. Um, I would say, you know, again,

01:07:08.780 it's, you know, I've been talking with another technology company about a software. They have

01:07:13.260 what in divorce court, what's called a dissimaster. So all of the financial numbers, the forensic

01:07:18.760 account, accountancy, all of those numbers go into this machine and it spurts out what people have to

01:07:24.020 pay, what people receive in terms of child support and alimony. And, uh, this app actually would,

01:07:30.240 would take in that, that information before, during and after, if there is an after while people are

01:07:35.720 married and if they decide to separate, to actually calculate who brought what, how they brought it.

01:07:41.260 But it's again, how do you determine that? Uh, because the value of God, the value of a mother,

01:07:46.340 I mean, that's a quick route to divorce right there, man, trying to negotiate all that. Well,

01:07:50.700 absolutely. Because you partly, what you do in a marriage is you enter into it and you have to

01:07:55.580 with trust because otherwise, how can you enter into it? And the trust has to be, I presume that you're

01:08:02.420 going to do the right thing here. And you presume that for me and will struggle forward trying to do

01:08:06.920 that. And if we have to, if we have to negotiate the terms of our eventual disunion, well, it's like

01:08:17.060 we're negotiating the disunion right now. And so I just can't see how that's going to work well. And so

01:08:23.060 look, what do you, if you look back, what do you, you must ask yourself this like a hundred times,

01:08:30.860 what did you do wrong? Do you think that led to the dissolution of your marriage? Or is that an

01:08:35.800 unreasonable question? What did you bring to the table that made things go sideways? You said you

01:08:40.480 were a great father and so hooray for that, but your marriage went sideways and, and why?

01:08:47.640 Well, the part that I'm responsible for, I can talk to that. Uh, I wasn't monogamous. I wasn't

01:08:55.340 faithful. Um, that was probably the biggest, she'd found out after all this happened, that that was

01:09:01.980 the case. Um, so that would be, I would say the, the kind of biggest factor. Uh, do you think that

01:09:09.760 this marriage dissolution would have taken place if that had not been the case? I mean, cause I'm sorry

01:09:14.860 to push you, but I'm going to, because this is so bloody important, you know, and what happened to

01:09:19.280 you is so terrible that every, and happens to many men and not insignificant number of women.

01:09:25.000 It's so terrible that it needs to be delved into deeply. And so you were looking for something outside

01:09:30.020 the marriage, obviously. And perhaps that was because there was something that wasn't in the

01:09:33.940 marriage or, or God only knows why. Um, and so. Well, it wasn't emotional intimacy that was.

01:09:40.800 You go ahead. Yeah. I was gonna say there wasn't emotional intimacy. There wasn't

01:09:44.560 physical intimacy. The sex had dried up, uh, after, after the, you know, first kid. And we,

01:09:50.920 I tried talking about it, you know, the male sex drive was there. It is there.

01:09:55.280 Yeah. So let's, okay. So let's go into that. That's a good one because that happens to lots

01:09:59.240 of people in their marriage, you know, I mean, and, and it happens as you get older and it happens as

01:10:04.560 you have kids because, you know, you have 15 priorities, but only 10 of them ever get

01:10:09.520 implemented. And maybe like number 14 is sex or something like that. And so it goes away and it's

01:10:16.040 really hard for people to negotiate. And you said, you, you tried to talk about it. I guess I would

01:10:22.580 like to know how hard did you try and how many times and how insistently and why didn't it work?

01:10:29.420 I mean, because I have clients in this situation and I'm talking to both of them. I wasn't a marital

01:10:35.720 counselor, but sometimes I would talk to both. It's like, how often do you think you should have

01:10:40.560 sex? Let's get a range here. Okay. Zero times per year is too few. And like twice a day, that's too

01:10:48.160 many. So now we got, we got the parameters defined here, right? So we're not going for zero. We're not

01:10:55.020 going for, you never get out of bed. We're going for something in between that. And so we might look

01:11:00.960 at what's acceptable for the average couple. And maybe that's something like twice a week or three

01:11:07.100 times a week. And that's a place to start. And so, because it's not optional, this isn't optional

01:11:13.340 exactly. And you say, well, you're going to, you're going to turn it into a routine. You're going to take

01:11:18.380 all the spontaneity out of it. It's like, well, how's that spontaneity going for you? Exactly.

