Sol (00:01)
Welcome to Coparenting Beyond Conflict. I'm your host, Sol, founder of the BestInterest app for co-parents. At BestInterest and on this podcast, my goal is to help you find peace in the co-parenting storm. Today, I'm joined by Derek Salyers, a father, content creator, software developer, and the author of The Forgotten Fathers. Derek spent three years in the trenches of a high conflict custody battle for his son. And rather than going silent about it, he turned that experience into a growing movement.

I'm excited for this conversation because Derek sits at a rare intersection. He's lived the emotional wreckage of high conflict co-parenting, and he has the technical mind to build real, practical systems around surviving it.

If you're a parent who feels like the system just wasn't built for you, that your love for your child is being weaponized against you, or you're fighting just to stay present with this next chapter of your life, then this episode is for you. Fair trigger warning, Derek's is a real story and there is some talk about suicide. So please use your discretion. With that out of the way, let's dive in.

Sol (01:02)
Derek, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for being with us today.

Derek (01:06)
Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Sol (01:08)
I'm really excited to talk to you about your story of being a father and going through some of the challenges that you've gone through, and understand a bit more about what brings you here today.

We're talking to today, having gone through some pretty deep challenges. Where are you at with this story, your son and custody?

Derek (01:27)
We finished the custody battle. I went through a two and a half year custody battle, divorce / custody battle. But the main contention was the custody aspect. The divorce part of it was actually pretty easy. But I went through a two and a half year battle over that. And it's been about a year since the closing of that. Unfortunately, in my case, I know this is Coparenting Beyond Conflict. Ours is still very high conflict. And I like to say that instead of co-parenting,

we are parallel parenting. I don't know if that's a real term, but that's what I call it. And basically, we don't have a lot of communication. We don't really co-parent with each other that much. It's very much like, hey, this week is yours. I'll see you next Sunday when you drop them off and vice versa. And it's working for us for the most part. But there's still been some in and out of courts, still some issues of trying to fight over how much rights are given back and forth and stuff like that. So it's been an ongoing battle.

Personally, in my specific case, I see it probably being an ongoing battle until my son turns 18. Not that it's crazy or anything. Like I said, for the most part, it's just parenting day by day and having to deal with each other as little as possible to try to make it as smooth as possible.

Sol (02:34)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and I can imagine it resonates with a lot of our listeners, especially having this desire to be more of in a co-parenting relationship, right? We have this vision of what that might look like to be collaborative, but then the harsh reality of these situations, oftentimes, the only saving grace, the only way to protect our kids is to do more of that parallel parenting, which

keeps the homes separated and you just have to let go of control.

Derek (03:00)
Yeah, for sure. And I chuckled a little bit there because exactly like you said, my thought going into this from the beginning was like, okay, me and my wife are getting a divorce. She doesn't want to be together anymore. We're going to parent together. We're going to still make sure our kid is awesome and amazing. All those scary statistics, that's not going to be our kid and yada, yada, yada. And I was in for a very rude awakening when that did not come. Like I said, I didn't even know what parallel parenting was,

in the beginning, even throughout the entire hearing. My ex went for full custody, basically, she wanted me to have every other weekend, kind of the normal default. And I went for 50-50 right from the beginning. I'm actually the one that submitted the shared parenting plan that the court ended up adopting throughout the process. Because in the state of Ohio anyways, you don't need both parents to submit a parenting plan together. One can submit it, and then that gives the judge the ability to either

give custody of one or the other, or they can adopt whatever shared parenting plan has been submitted. They can't really make their own ruling up, at least here in Ohio. So I was lucky to find that out and get that submitted. But from the beginning, I thought for sure we were going to be co-parenting. Even after two and a half years, I thought, she's gonna be co-parenting with me. That did not happen at all.

Sol (04:10)
Man, that sounds really rough. You went through this process, you have a shared parenting plan. How is that plan working out for you? Do you have any regrets about what you put in there, what you didn't put in there?

