 Welcome to the 21 Report. I'm Frank Pesci, with attorney and men's rights lawyer, Melissa Isaac. Melissa, how are you? I'm great. Good to be here. Excellent. Is this your first time speaking at the 21 convention? This is the second year speaking at the 22 convention. Oh, 22. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You know what? You've had such an impact on just the vibe of everybody here. We at the 21 convention can feel your presence too. That's good. Thank you. Melissa, what is it that you do? So really what we do is we provide solid, ethical, competent representation for men going through the family court system. And it's something that I can tell you is lacking. There's more divorce lawyers underneath. There's a divorce lawyer in every corner. But in my experience of as majority don't do a good job for their clients. There's not zealous advocates. There's a cookie cutter approach to the law. Most take that cookie cutter approach to the law and we don't. We generally go in, advocate for dads. We advocate for relationships really, post-divorcer separation, because that's what matters at the end of the day. If there's going to be a divorce, as unfortunate as that is, it's important that we preserve relationships. Yeah. So often from a distance, I'm married. Fortunately things have been good. I haven't had to go down this route. But I have seen others have to go this way. And what at base level initially seems like it could be an amicable separation. We'll co-parent. We'll figure this thing out. So quickly it's poisoned. The well gets poisoned by attorneys. Absolutely. Can you speak to that? Yes. I can't tell you how many men come in and they say, my wife and I are divorcing. We've already worked everything out. We're going to share custody. We've agreed that I'm going to give her $300 a month in child support. This is the schedule. She's going to keep the house. I'm going to give her about a year to refinance. Then we're going to sell it, split the equity, and we're just going to go our own ways. And I say, okay. So just draft out the paperwork. She'll take it to her attorney just to look over and make sure everything's okay. And we'll get everything signed. And I say, okay, so I'll do that. I'm going to draft everything. I'm going to make the agreement that the works for the two of you. She's going to take that attorney, or that paperwork. She's going to go to an attorney and I can almost promise you it's going to break down. Because he's going to say, women, why are you giving him half custody? Why are you doing that? Aren't you the one who stayed home? Aren't you the primary caretaker? I mean, he's not working your home with the kids. How is that fair? How is that fair to you? These women might think, well, that's true. How's that fair to me? And $300 a month, you know, the state guidelines say he should give you $750. Why are you settling for less than what you deserve? These women think, well, wait a minute. So then they call him and say, well, I'm with my attorney and I should be getting a lot. I'm entitled to a lot more than $300 a month. And you know what? We're getting divorced because you were always gone. And you know what? How about we just do this? I'll just be the primary custodian. You can have them on weekends and every Wednesday. Everything they did broke down because they went to an attorney. So there's so many attorneys here. Here's what's horrible is when a man comes in, he served with paperwork. I take the paperwork. The first thing I do is I look and see who the attorney on the case is. Based upon who that attorney is, I can tell these guys exactly what's going to happen with their case. There's attorneys that will every single case. Oh, he's abusive and controlling. We need a protective order. We want to go ahead and get a temporary order so that she gets the kids and gets spouses support and gets child support, whatever the case is. So I go ahead and tell them what to expect. Rare exception. So you're saying this is a script? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because it works. Because it generally works. Yes. That's pretty crazy. It's insane. Okay. So how do you deal with that on the men's right side? How do you counter that? So unfortunately, we we litigate differently for who are judges and for who the opposing counsel is. Now, I'm licensed in Alabama and Florida. Alabama is a one party state meaning that you can record in a conversation. So we're in Florida. So I can't record you without letting you know, hey, I'm recording this conversation. Do I have your permission to record this conversation? Yes, it's a little implicit. All right, very good. So but if you were in Alabama, you could we have a conversation you could record me and you don't have to tell me it's being recorded. So I predominantly practice in Alabama. So my clients retain, they get a recording device. Okay. And so I'm very clear. Every communication, every exchange, everything is documented. There should be no conversation that you don't have on a recorder. That's not in a text message. That's not an email. That's not with a witness right here. Something every if you go to court and say on January 1st, we exchanged little Johnny and little Johnny's mom told me that she was going to run off with her boyfriend. I was never going to see him again. She's I didn't say that. Actually, at that exchange, he told me that he was going to run off a little Johnny and they pushed me down and he told me he was going to kill me. Well, what does the court do? Oh, wait a minute now. Wait