01:11:22.680 It's like, well, we haven't had sex in six months. So yeah, it's, it's really important and really

01:11:29.160 great points. And I think as well, it's not just the sex. I mean, there is, you know, there is,

01:11:34.180 there is emotional intimacy. There's affection. There is, um, you know, um, that, that, that,

01:11:40.840 hopefully that's all part of the, that's all part of sex when it's really working properly. Like

01:11:45.020 I had this one client who was terrified of women to a degree you can't possibly imagine. And

01:11:49.900 he was so terrified of women. He couldn't even get near one. And he was in his forties and he had

01:11:55.160 his problems, believe me. And that was one of them. And his mother who was about 80 was still

01:12:00.040 taking care of him to some degree. And she needed to, cause he had a lot of impairments that were

01:12:04.100 real and profound. And I suggested to her that I take him to a strip club because that was the only

01:12:10.700 place I could think of to expose him to women in any possible sense. And she was a very conservative

01:12:16.360 person, this woman, but she agreed immediately. And so we went once a week for quite a long time.

01:12:22.940 And one of the things I really learned when I was there, that a lot of the men that were there

01:12:26.460 were there for emotional intimacy, for whatever they could get for some touch. Like you think it's

01:12:33.140 pure sexual gratification, but, and of course that, that element is there, but most of these men were

01:12:39.080 desperately alienated and lonesome and they were there at, and I'm not being naive about this. I've been in

01:12:44.900 strip clubs. I know what they're like, but that the idea that what you're negotiating in relationship

01:12:51.360 when you're negotiating sex is just the, the climax, let's say that's just wrong. You're negotiating

01:12:58.000 physical intimacy and that's not optional. You know, like babies die without physical intimacy

01:13:03.580 and children don't grow up properly unless they're played with and touched and cuddled. And even animals

01:13:09.940 are like that. And, and so this negotiation is of crucial importance. And so I'll go again. You

01:13:16.760 said that you, you talked about it. What happened when you talked about it?

01:13:20.580 It was shut down. I mean, how I was insistent at times I was, uh, I would continue to revisit the

01:13:26.980 subject. I would implore to go and speak with a professional, um, therapist.

01:13:33.000 Right. Well, and there's nothing sexier than a man imploring.

01:13:37.220 Well, darling, let's go. No, but that was one of the tactics. I mean, that was, you know,

01:13:42.580 you have to, you have to deploy multiple tactics. I tried courtship. I tried, you know,

01:13:47.300 I was exasperated at times, you know, look, if, what do you, what do you think I, what do you

01:13:52.180 expect me to do? Go outside the marriage, you know? Yeah. I have to, there has to be some,

01:14:00.220 you know, as patient as I was. So what do you, what do you think, what do you, okay. So

01:14:03.960 when I was doing this professionally, we'd start with these, you know, framing frequencies,

01:14:11.360 let's say, and then we would, these are people who are entered into this in good faith. So they

01:14:17.560 were trying both to move forward. We'd say, well, you know, have a date this week. And

01:14:21.440 what you do as a marital counselor or sexual counselor in situations like that, when people

01:14:26.360 haven't been intimate for a long time, you say, well, you're going to go, you're going to have

01:14:30.140 two dates this week, or maybe one, and you're going to hate it because it's awkward and you don't

01:14:35.780 like each other. And you're, you know, you're, you're separated from each other. But here's the

01:14:40.440 first rule is no sex to consummation, zero, that you do not do that to begin with. And

01:14:46.780 so you kind of have the person revert to the first stages of what would have been a protracted

01:14:50.820 courtship, right? And you go out and you have dinner and then they come back the next week

01:14:55.020 and they say, I say, how'd it go? And they say, it was awful. We just, all we did was fight.

01:14:58.920 We're never doing that again. And the answer was, well, I see you're never doing that again.

01:15:03.760 Eh? It's like, that's your solution. No romance now for the rest of your life. You're just going

01:15:10.280 to live and you're going to hate each other. That's your solution. How about you need to do

01:15:13.840 this 20 times before you're not absolutely bloody awful at it. And so with, but it's very hard,

01:15:21.620 you know, if you haven't been trained to think about such things like that, you don't know that

01:15:25.160 you need to take 10 steps backwards. You don't know that you need to forbid full sexual contact for a

01:15:31.160 while while you're kind of reintroducing it. And, and, and this, of course, as I said, this was

01:15:36.440 being negotiated between two people and me, let's say they had already agreed that they were going

01:15:43.960 to do what they could to fix this. So they were both kind of, even though they're resistant to it

01:15:48.440 in their individual ways, they were both willing to experiment, to find a solution. And I don't know

01:15:55.140 what you do. If you have a partner that just refuses point blank to go there.

01:16:00.280 Well, I think you, you, you said it right. The willingness to experiment and, and, and have a

01:16:05.700 little nuance and a little doubt to rekindle and revisit maybe why you came together to kind of

01:16:11.680 that nostalgic savoring of the first meeting or the first few times and to try something new.

01:16:18.620 Yeah. Well, that one of the things I often did with people was ask them, okay, well, what attracted

01:16:23.260 you to the other person to begin with? You know, and then they'd usually get misty eyed, both of them,

01:16:28.120 when they were talking about that, because they weren't that happy that their love had disappeared.