Derek (04:22)
I'll be honest, I was pretty smart going into it and I don't say that as a pat on the back. I actually give a lot of credit to ChatGPT. AI helped me a ton. Fathers that had to deal with all of this before AI, oh, my heart goes out to you. But AI made the situation for me a lot easier. And so that was actually how I found out that because my original lawyer, actually I had two lawyers. I had an original lawyer who I ended up firing and then I had a second lawyer who was with a firm called Cordell & Cordell,

which is based out of near Cleveland, Ohio. They specialize in father's rights. The first lawyer told me we couldn't submit a shared parenting plan unless both parents agree. That's what my lawyer told me. And it was actually ChatGPT that helped me find out that wasn't true and helped me figure out I could That helped me out a lot. And then on top of that, when I was creating it,

It was really ChatGPT that was guiding me and telling me "Hey, think about this." So for some solid examples, I had no idea what right of first refusal was. ChatGPT did. And ChatGPT told me "you might want to include this in there," which means, for those that might not know if for whatever reason you or your ex spouse can't watch your child, the other parent gets the first opportunity to basically be the babysitter on their off weeks or their time,

versus a babysitter or a daycare or anything like that. And so I included that in there. Because I ended up finding out that I could submit a shared parenting plan myself, worded that to at the end of the day, side a little bit towards me. I tried to make it as fair as possible. I never went for full custody, even though I thought I had every right to do so.

I really tried to keep it about my son and I thought 50/50's what's best for him, seeing both his parents, getting to spend both time with his parents, getting that male influence and that female influence. To me, that was the important part. Going into it, that's really what I tried to do. But at the end of the day, for example, when it came to like medical decisions, the way I styled it and the way again, the ChatGPT helped me style it was,

we both come together, we make a medical decision. The doctor says we got to do this. Now either parent could say, "Hey, I don't agree with that." And on their own dime, they can pay to get a second opinion. However, if both parents still don't agree after that, I get final say because at the end of the day, there has to be somebody that has that final say. So naturally, like I said, it was my shared parenting plan. So I'm not going to pretend I didn't. I styled that

end of the road decision making to be me. So it actually worked out in my favor that my ex was so hell bent for lack of a better word on getting sole custody that she didn't even try to submit a shared parenting plan or anything like that, that again, the judge was only able to accept mine or else give one or the other full custody. So it really worked out in my benefit, to be completely honest with you.

Sol (07:00)
Wow, that's fascinating. It's a really interesting point to have clauses in a parenting plan that create an opportunity to make a decision and move forward, even if the two parents don't agree. I can imagine that being really beneficial in a relationship like this.

Derek (07:17)
Yeah, for sure. Because the last thing that I wanted to do was to constantly be in and out of the courtroom every time there was a decision that we couldn't agree on. So again, my thought was try to make it as fair as possible at the beginning. Give the other parent the opportunity to get a second opinion, to discuss things. But then at the end of the day, have that person that can say, OK, I'm making the final decision.

Sol (07:37)
As a father too, going into this process, I'm sure you've learned a lot and had experiences that many fathers do, which is the system in some ways sometimes feels a bit anti-father. It's changing. But there is this default assumption, at least in some states, that the mother is the one that should take the kids and the fathers should be every other weekend or whatnot. Was that your experience going into this process?

Derek (08:04)
Unfortunately, yes, that was. I did not start off anywhere near 50/50. It was a two and a half year battle to get there. The first three months I did not see my son at all when my ex left. I was working from home, typical get off work 5pm every day, that my cut off even though I work for myself. Try to

be family, eat dinner together, all that. The wife worked a day job as well. She would get home about five. So that was the natural rhythm. And so I got off work and sometimes the wife was a little late because she would go pick up the kids maybe from daycare or her mother's or something. Sometimes I would on some days, some days she would. So this was the day she was picking them up and I thought, it's nice outside. I'm going to go get a walk in. I went for a walk around the neighborhood waiting for her to get home and

all of sudden I got a call ⁓ from actually CPS that told me that my wife was moving out of the house and wasn't coming home. And I was under investigation for abuse, for being an unfit parent and for not taking care of my kids basically. It blew my mind. I have three sisters and one of my sisters has also had a high conflict father to her children who

was a heroin addict and actually overdosed in front of the kids. He had had his rights taken away, but then they had been going back and forth and he had called CPS on my sister several times. So I actually thought they were calling me about her, like someone had called CPS on her again. And I remember this is how naive I was at the moment. I called my then wife and I'm like, "Hey, you're never going to believe this. I just had a voicemail from CPS."

I'm going in this whole spew and then my wife interrupts me finally and says like, you need to call them back. And I'm like, what? She's like, you need to call them back and talk to them. I gotta go and hung up on me. I'm like, what in the, so I did, I called them back and that's when they told me like, you're being investigated for abuse. And again, it shocked me. So from her using that system,

Sol (09:35)
My god.

Derek (09:55)
right from the start, that put me at the disadvantage to where that three months till we got into the temporary hearing, I wasn't even able to see my kid. I wasn't able to communicate with my kids. That gave her the leverage in that temporary hearing to say, hey, this is the default for the last three months. My son's been living with me. I've been taking care of him, et cetera, et cetera.