a minute. You you threatened her? Okay. So it's a he said she said again. That's the worst place to be for a man and family court. As he said, she said, but what happens? You have your version of the story. She has her version of the story. You push play. Who just won that hearing? Hands down. You just did. And it's not in trapping anybody when you're just trying to set women up. How is bringing truth into the courtroom, setting anyone up? No, it's not. But men, you have to protect yourself. Because if you get into he said, she said, women, they played the victim, they, they, they're abused, they're controlled. And the courts are very sensitive to that. And they tend to defer to women, especially when he said she said, so you don't want anything that's not documented. Nothing. I heard you say in your speech today that perjury is not a crime in family court. Oh, it's a crime. It's just not enforced. Okay. Perjury is a crime in any court, any court of law should be a crime in any court of law. Okay. Just like adultery. It's adultery is still illegal in Alabama. I mean, but you nobody ever gets prosecuted for it. But here's my thing with perjury is you're dealing with lives, you're dealing with parental relationships, you're dealing with custody of children, the most important thing that a parent will ever litigate. And a someone is caught perjuring themselves. And nothing ever happens. In 15 years, I've seen countless litigants perjure themselves, and nothing ever happens. I mean, they might, well, you know what, you're going to have to pay their attorney's fees of $2,500. But $2,500 for perjury when you should be sitting in a jail cell for perjury. I've never seen it happen. I heard you talking about, I mean, let me say this, I think people are by and large familiar with the family court system not being a favorable environment for men. Yeah. But what you said today was the makeup of the courts are changing because there is a generation of people who were the product of family court decisions who now are becoming more sympathetic. That's right. Can you talk about that? Yes. So a lot of our younger judges, they don't see a problem with shared custody. In fact, they're deferring to shared custody. So you have younger judges, some who've said, look, I grew up without my dad. And looking back, there was no reason for that. Why am I at a babysitter when my mom is paying someone my dad's child support for me to be at a babysitter when I could have met at my dad's house? So these are all common sense things that you think like anybody with a brain, right, with two neurons that hit together would know that this isn't making sense. But our new judges are coming in, they're saying, you know what, we're not doing this. They did this for generations. And so, you know, shared custody is more common now than it was 10 years ago, 15 years ago, because we're having new ways of judges come in. But still, you know, some of these old judges, and then it comes down to money. So the states, the judiciary, the family court system, CPS organizations, they're funded through litigation. So there's something called Title IVD. So let's say you and I are married, we divorce, you have to pay me child support. Just for you paying into the system, and then the state turns around and reroutes the money to the mother, the feds, the federal government pays the states 66 cents for every dollar they take from you and distribute back out. Well, what happens when you have shared custody? Sometimes you have no child support. There's no financial incentive for the state to, there's no, there's no money to be made there, right? So there's a financial incentive for the states also to make sure, you know, there's more shared custody. But let me tell you what, there's still a ton of child support being ordered. But if you have a very low-conflict case, both parents say, yeah, shared custody is fine, all the judges are going to do it. They get this case off their docket. But they still know, right? You have somebody come in, mother said, he's abusive, dad says, no, actually she's abusive and she's a liar, they go back and forth. There's almost a presumption with the judges that these parents are too high conflict to be able to co-parent, which is not true by the way. So then they sit there and they evaluate and they say, well, you know, I don't know and they don't know. You could go in there, you could be telling the truth or telling a lie. Your wife goes in there, she could be telling you the truth or telling a lie. The judge doesn't know, he has no idea who the two of you are. So he sits there and it can pull from his own bias. That's it, pulls from his experience and his bias and says, like, I don't know, the safe thing to do. Mom, you have custody dad, you pay her. That's safe because you're not really, you're still in the majority and the Court of Appeals probably isn't going to touch that. So if the judges still aren't sure, moms are still the ones that are getting custody. So does a man have a shot at all in family court? Absolutely. Okay, so what should a man be looking for in an attorney if they're faced with this challenge? Yeah, so I mean, I hate to tell them what they're going to be looking for an attorney, they're probably not going to find. Because attorneys, believe it or not, attorneys fight against these shared parenting bills. And why would an attorney fight against a shared parenting bill? Because the more contentious the case, the more the money the attorney puts in their pocket. So attorneys breed contention, that's