01:16:32.860 So, okay. So then I'll ask you a deeper question than that. So why do you think your wife was

01:16:39.440 unwilling to engage in those negotiations with you? I mean, it could be, we could say, well,

01:16:44.840 lack of skill on your part in the negotiation. And that's who the hell knows how to negotiate such

01:16:50.180 things. It's not easy, you know, and it's not like we have professional training in negotiation,

01:16:55.840 even though we should, because people are so bad at it. It's just beyond belief. They have no idea

01:17:01.580 where to start. And so, so why do you think you hit a brick wall? What did it start? Did you wait

01:17:08.040 too long to start or? I think, I think I floundered because of much of what you talked about in terms

01:17:14.820 of negotiation. You know, too many, from what I know now, um, I didn't know that in terms of the

01:17:21.440 you statements rather than the I statements, leading with the I rather than the you, the non-violent

01:17:25.420 communication, the, the, the, the way to, um, you know, the, the, the way to understand and collaborate

01:17:33.100 through and negotiate through without it being serious to, to, to do it together, to not put

01:17:39.240 demands or non-negotiables down. Not that I did. It was just an exasperation.

01:17:43.180 Exasperation. Yeah. Yeah. Well, couples will come in and they'll say to one of them will say to the

01:17:48.220 other, like, you never want to have sex with me. And it's been like that for two years. And I don't

01:17:53.220 see that it's going to change in the future. It's like, well, the other person is set on their heels

01:17:57.380 right away because you basically said you've been bad for a long time. You're bad now. And I can't see

01:18:04.840 how you're going to change. It's like, Oh my God, how are you going to start from that? And then maybe

01:18:10.160 in a situation like that, you ask the person, well, if you could have the sex life you wanted,

01:18:16.500 what would it look like? And you can ask each of them that. And then, well, then, you know,

01:18:22.000 at least you got a mutual vision there. And they're right. I would say men generally would like to have

01:18:27.700 sex more frequently than women. I don't think I'll probably get pilloried for that comment, but I

01:18:32.540 don't think anybody reasonable would deny it. I agree with you and I'll get less pilloried,

01:18:36.460 but probably pilloried too. Yeah. Well, it's generally the case. Not

01:18:40.140 always the case, but you can meet in the middle. That's for sure. Or no, that's, I shouldn't say

01:18:46.700 that because that's not exactly right. What you want to do is you want to elaborate out a vision.

01:18:50.940 Then you want your partner to elaborate out a vision. And then you want to create a joint vision

01:18:55.820 that's better than both of those that's sustainable. And then it's not compromise exactly. But if you

01:19:02.720 start with accusations, which you're likely to do, if you're frustrated and you have been for like

01:19:07.340 three years and things are already sideways, you're just not going to go anywhere. And the

01:19:11.640 other person will dig their heels in and, and then they, you know, they hit you with counter

01:19:15.340 accusations. And, uh, you know, it's one of the things, terrible failing of our education system

01:19:20.700 is that the rudiments of negotiation aren't taught. It's really not good.

01:19:25.580 Particularly interpersonal relating. I mean, this is one thing we haven't took, you know,

01:19:29.640 the charity that I started CPU, children and parents United, we have three basic, you know,

01:19:34.940 focuses in terms of what we are programs and what we want to do and what we are doing.

01:19:40.200 Um, and the first one is communication. You know, we've been talking with Warren Farrell about

01:19:44.680 bringing his couples communication in and, uh, not just couples, but, you know, interpersonally

01:19:49.380 relating throughout the generations and friends. And because to your point, when trust breaks

01:19:53.880 down, whoo, how do you, how do you get that back? You know, we need to, uh, Dr. John Gottman

01:20:00.120 talks about, um, you know, one negative comment has way more power than 50 positive comments.

01:20:06.480 So how do you want to do that negative? Yeah. You can tell that if you go on Twitter and see

01:20:10.200 how you respond emotionally. Yeah. Well, it's also easier to pick up on this. So, you know,

01:20:15.420 the other thing I used to talk about, one other thing I used to talk about with my clients

01:20:19.260 was, well, here's a, here's a tactic. How about you watch your partner real carefully? And whenever

01:20:26.040 they do something you'd like them to do more of, you tell them that you saw it and, and you,

01:20:30.480 and tell them that you're happy about it. That's really hard because generally we let normal go

01:20:37.320 unnoticed and we even let good go unrewarded. Or you could really be foolish and punish someone when

01:20:45.200 they do something good. Like maybe you're a bit jealous and your wife goes out of her way to make

01:20:49.940 herself look attractive when you're going out for a date, which might be an indication that she has