I don't mind talking about it at all because I think a lot of dads are afraid to talk about it when they get accused of stuff. But I think it's important because it shows that this happens a lot more than people realize When we even got into temporary hearings, I started with

every other Thursday for three hours supervised. My parents had to be there with us, with my son. And again, this was going from a dad that, I actually have a personal brand where I've been doing a YouTube channel for years. And one of the things that I've done on that YouTube channel is I do a weekly vlog. I record my whole life during the week and then I make a vlog out of it every week. I got into that inspired by some of the classics like Casey Neistat.

I started doing that on a weekly basis. And I actually started it before my son was even born. So all the way from my wife being pregnant till the moment they left, there is complete digital evidence of my life and all the stuff we did, all the doctor's appointments I was at, all the school games I was at for my stepdaughter, which ended up saving me a lot because a lot of the accusations from my ex at the time were like,

"he's not an involved parent. He doesn't do anything with the kids. He doesn't help with the kids," et cetera, et cetera. And I had all this proof to back that up. But still, nonetheless, all because of that one claim, I started from no visits at all to then starting with supervised visitation for three hours every other week. And I had to build up from there. And over that two and a half years fighting and calling for more more and more. So to go back to your original question, yes, I 100 % experienced that.

I like to play devil's advocate even with myself because obviously as a father, I can be a little bit biased. I'm one of those dads, I'm out there like the system's out to get me. But I try to check myself and I will be honest. I do think it is getting better for fathers. I do think there is a shift happening and changing. There's a lot of laws starting to get passed in a lot of different states. I know Tennessee just passed some good laws, for example. I think they just had one that just took

effect starting at the beginning of this month in regards to child support or something. You might know more about that. I do think it's getting better, but I do think that that bias is still there 100 % whether people want to admit it or not.

Sol (12:11)
Yeah, there's actually a law in California, I believe it will pass, helps to minimize or at least bring awareness around these CPS reports being used as retaliatory attacks in family court. There's more penalties for people that use that system in that way. So there is progress being made.

Derek (12:30)
Yeah, I think that's excellent. False accusation should carry some kind of a penalty to deter people from making those allegations and just using the system to their advantage, not just because it hurts fathers, but also it hurts other women who actually are victims, because it does lead to where we're at in society today, which is where now you have a lot of

people who might be being abused that are no longer believed because it's just being used all the time as this weapon.

Sol (12:57)
Yeah, lying is genderless, so it can go both ways and it often does. So it's good to see that there is some awareness being brought to cases like yours where there is a lie that then puts you on a path of having to defend yourself. It's like you were guilty before there was any sort of trial. You wrote a book, Forgotten Fathers, and the title

Derek (13:15)
Yes, yes.

Sol (13:18)
stops me in my tracks. What is that forgotten father that you're referring to?

Derek (13:22)
Yeah, it's called The Forgotten Fathers. It's on Amazon. Anybody that wants to check it out. However, I will be honest, I'm not a writer. I grew up under the assumption, like probably a lot of people in society, probably a lot of good fathers in society, haven't actually gone through this yet. I grew up believing

Sol (13:24)
Yeah.

Derek (13:37)
80 % of dads out there that weren't in their kids lives were dead beats. I was under the assumption like, they don't care. They don't want to be part of their kids lives. I didn't know that the system was how the system was. And again, to be clear, I know it goes both ways, but I didn't realize that there was all these issues that dads were facing. When I started researching some of those issues at the beginning and actually then looking, that led me into stats about fatherlessness in homes and what I consider personally nowadays,

to be this epidemic of fatherlessness that's happening in a lot of first world countries, not just the United States, but places like Canada, over in Europe. I think a lot of first world countries are experiencing this fatherlessness, that there are studies after studies and you can debate whether all the facts are right or it's as bad as they say, but what you can't debate is pretty much every study says it's bad in some way or another. How bad it is?

There's arguments over that, but started seeing all these statistics and all these facts out in this data around fatherlessness in the homes and the issues that it causes. And it blew my mind. It was across the board,

higher rates of teen pregnancy, higher rates of drug use, higher rates of school dropouts, higher rates of becoming violent offenders and ending up in the jail system, higher rates of being repeat offenders, higher rates of mental health issues. Across the board, it's detrimental to kids that do not have a father figure in their lives. Now, can that be replaced by stepfathers? I think to some degree, yes. I think a strong male role model was really

the driving fact, because I do know that there's fathers that aren't in their kids' lives. I don't think that necessarily destroys your kid forever. I think it can still work out for the good. But I do think that it's a big problem. There's lots of father groups out there, father's rights groups.

