Shared Parenting for Kids in Broken Families | EP 28

Family Court Tactics and the Fight for Shared Parenting

I've got so many followers on Facebook that reach out to me and say, you know what? I didn't hate my ex nearly as much until I walked into that first family law office and The attorney looked me in the eye and said, you know, hey, you're not gonna get 50 -50 in our state.

So I need you to help me dig up dirt on your ex. They know you'll give up on your car. You'll give up on your house. But you're not gonna give up so easily on your kids and they can rack up those billable hours.

And welcome to tearing down high places, my name's average Joe. Hey. Sorry, I'm interrupting myself. Yeah back in the tech room here doing a little editing. We realized what there was a couple of very important announcements that we didn't make so we're gonna make them right now.

Okay, first one. You might be aware of this, but if you're not this is a good reminder. Next week at Cornerstone Church 515 Mount Laurel Road. We've got VBS. So bring your friends that have kids that are 4 to 12 years old and Let them know it's free.

Come on out August 5th to the 9th. That's starting Monday this week. Great time to bless somebody with some right? So that's that. Remove there and then one week later, which is in two weeks depending on when you're watching this August 16th.

Today's guest Mark Ludwig from Americans for equal shared parenting is Bringing his 5050 tour right here at a Cornerstone Church. It's gonna be from 630 to 9 p .m. We're gonna have a lot of folks that aren't Aren't Christians don't go to this church.

They're gonna be coming as guests would love to have some people from the church there to greet them. There's gonna be multiple speakers talking about the importance of shared parenting legislation to Ameliorate the damage done by divorce and family courts.

So you're gonna learn more about that in the rest of the episode. So I'm gonna get off of this real quick, but the agenda if you come out Friday night. It's good. They're gonna have their political game plan.

The number of committed sponsors they have which is about 30 states. We're gonna talk about how they got those commitments what commitments they have. They have over a hundred and twenty pieces of legislation that are going out in 2025 and there's ways that you can support them.

Also, if none of this legislation feels like something that you could use to help bless a friend neighbor relative. What you could do it's just come out to learn how to speak better to our own New Jersey legislators because that's part of Mark's agenda.

Is teaching people here in New Jersey how to get in front of their state? Assembly people and state senators and local legislators as well to help them pass Good legislation to love our neighbors. So that's that's the plan.

Come on out. That's it. Hey, thanks so much for taking a brief break. I'll see you later I'm here today with Pastor Tim and we have a very special guest Mark Ludwig from Americans for equal shared parenting.

I I could probably talk about Mark for ten minutes. I've known him for several years mark. Thank you very much for coming on tearing down high places. Hey, thanks for inviting me Joe.

Yeah, we've known each other for quite a while at least I think seven years or so.

Yeah.

This is great.

We are we are we're.

Brothers in arms is probably the best way to describe it. So I'll just I'll just start describing mark a little bit. Mark runs this organization Americans for Marin's Americans air kin's for equal shared parenting and so We're.

It's a national organization. It's a political organization going after national legislation and helping individual states work on state legislation for equal shared parenting after people get divorced.

So Real I mean a lot of people that are in our audience. Mark They don't even know what happens when you get divorced because I'm a very strong Christians. So, can you give us an idea of what the battle is out here, what are we fighting for?

No-Fault Divorce and the Breakdown of the Family

Yeah, and that's why I appreciate you having me on is so many people are unaware. I was unaware until it happened to me. I grew up in the most typical Beaver Cleaver neighborhood you could ever imagine.

My dad was chemical engineer. My mom was a stay-at-home mom every mom on the street except for one was a stay-at-home mom. There's only one divorce that I know of out of our entire street growing up.

Only one divorce to this day entire street that I'm aware of. No divorce in my family and ever so it I was pretty blindsided and Almost ashamed if you will when I went through a custody situation and out of respect for my son I don't want to go through too many details you know that is his mother and He deserves a right to be able to love his mom so I don't want to go through too many details, but a situation happened that I was left with a Double whammy one a person that I was in love with.

That I found out I guess wasn't in love with me and ended up leaving. I ended up going two hundred and four days without seeing my son and during that time I didn't know if I would ever see him again.