01:20:53.900 some sense that maybe at some point in the future, she might sleep with you, but because you're jealous,

01:20:58.340 you don't compliment her wardrobe or you say something snarky about it. And then it's like,

01:21:03.280 do that three or four times and she'll never dress up for you again, ever. And then it's done,

01:21:09.100 you know? And so this idea of watching people and then seeing when they do something, you'd like

01:21:15.580 them to do more of, and then telling them that's really, I think that's, I think that's a really

01:21:20.600 powerful thing. And I, you know, that's something that, um, to your point can be, it's hard to take

01:21:25.720 on new, uh, new routines, new ways of being, of expressing affection. Uh, if you're not used to it,

01:21:35.460 if you're more stoic or if you're, but it, it, we have to, I think we have to give what we'd like

01:21:41.880 to receive. And I think we all like to receive platitudes and, uh, affirmations and, uh, you

01:21:49.060 know, that was lovely that you did that sweetheart. Yeah. Especially if it's specific, especially if

01:21:53.440 it's specific, you know, you say, Hey, look, I just saw what you did. Here's what you did. That was

01:21:58.680 specific. And like, yes, thank you. That's great. Yeah. That's great. No. And it's funny too,

01:22:05.220 because you do have to negotiate details. You know, it's well, I think, well, how often do you

01:22:10.900 want to be hugged? It's like, I don't want to talk about it. It's like, yeah, no kidding. You don't

01:22:14.620 want to talk about it, but like, how about never? Okay. Never seems a bit dismal. So, okay. Let's

01:22:20.140 see if we can do a little better than never. So maybe you have a couple in and you're talking to

01:22:25.000 them and you think, well, why don't you try once a day? Or do you want to just try once this week and

01:22:30.860 come back and say how it went? And then you have to be patient with your partner, because if you've

01:22:35.100 been estranged from them physically and you're doing this hug because your idiot therapist

01:22:39.880 told you it was a good idea, it's going to be perfunctory and a bit cynical, but it's

01:22:45.320 a hell of a lot better than nothing. And so you come back and you're kind of irritated about

01:22:49.780 it. You say, well, okay, you're practicing and you're not very good at it. So it didn't

01:22:53.540 go that well, but try it this week twice and see if you can just do it a little better.

01:22:58.840 And that works, you know, but you got to be humble enough to know how stupid you are when

01:23:04.940 you start. And it's pretty pathetic how bad you are at it.

01:23:07.900 Well, you can also laugh. You can also find ways to laugh about it. I think, you know,

01:23:11.840 in the room, if you're with a third, if that third is a therapist, you don't leave with the

01:23:16.740 third, you know? So as much as a therapist can have ideas, it's, I think it does have to

01:23:21.940 come down to the individuals who actually take that suggestion and really believe in

01:23:27.820 it and want to actually move it forward in a positive way and see it potentially as...

01:23:32.300 Therapists actually can't give advice. You know, you can only ask people. It's like,

01:23:37.060 you can say, well, how often do you want to get hugged? They don't say never. It's like,

01:23:41.140 okay, it isn't never. So, you know, is it once a week or something, but you have to ask.

01:23:46.620 And if you just, if you just ask, if you just tell people to do things, they just won't do

01:23:50.420 them. They can't even tell themselves to do things and do them. It has to be negotiated.

01:23:55.220 You can't. You try that. You tell yourself to do things. Christ. No, you won't listen.

01:24:00.620 Well, the conversation was, oh, I always say, you know, the two most important parts of the day,

01:24:06.100 waking up and going to bed and those mini rituals. And if you go to bed to sleep,

01:24:10.420 then you're not going to fall asleep. You go to bed to rest. Sleep will handle itself.

01:24:14.660 Right.

01:24:15.260 How many times, just curious, how many, how many times do you like to be hugged? Are you a hugger?

01:24:20.420 Yes. I mean, you must have a lot of people who come up to you and want to hug.

01:24:26.280 They do. That happens a lot. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's fine. It's fine, man. I don't mind

01:24:30.780 that at all. I mean, when my, I'll give you an example of how this works. When my daughter,

01:24:36.260 my daughter's a year and a half older than my son. And so kids that are spaced less than three years

01:24:41.620 apart have a pretty high risk of fairly severe sibling rivalry, and that can get really out of

01:24:47.240 hand. And it's partly because the older child is still pretty young to have an interloper in,

01:24:52.360 you know, and as all also is called upon to be quite mature very rapidly. Because when you have

01:24:58.240 a one and a half year old and no other children, you think that's a pretty young kid. But then when

01:25:02.580 you have a newborn, you think, oh no, that's an adult, man. It's just a short adult. And so there's a big

01:25:08.440 demand on the child to mature. And so then she, she, or he can get jealous of the infant and that

01:25:15.040 can really wreak havoc. So we trained our daughter repeatedly to come and get a hug. And we practiced

01:25:24.940 it. It was like, come and get a hug. And we practiced that until she got really good at it. And we said,

01:25:30.220 whenever you're feeling upset, you just come over and get a hug and then you can have some attention.