But in the beginning, I was actively going out searching, trying to find these groups on social I could not find them. It was like they didn't exist. I'm not trying to be a conspiracy theorist, but it's almost like they are pushed down in the algorithm or something. And you really got to find them and tell the algorithm, yes, I want this stuff, before they actually start showing it to you. But I was specific and I'm like, there's nothing out here. And that's what prompted me to start

FathersForFairCustody.com, which is the website that I started where I talk about some of these issues. Then again, going into all the different studies and the statistics that prompted me to write this book, The Forgotten Fathers, which is not my story per se. There's several stories in it of other fathers that I've talked to and interviewed. And then it's also a lot of just going through the statistics,

the problem of fatherlessness that we're facing in a lot of first world countries, the statistics, the studies. I would call it more of a data book than it is like, sit down and read a story. I am actually working on a second book called Erased that is more of my personal story of where I felt like I was trying to be erased from my child's life. But The Forgotten Fathers is specifically around that idea of this epidemic of fatherlessness

and the consequences of that that we're facing in society and in the world as a whole.

Sol (16:30)
Well, is it fair that many men that are faced with the situation that you went through where you were falsely accused, that alone is painful enough to experience, but then to have to do supervised visits, you hear stories about fathers that just stop fighting, step away, give up. Is that something that you've witnessed?

Derek (16:48)
Yes, I mean, it got dark. Most fathers that go through this, the mental health toll was tremendous. I understand why the rates are so high around men unaliving themselves. It's a serious epidemic in and of itself. And I think a lot of this is caused by the system that we currently have. I'll go a little more into what I experienced,

but just a quick side note. The other day I got a letter from child support, which I still pay even though I have, actually I have majority of time, but I still pay child support. But on the back of it, when I flipped it over, at least in Ohio, I don't know if they always did this or if it was new, but I'd never noticed it. They have the suicide hotline number on the back of the envelope. First thing when you're opening, 'hey, this might make you think of...'

That is so crazy to me. They're like, 'hey, we know this is a problem. Here's this resource.' It just blew my mind. But anyways, I went through it, especially that, beginning three months, going from a house every day where my wife and I would get off work. She'd come home, she'd cook dinner.

Sol (17:29)
my god.

Derek (17:43)
While she was cooking dinner, I'd be playing with the kids outside on the jungle gym, on the trampoline. We'd be riding bikes up and down the street, scooters or whatever, taking a walk with the family after dinner every day, traditional type family like that. We had Sunday family dinners where we still went to my parents every single Sunday for Sunday family dinner with all my sisters and my nieces and my nephews of 12 kids and they all played together. And so it was very much from that to the nothing for three months.

No noises in the house, just me sitting here with my dog who doesn't talk to me. That was rough. And I remember, those three months, it was a blur. It was a lot of waking up in the morning I slept on the couch most nights because I couldn't even go in the bed. I stayed in the home, but I feel like made it tougher for me because there were still all the family pictures hanging around.

There was still the bedroom that I'd had with my wife. So I found myself sleeping on the couch almost every night. And I would wake up in the morning and I would stare at the wall. And then next thing I know it was 9, 10 PM at night and I was going to bed. I was just in here the entire time for those three months thinking and again, the way it ended for me is me and my ex, we never had a conversation. She had never mentioned divorce. She had never mentioned wanting divorce.

I had no idea it was coming, call me naive, whatever. I had no idea it was coming. I didn't know there was this big issue like that. And there was no discussion afterwards. She just left and made these accusations and then never talked to me again outside of the court system. And so it was a lot of in my head just going, what in the world just happened? A lot of confusion.

I remember it got dark. There was times that I got close to the edge. But I will say the one thing that always brought me back was my son. It was just knowing, he deserves to have his father in his life. I have a nephew and his father actually committed suicide. He's about 12 years old now and it has, bothered him. He has a half brother whose dad is still alive and it's always been a point of contention between them.