I was literally told that I would never see him again. And so I didn't even have time to grieve the relationship that I lost because I immediately had to be focused on my son and he was six weeks old at the time that she left and It was it was a rough time.

I mean I can still remember coming home sitting on the couch and literally just look at the ceiling and crying and So many nights I would look over and realize oh my gosh the Sun came up. I've been sitting here all night.

I have to change and go back to work. If I was not a Christian 100 I would have committed suicide and that's why I love doing interviews like this. It's a little hard still to this day. So I apologize, but if people don't know Christ, I don't know how they get through it.

I've been raised in a very strong Christian family and not putting other people down, but I had been raised that. You always have to trust God that he has a plan for your life. And the way I was raised is that if you do end it you're saying basically I don't see a way out.

I don't trust God to get me out. Now that's not putting down. I know there are people that have gone through with it. And so it's in no way to put them down. I know that feeling I know how low it is. There's just my stomach was hurting so bad.

I hurt so much. I I didn't see a way out I didn't know if I'd ever see my son again. And I wanted to and literally the only thing that kept me going Was that belief that somehow God has a plan for my life that I don't understand what it is, but I'm supposed to trust him.

And it was all I'm here to tell you I'm here to tell the audience to Mark Ludwig has used the talents God has given him. And and well done good and faithful servant. Yeah, not that you're done by any stretch of the imagination.

But I you know, listen I I saw you last month at Liberty University talking to An organization it seemed to be lawyers for legislative Christian lawyers legislative.

No, just legislative National Association of Christian lawmakers. Yeah is exclusively legislators across the country who are Christians that have decided to come together and Stand up for their Christian values in the state houses across the country.

Yeah, they were they were I mean they were just so excited. You were coming there to talk to them about equal shared parenting. I don't think they ever heard about equal shared parenting. But I want to tell you our our audience probably hasn't heard of no fault divorce either at least a big percentage of them.

So I think before you get I mean, you know Some of the questions that I think people might be asking right now is well mark. It sounds like you didn't want to get divorced. Why'd you get divorced?

Why Children Become the Casualties of Divorce

Yeah, what what people don't understand is that like you said no fault divorce in in the 70s swept across the country and you know before that you had to have a legitimate reason for divorce and. And then in the 70s just anybody could just wake up one day and decide you know what?

Yeah, I'm tired. I want to move on and. So that what ended up happening is the kids became the casualty there were some. Without going into all the details. There was some federal funding mechanisms in DC that started awarding states for collecting child support and states started realizing well the easiest thing to do is get people fighting over child support and the way to do that is get them fighting over time with the kid and.

So in most states across the country in 83 of the cases across the country. If a couple splits up one of the parents usually the mother but I'll fight just as hard for the mother as I will for The dad because I'm fighting for the kids not for the mom but in 83 of the cases across the country the mother will become what's known as the primary custodial parent and.

The father usually is relegated in most cases to basically in every other weekend visit. Well, it's a very unhealthy even though a lot of people think and like I said before it happened to me I would have thought well, yeah, what's wrong with that?

Until it was my kid that was missing out on the bonding time with his dad. Until it was my kid that was missing out on the chance to get that bonding so that when the teenage years comes. He understands the relationship that's needed for a healthy discipline.

Until it was my kid that missed out on being able to do homework with his dad and the more research I started studying. You know opposites, you know attract and I think God designed that for a reason each has a strength and each has a weakness and as parents.

Man, what a great parenting dynamic they each offset each other. Normally in one one parent is a little bit more of the discipline one is more than nurture. One is is very strict with the boundaries one is a little more lenient with the boundaries and a child growing up in a healthy Relationship like that learns that there's boundaries, but there's also grace.

But you remove one of those parents out of that relationship and now you have a very unhealthy dynamic for a child to grow up. And you know when you look at the statistics across the country, you know, just about every major societal problem.

We have whether it's incarceration rates teen pregnancy rates teen suicide rates high school dropout rates. Behavioral problems drug problems the one common thread in every single one of those problems.

They grew up without their dad in 80 to 94 percent is usually 71 in high school dropouts, but you know up to 90 of homeless and runaway children grew up without a dad. Yeah. Unfortunately, the media is very good about talking about the dads that walked away.

