The New Mindset

For years we have been told by organizations that only small changes can be passed when it comes to family law. That is a misnomer. It takes no more work to pass comprehensive legislation than it does to pass a small bill that continues the problems.

Case in point, if we look at what happened in South Dakota; they got all excited and asked a presumption of shared parenting. It wasn't but a few days after that bill was passed and signed into law that those that supported that legislation publicly admitted that it will not solve the problem. What is this done for them? It has effectively placed them out of the picture for the next five years. Should they go to any legislator at this point, they will be told either “we need to see if this change works” or they will have the question posed to them of why they didn't go for stronger legislation and a complete fix when they pushed their presumption bill.

We need to change this mindset of small changes. Having been involved in trying to change these laws over the last 15 years we have seen no improvement in the current situation with the failed legislation or type of legislation being introduced over and over again that do not fix the problems. That is in large part to the fact that people have gone after small changes that do not comprehensively fix the problem.

As we work with various organizations across this country we have instilled upon them that it is no harder to work comprehensively than is to work for small changes. Does it take a little bit more work to get ready for these comprehensive changes? Absolutely! But if you do all of your work prior to introduction you will be able to defeat all oppositional arguments from day one.

What we do is get you prepared in advance by teaching you the little nuance things that need to be learned in how to deliver your message that explains the faults within the law, the problems that these failed shared parenting laws have caused and what the benefits are to fixing them completely. If you keep approaching legislators with a message that has failed before, you will get nowhere towards the actual goal of fixing the problems. The message has to be finely tuned to so that you do not turn a legislator away from the beginning and so that you draw them into the open conversation that is needed to get a bill introduced.

If you look at the link marked What We Expect, you will see a list of research that we are looking for. That research is designed to lay the complete groundwork to ease the work in advance. Through that research we are able to develop a program so that you can present to legislators information that explains to them what these failed policies, in regards to custody determinations, costs the state and the citizens every year. While many still have this thought that the government makes money off of taking your children away from you; that is extremely false. That has been a myth that has floated the Internet for almost as long as the Internet has been around. While the states do receive incentive payments from the federal government for meeting certain criteria that is placed upon them, those payments are only for administrative costs that the states face. Those costs are not even fully cover by those incentives. In reality the states lose money.

We teach you how to defeat the counter arguments in advance and what to expect at your meetings. If you have ever met with a legislator you have heard many of the counter arguments already and likely stumbled for answer to beat them on the spot. We don’t because of preparation with answers to those questions or comments in advance. We have heard the opposition and know what they have said behind the closed doors that throw false thoughts into the heads.

At the top of the page you'll see a banner that reads The Case for Family Law Reform. Click that report and read it carefully. For many that have pushed reforms in this area they have missed many areas that are affected throughout everyone's daily life, not just those that have gone through custody battles. As we put that report together we relied only on government supplied statistics and reports. Doing that research took time but what we were able to come up with was the proof that, for Ohio, shows that simply changing poor policy on families that have gone through a divorce or a custody battle costs the state $10 billion per year. I have also been able to roughly estimate that the state of Ohio loses an additional $500 million in personal income tax, that figure does not include losses in business income taxes.

So the question you need to ask yourself is if you are willing to spend the time, learn the methods, change your mindset, and approach this problem in a new way. Not the old “they're not fair to fathers”, not the “my constitutional rights have been violated”, but a method that breaks it down to a simple question that grabs the attention of the legislator you are speaking with. Going back and rehashing methods that have failed in the past will bring nothing but failure.

Albert Einstein put it best, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”

That is why we push and teach the new mindset.

If you are ready please us the Join Us Link above to get started in your state.