Because he doesn't have a father and his brother does. I knew how much it affected I just knew how much I loved my son that even though I thought about it and those dark thoughts were going on my head I still knew at the end of day like that's that's not an option for me. I have to be there for my son. I have to figure out a way to make this work and and once I did wrap my head around that it very much went from that to this all-consuming fire of

I'm going to win shared parenting no matter what. I mean, my lawyers told me it wasn't possible. My lawyer, both lawyers, even the ones that were for father's rights were like, "Hey, reality is you're probably going to get every other weekend." My family, my friends, all of them, "don't get your hopes up." But I'm like, "no, I'm getting shared parenting. They cannot deny me this. I've done nothing wrong. I'm going to fight this tooth and nail." And that's what I did. I mean, I spent $250,000

fighting this thing. If you take into like court costs and lawyer fees and just everything. I spent a quarter of a million dollars fighting this, but I had that much conviction. It either this way or this way and thank God and I do credit it to God. I know it's not popular nowadays, but I am a man of faith. I am a Christian and if it wasn't for God and my son, I don't think I would be here today, but luckily he gave me the strength.

He pushed me forward. And again, it gave me that once I got those dark thoughts out of my head, my focus just went entirely on, I'm going to do whatever I can to win this. And that's what then got me into using AI, like ChatGPT, to start asking questions. Every document I would get, I would be like, what does this mean? What is this saying? What should I do? What should I ask my lawyer? And just learning as much as I can and trying to read everything. I

picked up books off Amazon and custody journals and things like that, just trying to absorb and learn as much as I could, knowing that this was going to be a long drawn out fight.

Sol (21:13)
As a co-parent myself, I know how difficult communication can be. That's why I created Best Interest, the co-parenting app that uses advanced AI technology to automatically filter out all negativity, promoting positive communication and helping you create a healthier environment for your family. Try it now and get with code Beyond10. Link in the show notes.

Sol AI (21:35)
And now, back to the show.

Sol (21:37)
is such an incredible resource for all of us. It's so empowering in these situations. We don't have to necessarily rely on just what the lawyer might tell us, but we can get that second opinion. It's so helpful. And thank you so much for sharing your story and your journey around this. This stuff can get so deep and so dark. I can relate for sure to the moments

in my journey where I was feeling really down and considering ending my Looking back, I'm so glad that I didn't make that decision. I'm so glad to be here and to have experienced what I've experienced since then. But there is something so fundamental about being threatened in this way. And for you, having gone through actually losing your child for a period of time with the uncertainty of if you'd ever get to

have him back in your life is just so understandable why you would be feeling that dark.

Derek (22:32)
Yeah, for sure. Like you said, it's a normal feeling for most dads. Most dads will go through it and do go through it. If they haven't yet, they're probably just still in shell shock from the whole thing happening in the first place. But I do think it's normal. That's what I explain to a lot of dads that reach out that are just starting to go through this. It's normal. Don't be afraid of it. Don't shy away from it. Just understand it's just like anything else. You just got to process it. You got to

let it kind of get through you and get out of you and just try to keep your focus on your child and on the fight ahead. And again, realize that your child does deserve to have their father in their life, or their mother. This happens vice versa, I'm sure as well. It is so important that your child has you in their life. That it shouldn't even be an option at the end of the day, Even if my son would have gotten taken away completely and I wanted to have 50/50 shared parenting.

And I did only get every other week for three hours. My son needs that every other week for three hours. If that's all he can get, he still needs that. And so that was the conclusion that I came to that even though I was going to fight 100 percent, whether it went my way or not, I was just going to do everything in my power. It does feel very unfair that other people can determine I mean, it feels like your child is a God given right. I don't know how else to explain it.

Being a parent to your child, we have a lot of laws that back that up. There's a lot of things that parents can get away with in the terms of the law because you should be able to decide how to raise your kid. We as a society accept that overall. But coming to this point where now all of a sudden you're being told to do what some strangers tell you you have to do, whether it's a GAL lawyer in our case, or judges or magistrates who are sitting there saying like,

"I've talked to you one time face to face for an hour, and now I'm going to tell the court what you should or shouldn't have with your child," is mind boggling. It's mind blowing to even think that that's a system that we even have. And this isn't a father-mother thing. This, again, goes on both sides. To think that the system we have says, hey, we're going to give this lawyer that's for your child, their job is to talk to both parents and make a recommendation to the court. They talk to each parent for an hour, and somehow they're going to know what's best for the child.

Again, that's mind-blowing to me. It's a completely flawed and broken system from the start, and same thing with these judges and lawyers That's why I am a big proponent and fighter for equal parenting time from the start unless there's a provable reason that that shouldn't be the case. It has to be backed up by evidence because again, I do believe it's a God-given can give a reason why a parent shouldn't have access to their child, but

unless it's backed up by evidence, I just don't think that it's a fair system at all. And I think it solves so many of the problems in the system operating from that point and does away with a lot of things like the whole GAL lawyers and everything. If it's just assumed both parents, not just the mother and not just the father, should have equal access, should have equal ability to raise their child, I know there's a lot of people that disagree with that, but I think that is the best starting point and the best path forward.

