When Telling the Truth Isn’t Enough in Family Court

I didn’t walk into family court with a lawyer flanking me.

I walked in alone—heart pounding—carrying binders of evidence and hope. Hope that someone—anyone—in that courtroom would see past the polished arguments of my ex’s attorney and into the emotional reality our kids were actually living.

They didn’t.

In family court, the parent with the loudest, most legally fluent story usually wins. Doesn’t matter if it’s the truth. Doesn’t matter if the kids are suffering in silence. It’s not about justice—it’s about who controls the narrative. And when you’re pro se, trying to represent yourself and survive emotional and financial abuse, the whole system feels rigged.

Here’s what people don’t talk about:

• Judges often don’t have the time—or the training—to recognize coercive control or emotional abuse.

• Pro se parents get labeled “difficult” or accused of “parental alienation” the minute they raise a red flag.

• A good attorney can twist your fear into instability. Your concern into manipulation. Your trauma into hysteria.

And if you’re a protective parent—someone just trying to speak up about how this high-conflict nightmare is affecting your kids—you risk being told you’re wasting the court’s time.

Let that sink in.

The very system designed to protect children often misses the most damaging abuse—because it’s not loud. It’s not visible.

Emotional and psychological harm doesn’t show up on a police report.

It shows up in your kid’s sleep patterns. In their schoolwork. In their anxiety. In their sudden tension with siblings they used to adore. In their simmering anger. In their lack of joy. In the way they come back quiet and withdrawn after a weekend visit.

But unless you can take that invisible damage and wrap it into a motion that checks all the right legal boxes?

It doesn’t get heard.

I know—because I lived it.

I wasn’t fighting for sole custody. I wasn’t even fighting for more parenting time.

I was fighting for someone to believe me.

To believe my kids.

And in that cold courtroom, under harsh bright lights, sitting alone at a bare table with a microphone and a plastic cup for water—while the judge looked annoyed just to see us again—belief felt like too much to ask.

This isn’t just my story. It’s happening in courtrooms across the country—to parents, especially mothers—who get dismissed, discredited, and told to “just get along” with someone who spent years gaslighting them and is now using the court system to finish the job.

So why am I telling you this now?

Because the system is still failing our kids.

Because family court still doesn’t get how real—and lasting—emotional abuse is.

Because pro se parents deserve more than judgment, labels, and being eye-rolled into silence.

And because some of us are still healing from what it took to try and protect our children in a system that mistook our fear for drama and our pain for instability.

But here’s the part I need to say out loud:

It didn’t have to be this way.

We went through mediation more than once. And every time, it felt sterile. Transactional. Surface-level.

No one asked us to talk about our children unless it related to a spreadsheet.

No one explored the emotional dynamics driving the conflict.

The process didn’t invite honesty—and it definitely didn’t create safety.

And once my ex’s attorney started controlling the narrative, I shut down.

I didn’t trust the process. And I didn’t feel safe in it.

What was missing?

A co-mediation team.

One professional to handle the financials.

Another to guide the emotional dynamics.

Both working together—not just to tick boxes, but to actually help people through it.

If we’d had that kind of support?

Maybe we wouldn’t have spiraled into endless litigation.

Maybe our kids wouldn’t have become collateral damage in a system that never really saw them.

That’s why I do this work now.

Because families in conflict deserve better than what I got.