Because it just for some reason they just love to be able to talk about that, but I'll tell you what there's a lot more dads that were being pushed away than walked away and It's become prevalent across our country and so what I work on is we call it a 50 -50 Rebuttable presumption and what that means is that a child should be presumed to have equal access to both parents.

Now the rebuttable part means that a judge still has judicial discretion so they can go ahead and describe, you know. Rule on is there extenuating circumstances is one parent unfit unwilling or unable?

But you have to be able to prove a reason before you just rip a parent out of a child's life. You don't arbitrarily say yeah, you know what? We're just gonna let you because imagine a child in this situation.

Imagine a child that only gets to visit a parent every other weekend in their mind. They're wondering does my dad not love me. Am I not worthy enough? Is there something wrong with me and Because they can't articulate the questions and concerns that they have.

That's what leads to the confusion that ends up leading to The behavioral problems the drug problems the runaways all the other problems start out because a young child can't articulate. They're already confused enough that mom and dad aren't together.

But all of a sudden immediately they're hit with the fact. Why do I get to see I love them both the same. Why do I get to visit with one parent and they never really feel like that second home is their home they feel like they're visiting they feel like a suitcase kid and for the dads we become a Disneyland dad, which a lot of people think sounds fun and.

And it may be fun. The challenge is Fatherhood isn't just about fun father. It's about responsibility and God entrusted me with raising a son and part of that raising the son means I have to be able to discipline him during The teenage years I have to show him the boundaries when he's young and my son needs to see that I can help him with this homework that I can get him ready for school and he needs to have that bond if a Parent if a child only visits with a parent on weekends.

There there's not a lot of boundaries because the kid knows they can get a lot away with a lot on Sunday. Because the last thing a dad wants to do is discipline a child on a Sunday knowing they're not going to see him for two more weeks and.

Now that you know and sometimes and in between 9 and 13 percent of the cases that are extremely toxic. You have a custodial parent that will intentionally use that. Against the other parent, you know, gosh, you probably don't want to see your dad because you got in trouble last time you were there instead of reinforcing the boundaries that the child should have had they're using that against the other parent and.

So many times and I've got I'm part of a community of what we call the shared parenting community online. There's about a million two hundred thousand people both fathers and mothers. But I get calls every day from people that said, you know, I haven't seen my child in five years ten years they've been alienated against me brainwashed against me and what I've been getting a lot of in the last few years is people in their 20s that say.

From the age 12 I never saw my dad and I was told all the stories about how they hated me and didn't be a dad and didn't love. And I finally tracked them down last year and found a banker's box full of return-to-sender birthday cards and Christmas cards and and Thanksgiving cards and bankruptcy papers because they spent every dollar they had fighting a custody battle and ended up homeless and finally had to realize I've got to put the mask on myself and hope and pray that my child comes back to me and I've got two good friends of mine one of which testified in the Missouri Senate this year or a year and a half ago that Exact same thing happened.

She said, you know what? I did, you know, I grew up not really knowing my dad finally got a good relationship with him only in time to watch him die of cancer six months later and I lost all those memories and all those chances with my dad that were stolen from me because of lies.

And so like I said, what we want to try and do is get both parents involved. There is no what the courts want to do is create this adversarial relationship because if there is no 50 -50 you walk into a court into a Attorney's office and the attorney's gonna say hey look in our state.

You're not gonna get 50 -50. So I need you to help me dig up dirt on why you're the better parent. Well, first off, it's not a better parent. There's a different parenting style. So there shouldn't be a better parent.

But more importantly, here's a couple of the most vulnerable stage of their relationship. Where they're trying to move on and a attorney is drinking up all the memories and Going through a divorce and a breakup.

The last thing you need to do is be thinking about the worst things about your ex that's just asking for problems when you're trying to raise it and the big problem is how many marriages could have been saved if You would walk into that same attorney and say look you're probably.

Anyway.

Instead of digging up dirt. There's a chance of.

Reconciliation mark, you know, I am so grateful for having you on to talk about this. I'm afraid People are gonna need to rewind and listen to that again because what you just said was there was no fluff.

You you got no room for people to really bring it in. I think a lot of folks are saying I Don't see that too much, you know, most people I know don't aren't, you know, unless the kids are I mean if they're homeschooling their kids and they're going to a decent church.