Sol (25:22)
Let's talk more about 50/50 custody because I know you've said that the math doesn't always add up there. Can you tell me more about your thoughts?

Derek (25:29)
Sure, so on paper, my ex and I have 50/50 custody. However, like I said, there are clauses in there that do adjust how much time a parent actually receives. The biggest one in our case would be the right of first refusal. Specifically, and this is a little bit of a unique case to me, but these unique cases do happen. I work from home almost every day.

During the summer while my wife's at her job all day and my son's off school, I have my son the entire time during the day from 8 a.m. till 5 p.m. till she gets off work and picks him back up. Also, even on the weeks that he's in school, like next week for example, he gets off the bus at three o'clock, she doesn't get off until five, so I pick him up off the bus and I have him for that two hour period until she gets off work and picks him up.

I actually had him like 57 % of the time and she had him 43 % of the time, if you took, into account all those hours. And the majority of that being summertime where I have them all day long, that majority of time. And so to me, it does still get skewed one way or the That's what I mean by it. So on paper, it is 50/50. We have seven days on, seven days off.

And of course we rotate the major holidays like, pretty much every couple does, but there are those things within it that can skew it one way or the other. To my knowledge, the biggest one being right of first refusal.

Sol (26:40)
Mm-hmm. And would you advocate for adding right of first refusal to one's parenting plan as a way, presumably the care that you can provide or your ex can provide is better than a third party? Is that the concept?

Derek (26:56)
Absolutely, not even that it's better necessarily per se. For me, the thing is like just the more time spent with a parent is inherently better for a child than spent with anybody else. That's just my inherent belief is it's better that my child spends more time with his mother or with his father over anybody else. I think especially as a young child.

They're learning things. You obviously want them to have your values, your beliefs. Again, it's your child. We have whole debates over this in the whole school system of what schools teach and stuff. To me, just inherently, the more time with a parent, the better. Now, does that mean I'm a better teacher than somebody that went to school for six years to be a teacher and had a daycare and they could teach him his ABCs or to read better than I can? No.

But overall, I just think that rings true that more time with a parent is better.

Sol (27:44)
As a software developer, you've talked a lot to us about how AI has been helpful in this process for you. Are there times where you felt that AI is problematic for your experience as a co-parent?

Derek (27:57)
Yes absolutely. That's a, that's a great question actually, because it's not something that I normally mentioned and it is actually very important. It's gotten a lot better, but even still today, it hallucinates a lot. If you don't know what hallucination is, it means it just makes stuff up. It just says stuff that sounds like it is a hundred percent true and it 100 % is not. I remember times it gave me

things and it's like, okay, there was this case law and this case and this this person won it was, Monroe versus Jerry and this was the outcome. I go into my lawyers like, "I've never heard of these cases." I didn't want to be like, "well, I looked it up AI." So I'm like, "yeah, I did research." Then they come back and they're like, "these are not true.

You use AI?" That's where I learned very quickly, everything with AI, everything, if your brain says, this is 100 % true, to me, that's the first signal that you should look it up. Because if you believe it's 100 % true, you probably already have some kind of bias there to begin with, and you should probably look up the information. So that's a very important question. And the truth is, yes, it can cause problems.

You do not want those problems to go into the courtroom. It's one thing to hand a stack of papers to your lawyer and them to fact check you. There's actually been several cases now that have come out where a lawyer has used AI and it has given them false information and they have gotten in trouble from the court systems because of it. So the last thing you want to do is actually be taking that information into a court system and trying to present it as facts, as truth.

That can bite you in the butt really bad. But I do think there's a lot of benefits too. It's really good at helping you understand stuff, break stuff down, legalese terminology and stuff. I used it a lot for messaging back and forth with my ex. We all are humans. We all have emotions.

You can think you're being as objective and as kind of flat tone as possible. And next thing you know, lawyers pulling up that text message in court saying, look out. all the anger here. I use it a lot to just strip out any type of emotion, just to make everything very matter of fact. I would use it to basically rewrite everything, almost like as a gate system. It works really well for both of those two things. But

actually doing legal research and stuff, always back that up with actually doing the research yourself. It's a great starting point, but I do think that is something definitely worth calling out.