01:25:34.400 And so sometimes my wife and I would have a hug and we'd have the kid come in between us and then

01:25:40.720 she could have a hug too. And so by the time this, our son was born, she was an expert at coming to

01:25:47.660 get a hug. And so whenever she got upset, she could just come get a hug. And, but that took, like,

01:25:53.320 you have to train someone to do that. You think, well, you don't have to train that. It's like,

01:25:57.800 you would be surprised what you have to train and what you have to learn in practice. And,

01:26:02.140 you know, yeah. And also it reminds me of Jordan is my youngest, my eldest boy, when he was born,

01:26:08.380 he went to kindergarten, pre-kindergarten and kindergarten. We would tell him because we,

01:26:12.940 as new parents, we were listening to the school and it was a very, you know, Hollywood school.

01:26:19.000 It was actually a Hollywood school house. It was all, use your words, use your words. So we

01:26:23.720 drilled this into him. Use your words, use your words. Then he, he went to kindergarten and he,

01:26:28.560 you know, he got the crap kicked out of him every day. He was bullied mercilessly from

01:26:33.140 kindergarten through first grade, no support from the school and realizing that the tool of

01:26:38.620 use your words doesn't make, it doesn't do any good when a big kid is coming up and punch you in the

01:26:43.940 face. So, you know, then my youngest son, um, it was slightly different and he's a little,

01:26:49.120 and this may be a, you know, second sibling, uh, thing, uh, second born of his boys. I don't know,

01:26:54.620 but that rite of passage of, you know, just being a little bit more rough and tumble and rough

01:26:59.200 housing, the importance of that. Um, you know, going back to the, the issue of fathers being

01:27:04.360 around. Yeah, you gotta use your words, man, but you gotta have something to back them up with.

01:27:07.820 Oh, yes. Absolutely. And kids are really good at sussing that out real quickly, especially the

01:27:13.100 bully types. Like they'll come along and poke you. It's like anything to you? Nope. Oh, well then I can

01:27:18.980 just pretty much steal everything you have, including your reputation and your happiness. There isn't a damn

01:27:23.840 thing you're going to be able to do about that. You think, well, kids aren't like that. It's like,

01:27:27.740 no, you're just naive and like heaven help your kids because being naive as a parent's not that

01:27:32.840 helpful for your kids. And there's plenty of bullies on the playground and plenty in adulthood too.

01:27:38.820 So aren't there, there are many, you've experienced quite a few. Um, but you're, you seem to be holding

01:27:45.520 your own and you seem to be, you seem to be back and, um, you know, getting into a full schedule

01:27:51.420 again. I see you going on tour. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank God for small mercies, you know,

01:27:56.200 and for all the help I had too. So, but yeah. Hey, so tell me what happened with your kids.

01:28:03.040 How old are they now? Your boys?

01:28:06.020 17 and 15. My youngest turned 15 on November 22nd, the day before Thanksgiving. Um, they,

01:28:13.660 they, they, I don't see them. I don't hear from them. Um, my, my arms are outstretched wide open

01:28:25.480 for if and when, and maybe one day they will, there will be that reckoning. Um, you know.

01:28:32.740 So why do you think that, why, why is it that they're not seeing you? What,

01:28:36.920 what happened as far as you can tell?

01:28:38.840 Parental alienation. Parental alienation is child abuse, plain and simple. It's brainwashing.

01:28:46.160 And it's clear if you look at, um, the history of our family and then for the 18 months,

01:28:51.340 the first 18 months that I was mired in court and had to have a visitation monitor that they,

01:28:56.820 you know, I actually published this in my book at the end, the two, uh, independent psychological

01:29:02.160 evaluations that I was forced to partake in and pay for. I published those. One is 2015 and one is

01:29:08.340 2019 in December at the end. Neither judge looked at either of them or cared, but in the first one

01:29:13.860 in 2015, December, 2015, um, the psychologist, the psychiatrist included 70, I think it was 69

01:29:22.180 monitored visitation reports. And it's clear and unequivocal that my sons are suffering. They love

01:29:27.740 me. They say in every report, I love you, dad. We love you, dad. I love you, dad. We want to live

01:29:32.340 with you and the system didn't care. Um, and so that, that spoke highly to me that the system

01:29:40.440 needs reform. It needs improving on a personal basis. They now have this image of me having not

01:29:49.340 been around that I'm someone to be a theod that I can't be trusted that I'm dangerous. Um, and none

01:29:55.940 of that is the case and none of that is true, but, um, Jesus, I, their psychologies that their