The problem is they don't see this is the culture of outside the church. It's crumbling down all around us and our churches are shrinking, you know.

We're retreating from the culture. The reason churches are shrinking. They always say that if a father is born again That family is very very likely to go to church and the child to continue in those footsteps.

Fathers, Church Life, and the Statistics of Fatherlessness

Yeah, what's happening is in churches across America in almost every church. There will be a single mother's group. But I'll tell you what, there's a lot of men's groups, but I don't see too many churches that have a dad's group and.

That's one thing that's missing is that father's, you know father-child relationship in most churches.

Mmm.

Feminism has definitely infiltrated the church and we talk about feminism on tearing down high places all the time, right Tim?

Oh, yeah, it's one of the highest places out there and man mark what you just said that. There was nothing wrong with what you just said everything that you said just made complete logical sense. Especially about the part when when you go to court Why are we assuming one is gonna be better than the other.

We can't go in with that assumption. You need to you want both you want both parents in the home because even at best at best now if Parents get divorced at best you're gonna get 50 -50, but you're already missing out on a hundred hundred.

But at best 50 -50 and it's so crucial. Look at all the stats. It's so crucial to have both parents in the home, especially the father in the home. I mean those stats that you pulled up earlier Joe. I know they are again.

They are that is insane. I didn't know the stats were that high on that and that would make sense even there's probably even more stats. They're not even like you can't even Make the stats up, but there's so much so much issues even talking about church.

You you can't really probably get a stat for that. But yeah, if the dad is born again, and they're bringing their their family to church. It's more likely that the children are gonna grow up and and do the same thing, but if the serial killers isn't on there.

Yeah, well almost all fatherless. All serial killers are fatherless. 90 yeah.

Yeah, but the another thing to a lot of people don't realize people think for some reason and once again I don't believe there is a better parent and I will literally and I do fight just as hard for me.

Yeah, ask me they you know a lot of awesome.

Man.

Well, I get I get it a lot of times people will ask me, you know, hey mark, you know, your son's 14 now. You know, he's at an age where he could ask to live with you full-time and and I don't want that in two reasons, I don't number one a Child should never have that burden on their shoulders.

Well, they have to choose between a parent. That is a thing to put a child in that situation. But the other thing is there is no better parent Levi. I look, you know I love Levi enough that I want him to have a relationship with his mother in spite of the fact that the first You know five years she did everything to keep me out of his life.

It doesn't matter. He needs her in his life and I want her in there. But what a lot of people the perception is that a single mother is better at raising a child. But I tell you what the statistics don't prove out the number one relationship for a child is an intact married family.

Right second is a single father raising a child. Believe it or not a single father raising a child is just barely below. Statistically when you look at outcomes as far as academically emotionally socially on all the issues a Father raising a child by themselves is just barely behind an intact family.

But a mother is number years though, right mark. I'm sorry after a certain number of years after like five years. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, you say that mark. I can't think of one benefit that the child would have even with the parents separating. I mean, there's so much that can go wrong with the parents separating. Why are we not fighting as hard as we can to try to even and make this situation better.

Because I can't I can think of so many benefits of having both parents in the home, but I can't think of a whole lot of benefits of having. You know even thinking about even if you have two really great parents it's hard to live one place and then you got to go to another house and then.

There's so many issues that can arise. Someone moves to a different state whatever it is. It's hard. And it's like you look at the the parents that get divorced. It's hard on them. But I don't think we're thinking about how hard it is really on the child.

Maybe even harder on the child when parents get divorced. It doesn't the child's life easier at all.

Well, that's one thing I've worked on legislation and Joe's aware I've been very fortunate to be a part of a lot of people give me more credit recognition. They say that I pass bills. I didn't pass bills.

I'm part of the. One guy ain't gonna pass a bill in a state. But I've been very fortunate to work with some great people across the country and we've now passed that what I call 50 -50 rebuttable presumption in Kentucky Arkansas, West Virginia, Missouri, Florida.

We passed a smaller version of that in New Hampshire that was just signed by Governor Sununu this past week. So we're making progress but one goal I have next year. We're gonna be filing legislation that Specifically deals with what you were talking about.