Sol (30:06)
In my experience with ChatGPT and Gemini, what you can do sometimes in those scenarios, especially if you find that the answer is just deeply aligning with your preconceived notions about what you want things to happen. Just read everything with a heavy dose of skepticism and then actually ask it, is that true? Is that really true? And oftentimes it'll reevaluate what it just said and say,

"no, you're right. You're totally right. That's not true." That can be really helpful too as a way to just fact check within the system. Sometimes it skips over the processing and then provide something that's false, but it will correct itself when it's pushed. Are there any other AI tools or workflows or suggestions that you have for our listeners?

Derek (30:47)
Yeah. Number one, just asking it "is what you told me true?" Another great tip that I would give is use different models. So I'm like Gemini and ChatGPT up side by side, and I'll make them go back and forth with each other and check each other as they're going through this process. And I'm just copying and pasting back and forth.

And then another simple prompt that I love doing is just asking it "what might be my blind spots here? What might I be missing? What might I not be seeing from the other side of this?" And it does a really good job at playing that devil's advocate. At the end of the day,

⁓ whether you believe fathers are treated unfairly in the court system or not, and whether that's true or not, at the end of the day, you're still a human. I'm still a human. We still have things we're wrong about. We still have things that we have read something that for whatever reason clicked in our head and because of our own personal preferences, we believed it a hundred percent without fact checking it. Always letting AI play that devil's advocate role.

The last thing you want to do is go into court and not understand the other side because if you believe that fathers are unfairly treated and you think that this is true across the in with the actual facts and not just saying stuff that then is easily provable to be false by the other side is going to help you so much more than just going in there blindly with all of these preconceived notions

that the other side is just going to rip into. Allowing it to play that devil's advocate prepares you for that cross examination. My case, we had a two day hearing at the end to determine everything where there was witnesses and everything. That prepares you for that even if it does get to that point and mediation and stuff doesn't work.

Sol (32:19)
Wow. Now moving on to our lightning round, Derek. It's a fill in the blank. So I'll start a sentence and you fill it in and we'll discuss, okay? Ready to go? All right. The biggest lie dads are told about custody is...

Derek (32:28)
Okay, yep.

the system's fair to both parents. It's just not the case still. It's just not.

Sol (32:37)
Yeah, we're getting there, but it's not quite there yet.

Derek (32:39)
We

are, we are getting there, but it's a hundred percent not. My belief, my experience, all the research I've seen, all the fathers I've talked to, it is still heavily skewed towards the side of the mother for default custody. It's almost always the dad trying to get up to even ground versus both parents starting to even ground. It is changing, I acknowledge that, but I do think,

going in, I had the assumptions, especially going into that temporary hearing, that three months I didn't see my son, I thought, all I gotta do is get in here, tell the judge, "hey, I'm active. I go to all the doctor's appointments, I go to the school games, I'm there every day, I play with my kid every day." All I gotta do is go in and tell him that, and I'm gonna walk out with 7/7 right off the start, and then we're gonna go through this battle, and it's gonna start from there on equal footing.

Sol (33:22)
Wow. moment that I knew in all of this that I was going to be okay was...

Derek (33:28)
that's kind of a deep question for me. So like I said, I'm a man of faith, Christian faith. I grew up as a Christian. I walked away from God for 12 years. I walked away from church. I got into self-improvement, Buddhism, all these other religions. I'm not arguing them or nothing. I think there's benefits to all of them. But I thought I had it figured out in myself and was using all these techniques. I consider myself lucky unlike a lot of other fathers because I had

investments and money saved up and to help me fight. And I thought I had life figured out, man. I was married. I had a kid. I had And then everything fell apart. And like I said, I didn't need God for 12 years. And I was in my office after about three months of just every day waking up, staring at the wall. And I, did the whole raise my fist to the heavens and "why are you doing this to me? God, what did I ever do to deserve this?" And he just met me with

unconditional love. I don't even know how to describe it other than I just felt this wave of unconditional love, like, "hey, I get it. I get you're mad. I get you're upset. I get you're angry. I get you're blaming me for this when you don't even have a right to do so because you haven't even talked to me in 12 years. I still love you anyways." That's all I can explain it as, just this overwhelming love of "I'm here. I gotcha. Let's do this."

And that was the pivotal moment for me that helped me get out of that dark spaces I talked about, to focusing on, okay, I'm gonna win this no matter what. And so for me, that was that pivotal moment.

Sol (34:48)
Yeah, it is a common story and I can relate to divorce is an incredible, you could almost call it an opportunity. You're going down a certain path in life, you think you have it all figured out, divorce is maybe the furthest thing from your mind and suddenly it's there and you have this opportunity to go deep within and heal and grow and emerge

a new man or woman that it is stronger for the experience, which sounds like that happened to you.