01:30:03.580 psyches have been so cemented, uh, at such a young age, 10 and eight, you, you talked about grief too,

01:30:10.440 you know, and the never ending consequence of, of this grief that comes from separation without

01:30:16.120 finality. It's like, they must've been experiencing that too. And at some point, you know, they can't

01:30:22.420 also betraying the matriarch. If they, anytime I remember my youngest, where it was a year in

01:30:28.220 Jordan and, and, and, oh my God, we had a visit and he called me on the phone. I still kept the

01:30:34.260 voicemail. It kept me going. It gave me, it was medicinal fuel for me to just hear his voice

01:30:40.240 and know what it sounded. I always know what it sounded like, but he called me and he was like,

01:30:45.760 dad, dad, dad. And then his older brother was like, get off the phone. Don't hang up the phone.

01:30:49.620 We're going to be in trouble with mom. And he hung up the phone and it's that fear, the irrational,

01:30:54.420 paranoid fear of, of me. Yeah. Well, at some point it's got to be easier for them to let you go

01:31:02.040 than to be torn apart on a day-to-day basis. When I realized, yeah. When I realized that,

01:31:08.300 that they were after four years of monitored visitation, I finally got, uh, um, a visitation

01:31:15.140 without a monitor, uh, watching my every move and writing it down. And then I realized that they

01:31:20.640 were, they were both, and they weren't allowed to have their iPhones with them, their phones with

01:31:24.640 them on visits. Mom wouldn't let them, but they both had their phones and they were sticking,

01:31:28.920 they were videotaping. And then, and then I, I, it, it became clear to me through other channels

01:31:35.440 that they may have been fitted at least one of them with, um, body cameras. And when it got to that

01:31:40.720 place, I, where my sons are being used as a tool against me to try and record incriminating evidence

01:31:49.560 that there has to be an end to that for them. So part of why I, I came to some kind of resolution

01:31:55.640 and ending on it. Um, and I, and I gave up so much. I mean, she wouldn't even give me through

01:32:01.160 the settlement agreement. She wouldn't give me the rights to know, to let me know if our, either of

01:32:05.380 our sons were on life support and the button was going to, the switch was going to be, you know,

01:32:09.840 permission was going to be given that they would die. She wouldn't, she wouldn't legally have to

01:32:13.260 let me know. And, but I didn't even realize at the time that every, everything in our settlement

01:32:18.840 agreement that, that I got, which was very little, she hasn't held to anyway, because she knows that

01:32:26.100 ultimately it's going to cost tens of thousands of dollars to go back to court in the same system,

01:32:30.740 zero sum and so on and so forth. One of the things I learned from being a clinician was that

01:32:36.400 restraining orders only work on the people on whom restraining orders work, for example. So I had

01:32:42.060 some clients who had like six restraining orders on them. One of them, I remember he was really

01:32:46.640 paranoid. He was, he was hard to deal with. I got somewhere with him, but it's very hard to deal

01:32:51.640 with a paranoid client. And he was clinically paranoid. And it's like NDAs and non-disclosure

01:32:56.900 agreements that, you know, really they aren't worth the paper they're written on because people are just

01:33:00.180 going to do what they're going to do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So enforcing that's very difficult. He used to say to

01:33:04.860 people if they annoyed him now and then he'd get tangled up with someone who is bureaucratic in

01:33:09.760 their inclinations and he'd say, I'm going to be your worst nightmare. And you know, sometimes you

01:33:16.180 might want to say that to someone, but you don't really mean it. He really meant it. Six restraining

01:33:22.040 orders. Oh yeah. You have no idea. How do you, how do you, I'm curious. Okay. Because this is the

01:33:27.740 false allegations of DVs and TROs, I mean, you know, over seven, I think it's around over 70%,

01:33:35.480 and I'd have to check on the stat of domestic abuse allegations resulting in a TRO, a temporary

01:33:40.440 restraining order. TRO is TRO, yes, temporary restraining order. Temporary restraining order

01:33:43.580 or EPO emergency protection order are not sustained once the case moves to a permanency or evidentiary

01:33:51.240 hearing. This shows that the majority, perhaps the majority of domestic violence allegations

01:33:56.840 are perhaps false or unprovable. Um, and I think this correlation with what's going on in rub,

01:34:04.720 the rub there. Go ahead. Yeah. The, the, the, the correlation with cancel culture and victimhood

01:34:11.620 being the new social currency. Um, this is an affront to the real victims of domestic violence.

01:34:17.240 So how do you tackle, uh, this, the, the false allegation, the perjurer, um, if the allegation

01:34:27.340 works every time, if the silver bullet gets rewarded? Yeah, well, the question is absolutely,

01:34:31.580 well, then the question is too, how do you stop people from using systems there that are there

01:34:36.520 to protect the vulnerable from being used as weapons? You think, well, people wouldn't do that.