what they like, or a contention costs. So what you want to look for, first of all, is an attorney who's going to go in and be reasonable. There's no reason. If someone comes into my office and they say, look, I want to share custody and, you know, she's a bad wife, but she's not a bad mom, so you want to make sure that she has time and I have equal time and I'm going to go ahead and give her the house. I'm not going to say, okay, listen, I understand that's what you want, but let me tell you how we're going to do this. We're going to make this as contentious as could be. You said that she wasn't, she was, you know, a decent mom. Are you sure she was a good mom? I mean, how can you be a good mom and a good wife, right? I mean, if she's a bad wife, she's probably a bad mom, where lawyers literally talk them into position that they didn't come in taking. So you want to make sure you be reasonable, because some of the judges see that. Maintain your reasonableness, keep your emotions under control. I can't emphasize this enough. Emotions win cases for women, emotions lose cases for men, okay? So men show emotions a little different than women do. If I get upset, I might cry. If you get upset, it might look like anger, but it's really frustration. Well, if we both are upset in the courtroom, we're showing this emotion, the judge is saying, ma'am, do you need a minute? Are you okay? Sir, you need anger management over there? You look a little bit upset, okay? And they say this out loud, and they put it on the record. So you have to be careful as a man. You got to keep your emotions in check. It's okay to have emotions, but understand in family law, your response to the situation dictates the outcome of your case. Can you give me an illustration of an example where you had to cross examine a plaintiff? I heard you talking about, I don't know, I guess you used a fake name Natalie and- No, that's her real name. Can you talk about that? I thought that was a great illustration. Yeah. So this particular case, the client knew that she was vindictive. He knew that she was dishonest from the get-go. He did everything he should have done. He recorded absolutely everything, everything. We have her serve of divorce papers. We don't try to kick her out of the house. We don't try to take the kids. We initiate divorce proceedings. She initially did what he knew that she was going to do, start stalking him, interfering with his work, calling his employees. Well, he went out of state to, he was there, he's a runner. He went out of state. Natalie lists a couple of her friends and they take off and they go up there. They find him and they run him down on the course. The wife kicks him in between the legs. It was not pretty. He gets home. First thing he does, all right, the recording is cut down a little bit. You can hear the garage door open because here's the thing. When you turn your recorder on, you turn it on from before the time you say hello till after the time, well the time you say goodbye. All right, the entire recording has to be there. Well, he did that. He gets his bags out of the car. He's walking up. Now you can hear the garage door going down. He's walking up to the door. He has a bag in each hand. The door flies open. I think you probably heard it. Natalie starts screaming at him, accusing him of things. He's like, what are you talking about? You can, the slap was audible. You can hear him, hear it slap her. She's yelling at him. She's cursing. Well, he's fumbling to get his cell phone. She has no idea the audio recorder is already going. She's yelling. She's screaming. He gets his cell phone. The minute he turns the video on, you heard the change. He says, why are you hitting me? Initially, she says, because you fucking cheated on me. When the video camera comes up, he says, why are you hitting me? I didn't hit you. Oh my gosh, what a lie. Complete change in her demeanor, her voice, everything in a minute. Now, if we would not have had the audio, you look at that video and you're like, wow, he's kind of antagonizing her. She's walking away from him and he's still videoing her. Kind of antagonistic. No, but you have to put everything in context. And that's why it's so, so important to get the entire story recorded. So in that particular situation, I'm convinced, had we not had that recording, she did go to jail that day. He would have went to jail that day because you had two completely different sides of the story. So you want to make sure that, again, you stay away from it. He said, she said completely, if you're a man, you want to get absolutely everything documented. There's been other times where I've had women on the stand and I ask him, well, but isn't it true that you routinely yell at your, at your husband in front of the kids? Oh no, ma'am. I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do that in front of my children. So you're telling me there was never a time where you got mad at your husband and you said, you stupid motherfucker, you're never going to see your kids again. Oh no, ma'am. I don't use that language. Oh no, I wouldn't. In fact, you did this three days ago, didn't you? I don't, I don't think I did. You don't think you did. You don't remember if you said this three days ago? I don't think so. All right. Ma'am, I want you, I want you to hear something. You start playing the recording. You stupid motherfucker, you're not seeing the kids again. We got court in three days. Kids say goodbye to daddy. All right. And the judges, it is harsh. And the judges eyebrows go up. Well, there