The welfare system back in the 90s, there's what they call title 4d that has to do with all the welfare benefits and Most of those welfare benefits started out that the only way someone could collect those benefits was to get the father out of the home.

And if you look at most of the major cities across the country. That rampant crime drugs violence everything and the reason is they took the dads out of the home. Don't aren't aware that's you know part of TANF which is is part of the Welfare benefits there were four purposes in 1996 that were written into the code that a state was allowed to use those benefits for.

The first three of which a lot of the radical feminists jumped into the state legislatures and pushed hard because the first three of the four purposes that a state can use that money for. All require a father to be outside the home.

So if you can get the dad outside the home, you can collect the welfare benefits. Well, there's what's known as purpose for purpose for specifically says For and I this is terrible. I can't believe I'm on camera and I can't remember the verbiage I'm trying to play but it basically says for the reunification of the family unit.

States have money that's being given to them from the federal government. To spend and right now states are spending that money to drive dads out of the home instead of saying hey. Here's an at-risk couple.

Can we get them into some mediation? What other things can we do to try and get that couple working together? That money's already out there. We just need to repurpose it from Encouraging divorce to encouraging reunification.

So this year for sure already I just met with several sponsors in Missouri, but we're gonna be starting to file that bill across the country It should have bipartisan support I just can't imagine. Why any legislator unless they're a family law attorney who makes their money in in divorces why they wouldn't be for?

Encouraging.

Reunification of parents. Well, I was just gonna say mark I mean, you know and and you're free you're you're among friends here where you can say it there is there's a spiritual war out there that is Going on and they want to destroy the family and they're very effective at it and the goals behind it, you know.

It's funny. You said radical you mentioned radical feminists. I'm thinking of myself What kind of feminist isn't radical? But but unfortunately, we've had feminism around for so long. It's now steeped into the culture and People just think like feminists naturally and I think we talked about feminism in the church.

It's something people just accept, you know, they don't think they don't read their Bibles they don't study they don't understand the the consequences of No fault divorce and you know free free access to Unlimited access to all sorts of wickedness.

It's not.

Another thing to consider is that if the father is not in the home Who's teaching that son to be a man if there's a boy in the home? They're gonna become more feminine and it's not their fault. They're hanging around all women they need to see a man and have a male role model in their life and not learn about feminism and Victimization and they need to be taught how to be a man.

That's what makes society better. So I think that's that's an issue as well. It's just it's that's things that might not be visible. But it's true that when you look at sons that grow up with their mom Some of them work out and they're manly men but a lot of them they have feminine traits that that need to be ironed out and they need a man to see an Example and lead by an example.

Mark, you gotta go. You gotta go look at our episode last week. Tim's wife was on and she was back down the feminists.

But you bring up a good point is is that they're around, you know, most most teachers are women. So they're gonna be around right now teachers all during the day that are women and and especially what's going on in public schools.

Not is really scary and right at night. And like you said or you get the other extreme where there's a revolving door of men coming and that's that's the thing. Oh, yeah, that's worse. A lot of us is most people who've been through a divorce.

A Boyfriend that a woman meets at a bar could literally have more access to the child the next day than their own biological dad has and I've seen so many situations where somebody you know, someone is dating a convicted felon who lost custody of their own kids.

But they're allowed to see the father's child. Every day, you know the majority of time and that's how heartbreaking for the for the father to even think about that.

That someone else's is raising their son and things like that, especially maybe even a felon that's.

That's heavy. Yeah, and that that happens. I have a lot of my followers contacting me that say that they're like, you know, my. Just started dating a convicted felon and I'm getting every other weekend.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

That is insane. I think Joe it might be it might be good just for the audience to talk about Some of the reasons for divorce and and when it's okay to get divorced. And Matthew 19 for sexual immorality but I also want to say that doesn't mean you have to get divorced.

That's just an allowance or a What do you call that. A You're allowed to do. It doesn't mean you have to do it to get divorced. Sexual immorality. And then if the unbelieving spouse leaves and departs and and and Separates God says that you're free, which is good, but it's not great for the children.

But Malachi 2 16 God says what he hates divorce. So I think that we should be a culture that doesn't support divorce. But a culture that also hates divorce and doesn't want to see it and fight. For what God says is that what God has brought together?