01:34:41.860 It's like, yeah, yeah, you just wait till you tangle with someone who'll do that and you'll change

01:34:46.420 your, yeah, who is right. I don't know why people always make that particular noise when they hear

01:34:51.040 about such things, but yeah, yeah. I've seen those systems weapon. Well, they've been weaponized

01:34:57.220 against me continually, but I've seen people just brought to their, well, same, same place you

01:35:02.320 were brought to. It's like, yeah, tangled up with child protection services for a week and see what

01:35:07.340 your life is like. Well, an hour. Yeah. Yeah. False allegations that these false allegations that

01:35:13.760 are used in family law to thwart the non-resident parent and child relationship need to be dealt

01:35:19.740 with in a way that protects the relationship that is under attack and in a way to dissuade the making

01:35:26.360 of these allegations or accusations going forward. And from what I can see-

01:35:32.380 one of the things we could warn people about in this podcast is if you're thinking about making

01:35:37.560 such allegations, don't be so sure that your own arm won't get tangled up in the machine

01:35:44.200 because it's, you think, you know, you're going to leverage this, this enterprise to punish your

01:35:50.120 partner. And you're, maybe you're willing to do that because you've been pushed to your limit in

01:35:53.700 some sense, or maybe just because you're feeling a bit malevolent. It's like you wear loose clothing

01:35:58.820 close to that machinery and you're going to get pulled in and spit out. And so it won't just be

01:36:03.420 you going down the negative pathway. And problem with that is, is that some people, they get so

01:36:08.280 inclined to wreak havoc and to extract revenge that they're perfectly willing to hang themselves

01:36:15.160 in the window to block out their neighbor's sunlight, let's say.

01:36:19.740 Yeah. If you're going to, if you're going to go on a journey of revenge, dig two graves,

01:36:23.420 you know? Yeah, that's right. That's for sure.

01:36:25.320 You know, and when I, this is what I think about with, you know, the Pandora's box that she let,

01:36:30.240 that she let out, the only thing that was left was hope is, is those who, you know,

01:36:35.200 God will forgive our sins, our nervous system won't. And that, this is, this is that false

01:36:42.020 allegation, you know, that technique and tool being weaponized for financial gain. I just wonder

01:36:48.240 when this will reach a, we have a president in America, we have a president who's a Catholic

01:36:53.920 father and grandfather. And the Violence Against Women Act was his act in 1974. And that, that's a

01:37:03.180 series of, it was a series of law enforcement grants that shifted the focus away from the problems of

01:37:10.340 the relationship to a law enforcement approach to domestic violence, resulting in a shift from the

01:37:16.360 prior discretionary approach to mandatory arrest or detainment policies. And, and I think that,

01:37:23.600 that's the kind of holding space now, like purgatory, where like in my case, Jordan, when the

01:37:30.480 police came, they couldn't arrest me. I've never been arrested. They couldn't arrest me because I

01:37:35.060 hadn't committed a crime, but they had to remove me because I was seen as a danger. Where do they take

01:37:40.740 me? They can't put me in a prison cell for long because I would need my Miranda rights read to me.

01:37:45.600 I'd need an attorney and access to one. You know where people like me end up? 5150 holds. You know,

01:37:52.200 those who need to be on 5150 holds where they end up because they were thrown out into the prisons.

01:37:59.120 So, you know, those who are actually emotionally disturbed, who need help and need assistance,

01:38:05.280 go to the worst place possible for them, jail and prison, prisons, our prison system. And those men

01:38:13.440 and sometimes women like me who have a false allegation, false accusation made, there is no

01:38:20.380 real place for the system to, so the police used to have discretion. And now all this money that

01:38:28.340 President Biden created through pushing through his, his act. And by the way, VAWA, the Violence Against

01:38:33.340 Women Act is being, you know, it's being looked at again. Uh, they call it stop grants. It was money

01:38:38.160 for stop grants. So to qualify for these stop grants, law enforcement had to adopt these policies

01:38:43.980 of mandatory arrests. So, you know, forcing law enforcement to prosecute or persecute every man

01:38:53.440 who's accused of domestic violence to keep the coffers full. Like this is the incentivized structure

01:38:59.800 that we have. So how can we change that? Then, you know, yeah, well, I guess we start to change it

01:39:05.480 by having conversations like this, right. And trying to specify what the problem is, because

01:39:09.440 it's really complicated what the problem is and then what the solution should be on a legal basis,

01:39:15.380 what the solution should be ethically and on an individual basis. So, you know, a thousand

01:39:21.620 conversations like this is a place to start. So I think so too. And I think, I think more, uh,

