Gentleman, I’m a long-time lurker and contributor (but I change my username often; the ex stalks me). I need to vent and rant, but any comments are welcome. No specific issues here. Instead, it’s more about the divorce process as a whole and how it varies across the USA.

There’s a YouTube channel called Veterans In Politics. He (they?) post videos from Family Court hearings in Las Vegas. Some are more than an hour and drag on. But, if you want a sense of how actual hearings are held, it’s a great source. I watch it all the time.

Tonight, I’m watching this video and it’s breaking my heart a little. At the start of the hearing (around 1:44), the judge states that the mom and dad are both “fit parents” and assures them they both have “fundamental rights concerning your child”, and those rights don’t change “just because you’re getting divorced.”

The judge seems actually interested in a realistic co-parenting plan so the child can enjoy both parents. The judge even questions the schedule, noting that traffic is bad at certain hours.

My divorce? First, the judge was 200 years old. He was a retired judge who came back to work as a temporary “contractor” judge. I got the sense that everything he knew about marriage was from the 1950s. Women stayed at home with the babies and men went out and worked. And that paradigm was the same no matter if the couple was married or divorced.

Everyone – and I mean everyone – seemed to think that my ex-wife would automatically get custody. Even my own lawyer assumed it. My lawyer told me that I had to “fight” for custody. Well, wait a minute. All my ex-wife had to do was sit there and do nothing, and she’d get custody automatically. Outside my courthouse, there's a monument to the Confederacy. Not kidding. Inside, ceiling fans and Civil War Confederate hero paintings.

And parental “rights”? What are those? No one ever explained to me that I had rights as a father. I even asked. In my divorce, the judge essentially said, “This is a winner-take-all battle to the death. Hurl the harshest accusations you can at the other parent. No one here is guaranteed to have a lasting connection with their children. Good luck.”

In many ways, my divorce seemed like it was from the 1980s. It had all the clichés. I was seen only as a source of money, and possibly dangerous. Now, I read online about judges who are younger, and more progressive, and assume 50/50. And I see this judge in this video in Las Vegas, telling parents they have rights. And this judge encourages mediation. At my divorce, we went directly to trial: no mediation, no negotiation, no settlement, no compromise. We both had lawyers, but the whole thing just went over a cliff anyway. I’ve lost contact with my kids thanks to bullshit unworkable “visitation” (no mention of “co-parenting” for me).

Watching this video, it kills me that some old judges and old ideas are still out there, hurting kids, ripping families apart, leaving so much destruction and bitterness in their path. It’s amazing to me to watch divorced parents cooperate. It hurts, to be honest.