it is. All right. I've had cases where I have a soldier for children. She was a stay-at-home mom the entire time. Those recordings won that case for us. All right. She would say, you just wait till we get to court. No judge is going to give you custody. I'm the mother. I'm the one that stays home. Get ready to sign your checks over to me and laughing. And the judge hears these things. Judges are people too. Right, right. They're people too. So when they see and when they acknowledge and they know for sure that this litigant is sitting here trying to pull one over there, you know, pull a fast one, they don't, they don't, they don't look kindly upon that. Your tactics are strong. Their sound, I'm curious to know what drove you into this passion. Yeah, so it's sort of a long story, a winding road, but my, so my dad got back from Vietnam. He was a Marine in Vietnam and has about six foot four. Runs into my mother, who was about four foot ten, a little tiny lady. And a pretty lady turned the charm on. They got married quick, had children quick, and I think they were even separated by the time I was born, perhaps or shortly thereafter. So he served with divorce papers and of course he was a firefighter at the time. So you have a Marine coming back from Vietnam, big old guy. He's a firefighter. Then you have this little tiny lady. I'm just afraid of him. He's mean to me. But I watched her, my whole childhood. I watched the lies. I watched, it's like a one woman hurricane. Everywhere she went, there was like a path of destruction with her family, with my father. I have a younger sister with a different father. She didn't meet her father until she was 26 years old. You know why? Because my younger sister's father, I don't think wanted her. He wanted to be a dad. But he didn't want a relationship with her because she was a little bit crazy, in my opinion. So she destroyed relationships. My dad and I were close now. But it wasn't until actually I aged out of the system. And I went to foster care because of her. Right? Because of her parenting. She would withhold food when she got mad at us. And she would say things like, we don't have any milk in the house because your dad won't pay us. Your dad wanted you dead. Your dad wanted me to have an abortion. And I never internalize anything she's saying. I think my sister did a little bit. But I never did. Long, long story short, I go through my childhood watching this woman. And everything she said was taken as gospel. No proof, witnesses, no anything. And then you have my dad over there who could do no right. It doesn't matter what he did. The system was so fundamentally unfair. Well, before I became an attorney, I was a child therapist. I worked at inpatient psychiatric hospital for children. Worked at a private practice. But when I worked at the children's hospital, it was interesting because you see these kids, and we're talking about textbook schizophrenia, textbook depression, all these things. But they all had the same story, right? These kids are crazy. They have this normal reaction to it in extremely abusive and oppressive environment. But these kids had one thing in common, they had bad moms and absent dads. Okay. I was curious to know, what do you think drives that behavior in women to act that way, to take on a victim mentality, to be vindictive, to look to tear down, to destroy, to say things like, the reason we don't have milk is because your father won't give this any money. What's the underlying root of that? And if there was a woman listening to this, that was either already in that frame of behavior or was in temptation to start acting that way, is there something that you can say from an interjection standpoint, from your experience, to talk them out of doing that and acting more applicable? It seems like women have, let me put, let me back up. In family court, when these guys come in and they say, I don't understand why she's doing this. You can always put it in one of two categories, money or control. Everything can go in one of two categories, money or control. So, and you have feminism that tells us, you have to, don't rely on a man ever. You have to be independent. You don't need a man. If you and I are married, I don't need you. I could leave you, and you pay me child support, and you pay me alimony, and I'm going to be an independent woman. Okay, well, obviously, I'm not an independent woman, I'm relying on you for money, but that's still the mindset that feminism is just grinding down. Destructive. It's destructive. That if you offer your opinion to me, and I disagree, well, if I take your opinion, then I must be oppressed in some way. I must be an abused woman. I don't realize it, but maybe one day I'll realize how oppressed I am. You should see some of the emails that I get. Women tell me it's too bad that you don't realize that you're just a kept woman. It's too bad that you don't realize how oppressed you are. You're so stupid. What are you doing? You're an attorney that owns your own firm? Yes. And you're not even... You have more business than you even... I have more business than I can handle right now. Okay, I got you, but I got you. You're a kept woman who has no exposure to reality. Continue, please. Exactly. But so the consequence of that is if you're a woman in this mindset, you might keep your child's father away, then you might. But my mother did that. I have two sisters. My mother did that. So guess what her relationship is like with myself and my two sisters? It's non-existent. It's non-existent. Because at some