Let no man separate and I think you can even it's mainly for you know People becoming one, but I think you can even apply that to the children when two people become one and they have children. We don't want to see anyone in that family separated.

We don't want to support that at all. So I think just just to give some biblical grounds of.

Divorce might be good. No, that's great. You know what else you've got? You got to remember that Jesus says only for sexual infidelity. Paul does not go against Jesus when he says you're free because your spouse abandoned you.

Abandonment is Adultery, it's spiritual adultery. Yeah. Yeah true.

And the reason why he allowed it was for a time was for the hardness of our hearts, right? And really from the beginning God God doesn't want anyone to get divorced. So if you can stay with your spouse and and if you're a man love Your wife like Christ loved the church and giving yourself for your wife and then women respecting and submitting to your husband's.

It's the biblical way and guess what? It works because that's God's design. It isn't man's design. Man's design of this, you know father being here woman being here and then we're helping out and supporting this the state is Okay with that.

It's it's not good. It's a high place and I'm glad I'm glad we're trying to tear that down today.

Fair down.

Joe brought up to there's a war on the American family, you know, we've all known, you know you see every when I was growing up there was leave it to beaver where Ward was like the pillar of the family and The Brady Bunch and and all these you know, wholesome families growing up.

Nowadays I challenge anybody to find any show or any movie where the dad is the hero in. Every show in every movie that is the goof the dad is the bottom.

And mom's packing to to heavily armored. She's packing a gun on each hip and she's blowing people away. I mean, it's yeah violent. She's all violent and.

Yeah, sorry Joe didn't. Even when you watch crime shows you see the women is like, you know. The one taking down the bad guys and stuff. I'm like in reality that wouldn't happen like no offense. I'm not like a super strong guy.

But if a woman is trying to chase me down and tackle me, it's probably not gonna happen. But in these shows it's like an. It's like in every show occurrence. It's something like that happens.

Yeah.

And there's there's just a total war on and because they realize if they can get the dad out of the house and break the family up. Now all of a sudden it's very easy to get all the societal things that they want going on to get people depending on the government.

To get them dependent on the state to really push the the leftist wacko agenda. Yeah, the only thing holding that agenda from getting inside is the church and the family. That's the boundary that we have.

And if they can break. And what's the easiest way to break down the church? Break down the family and get people going to some of these woke churches that are more interested in filling the pews and not worried about preaching the gospel anymore and Watering things down.

And all of a sudden people just become receptive and intolerant. I hate that.

Protecting Children, Marriage, and Church Teaching

Mark the highest place. I think what you're you're making me realize is the highest places are always against the children. Every single really high place like look at abortion The children are getting mutilated before they have a chance to be born and look at like transgenderism and everything like that.

It's messing with the children and then the father's not being the home. It's messing with the children. The devil is Attacking our children and as men we can't let it happen. As men We got to do better and as just as a church We got to do better preaching the gospel and preaching the word what the word says and try to get people To change from that that that woke ideology and that that feminist thinking all of that.

It's horrible for the children. I think we're just so worried about the mom and protecting women. That's great. But let's try to protect all people and especially the children who are the most valuable in the kingdom of God and the greatest in the Kingdom of God who have angels with them all the time and people are gonna face Serious judgment for messing with these children, especially children of the Lord.

National Association of Christian lawmakers that Senator Jason Rayford that founded that organization has just done a phenomenal job of standing firm and Getting people who are gonna stand firm in legislatures all across the country.

So it was just a neat experience to be there. That's a that's a good group.

I want to show I want to show two minutes of that clip there because if you want mark this is the last two minutes we saw you you were you were you were sitting here and I don't know. You got a little iced tea going on there and I'm just gonna show this.

This was really great, man. I think this is like I want to do this because this is like a victory lap after watching you for so many years.

We're gonna keep this moving. Because we are very short on time and take one quick question from center. It's a little housekeeping here.

You said you had 29 states are most of those states have the same legislation. What I'd like because we need to get his model legislation. If the majority of states have one particular one, we'd like to see that.

That's it. Thanks.

So I was gonna Say something but senator, I'll just let you do this if you want to. So I'm I was thinking we should take this up As a as a potential model policy. So would you like to make a motion? Yeah, I make a motion.