01:39:27.280 proactive solutions. I mean, that's what I'm trying to do through, through my new fledgling charity is

01:39:33.060 to, is to have, um, you know, the communication programs. And where can people find out about

01:39:38.960 that? That's Children and Parents United. Where? Yeah, that's right now. Sorry, go ahead with the

01:39:46.220 charity. Yeah, right now, Children and Parents United or CPU is, uh, our mission is to promote and

01:39:53.300 improve child wellbeing, uh, by providing information and resources to policymakers, um, the public,

01:40:03.060 um, practitioners resulting in, in, in reduced conflict and enhanced, uh, relationships, uh,

01:40:09.940 for those children and parents negotiating our current family law systems. And we have three,

01:40:14.580 the place to find that is the respondent.com. We will, we'll be launching the, the, the website for

01:40:19.900 the charity soon, but right now it lives at the respondent.com. But we have three cost-effective

01:40:25.120 practical solution based programs right now, communication workshops and programs that we're

01:40:29.640 working out and developing that promote improved interpersonal relating, um, mediation, uh, CPU

01:40:36.740 mediation, which we call it is to provide mediation services. I just actually, I mediated my first case.

01:40:43.380 I wanted to do one myself just to see. Um, and it was a couple who'd been in family law for six

01:40:49.800 years, spent nearly $2 million, no resolution. I was able to find resolution and settlement within

01:40:55.760 six hours on a Saturday and three hours on a Sunday. That's a way different process than trying

01:41:00.700 to get each person all they can grab from the spoils of the relationship. Yeah. It's like, it's like,

01:41:07.300 it's not, I was, I heard someone tell me once it's not, you don't get what you deserved. It's what

01:41:11.520 you can live with, uh, because you always going to walk away from mediation, you know, feeling

01:41:16.580 somewhat aggrieved. Yeah. At least you can walk away. Right. Uh, yeah, you have life. Um, and then

01:41:24.740 the other is the public interest law firm, uh, providing legal advice. So that supports the

01:41:30.480 mediation process overseas, the legal, legal procedures, uh, so that if people do want to

01:41:35.160 get divorced, that they do want to separate long-term, um, that, that there's the ability to actually

01:41:40.780 draw up those legal agreements and, uh, and deliver them. But really we just need to keep

01:41:45.140 people out of court. I joke that we are the red cross of divorce as we're growing and building out,

01:41:50.320 but we need resources and infrastructure. And we're hoping to get that. Um, because hopefully this

01:41:55.780 podcast will help. So that's children and parents united. And that's at, it's at the, what's the.com

01:42:02.300 address? The respondent.com. And that's after your book, the respondent exposing the cartel of family

01:42:08.920 law, which is a description of your journey through, well, let's call it first purgatory

01:42:13.840 and then maybe hell. I think you're probably right. And by the way, the audio book will be out

01:42:19.880 soon. And I've just, uh, we've added, we've been adding sound effects and ambience and atmosphere

01:42:25.180 to that, to make it, to make it really feel like that hellish journey, you know, so you're actually

01:42:32.060 there and present, uh, more so than just a regular, like me reading the audio book. And I've got a couple

01:42:38.120 of great people who've, who've helped with that. Andrea Romano was one nine, nine, nine time Emmy

01:42:43.580 award winner. Uh, she voice directed it and actually read as one of the psychologists at the end of the

01:42:49.100 book. So, um, hopefully, uh, hopefully we'll do some good. And, you know, the, the emails that have

01:42:54.040 been coming back from, you know, I was asked early on by, you know, how it is that the Hollywood,

01:43:00.820 you know, marketing and publicity and the publishers, you know, who's your target demographic? I said,

01:43:05.500 look, if, if, if we can get the suicide rates down, if, if, if my book can get to one person that

01:43:11.880 they can feel like they're not alone. Well, that's a big deal for people to know that they're not

01:43:16.780 alone, you know, and they're not, they're not crazy. I had a, uh, uh, uh, military, uh, father who

01:43:25.740 lost his legs in Afghanistan, two chores at tours of duty, was served with false allegations of

01:43:32.020 domestic violence papers. Uh, he came home homeless, hasn't seen his kids. I think for

01:43:39.640 six years, he's been representing himself in family law. And I think about that Jordan and

01:43:44.520 it just, it, it makes me weep. Talk about being punished for your virtues, man.

01:43:49.680 Whoa, you said it, you said it, you know? Hmm. All right. Well, Mr. Ellis looks good to see

01:44:00.420 you on your feet and through this to some degree. Mr. Peterson, you too. Thank you very much.

01:44:06.060 Pleasure talking with you, man. Yeah. You too, man. Really keep up the astonishing work.

01:44:19.680 Thank you.

228. Men and Divorce Court ｜ Greg Ellis

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