point, at some point, if your children are going to turn out healthy, if they're going to be healthy-minded, they will look back and they will see what you did. And so my mother, I think I was 16 years old, and I told her, when you take responsibility for everything that you've done to the people that I love, we'll have a relationship. You talked in your talk about red flags, that pop-up in a marriage in women. I'd like to hear from that. And then my follow-up question to that will be your insight on what makes for a healthy relationship. All right. So red flags, honestly, we could do a whole conference on red flags. That's why I gave you two up front. That's very good. So red flags, so there's different types of red flags. There's red flags that before you get married. All right. So a lot of men say, you know, I want a good Christian woman. And I'll use this as an example because I litigate in Alabama. It's right there in the Bible Belt where, you know, I've yet to litigate with a woman in a contentious case where she wasn't a Christian. Okay. So if you want a good Christian woman and you made her a Bible study, for example, and you're in your Bible study and you're reading the Bible and you're thinking, wow, this is a good moral woman here. So you get done, you ask her out, and she's like, yeah, why don't we go, let's go talk over, let's go to the bar and have a few drinks. Flag number one, you just have Bible study. You tell me you're going to go to a bar. And you say, well, that's, I mean, you can't sum up someone's life. Nobody's a red flag. It is a flag. So a pattern of behavior that doesn't consistant. Right, inconsistent. Right, completely inconsistent. You know, or you have women who say, and I talked about this, they say, listen, I would never, I mean, you know, children need both parents. I would never keep my child from their father. But then you go pull up the pleadings and their dad wants shared custody and mom fights against it. I think every other weekend is enough. I just got done with the case. Probably this woman, one of the biggest hypocrites I've ever litigated against. And judge gave dad custody. She moved from Alabama to Georgia to destroy any chance of sharing custody with him. She takes the kids, she moves them across day lines and rolls them in school. Doesn't even talk to my client. Well, we litigated it and we litigated the heck out of this case. Well, the judge just understood because of the distance, a 50-50 was not plausible. Right, because of school. So guess who got custody? We did. Everything that she did ended up working against her because it's very important when I tell my clients when they commit I don't care what she does. We do what's right. We do the right thing. We don't give them anything to use against us and your kids are going to see that. One day they will look back and they will see, even though mom did this, dad still did the right thing. It worked out well for us. It is a lot more work litigating for dads. I feel like the lawyers that work with me feel like we have to do, I'm not joking, 10 times the work to get a fair result. Just to get a fair result. You know, I was always under the impression that if you were in a custody battle that you could not just unilaterally move across state lines. You can't. So what happens if somebody does and you have to go to the court and just ask them to fix it? Yeah. So you can go to the court and you can ask to make them move back or you could say, we just return the children. I have had where the courts have had the children return back. The courts don't really make the mothers return back. But a big majority of the time when moms move without prior court approval, the judge just kind of say, well, I mean, just be too stupid. I can't make them come back now. But that's insane. What if one party lives in New York and one party moves to California? What are you supposed to never see your children again? Yeah, it's happened. That has happened. Wow. That's crazy. Do you see any hope for fixing this broken system other than, of course, we talked about the demographics of the court changing a little bit. Is there any major initiatives on the horizon? Is there an awakening coming? I think there's an awakening in terms of shared custody that a lot of our legislators, I mean, they know it's coming. They don't want it to come because they get this Title IV D money that comes in with child support. Right. So I think it's coming and they're trying to allow for it with legislation. They're saying, OK, so generally with a shared custody situation, there's no child support. But now they're saying, OK, with a shared custody situation, we're going to go deeper into the party's finances to see how much the other parent really needs. They're doing everything they can to try to salvage the child support system because child support is a business. It has nothing to do with what's best for the kids. It is a business. Anytime money changes hands, somebody's making money. The states make money when money changes hands. More money filters through the family courts than any other system than the car accident litigation, medical malpractice. Family court is the biggest money maker for courts. Melissa, it's obvious that you're doing great work. Where can people find you? My website is protectingmen.com. That's probably the best place to find me. We're on Facebook at the Isaac Law Firm. Attorneys for men. And that's where you can find us. This is Frank Pesci with the 21 Report with Melissa Isaacs. Attorney and men's rights. Attorney.