Derek (35:22)
Yeah, absolutely. Doesn't make it any less hard. Doesn't make it any less easy. But I think you're absolutely right. At end of the day, you have two choices. You can let it consume you and let it take you down that dark path or you can choose. And I do believe it's a choice. I do believe that choice is much easier with God. But you can choose to allow this horrible thing, this horrible feelings, these horrible

circumstances propel you into something even greater on the other side. Again, doesn't mean that there aren't still days I wake up and I'm like, why am I even doing this? But, it's that choice every day. And it does get easier, at least for me, having God there to help lead that that decision of, OK, I'm going to do it this way. I'm going to allow it to make me stronger.

I'm going to allow it to grow me. I'm going to allow it to, because again, it's the same belief I have with everything. Just like I said, I'm human. I'm not perfect. There's absolutely things I did that contributed to my wife leaving She just got up and left me and none of it's my fault. And woe is me. And like, I'm not stupid. I don't think I deserved what all happened, but that doesn't mean that I think that I was perfect in it either. Or that I've been perfect through the whole co-parenting experience or parallel parenting experience.

at the end of the day, again, you have two choices. You can let it bring you down or you can keep making a choice to keep trying to get better, to keep trying to improve, to keep trying to use that junk to make you a better person and more importantly, a better parent.

Sol (36:43)
Yeah, and what I'm hearing in all this too is that whenever we're faced with a challenge in life, we can choose if we learn and grow from it, accept how we got ourselves into that place. And by doing so, then we can learn and grow rather than stay stuck where we were stuck before.

Derek (36:59)
Absolutely, absolutely.

Sol (37:00)
⁓ Okay, next question. Co-parenting gets easier when you stop trying to...

Derek (37:05)
control the situation. ⁓ Yeah, it gets a lot easier when you realize that things are going to be different at one house versus the other, that there's nothing you can do about that. And that honestly, you don't even have a right to do anything about that. Just like your ex doesn't have a right to tell you anymore how to parent your child when they're with you. You also don't have that right anymore to tell them again, whether who initiated the divorce or whatever. If you want that same respect that like, "hey,

Sol (37:08)
yeah.

Derek (37:33)
when he's with you, you're making the decisions," you have to also give that. And I do think it's very easy at first to want to try to hold on to this sense of still having control when they're not with you. And the truth is you just don't. If the other parent works with you and you guys can work together and make, that's great, but you're not entitled to that. That's something that's given from both sides. And either parent could at any time take that away. And again, there's literally nothing you can do about that.

Sol (37:57)
Now the flip side of that is the situation where your co-parent is trying to continue to control your household, what you do. How do you navigate that?

Derek (38:08)
I guess maybe because of my belief of how much right she has to make her decisions, that also applies to me. So I'm pretty no BS about it. I just don't respond to that. I just don't, I don't even engage in that. If I'm told that I need to do something, there's not even a response. I don't even say, okay, I don't say no, I just don't even respond to that message. If it's a message about 'you need to do this,' there's no response from me

in regards to that, negative or positive. I just choose to make sure it's very clear. You don't have that right to tell me that, we're not married no more. You can offer me your suggestions and opinions. You can say, "hey, I noticed Tanner's been struggling with this and maybe we should think about doing this more." Sure. But the moment you tell me, hey, you need to start doing this. I just don't respond. And again, I give that the other way too. I don't try to tell my ex ever what she has or has not to do.

Sol (38:36)
Yeah.

Derek (38:56)
That's her choice. Now, I expect us both to follow the court orders. I expect us both to follow the parenting plan. But beyond that, it's the other person's decision, unfortunately.

Sol (39:05)
Okay, last one. Peace starts when...

Derek (39:07)
you surrender. There's that old prayer that goes serenity is like understanding the things you can't change, that's true. The only way to get true peace is to my opinion, to something higher than yourself and to realize that

life is an experience and not something to control. It goes back to controlling things. It's just something to experience. You can't control the outcomes. You can't control other people. So accepting that and just, I don't know how else to say it except for going along for the ride, is what leads to peace. Things are gonna suck sometimes. Things are gonna be awesome sometimes. We all get both sides of that.

bad to dwell on either side. You can dwell on the bad stuff and it'll bring you down, but you can also dwell on the good stuff. And then when things aren't as great, you're going to feel like everything's horrible. So just understanding that you're going to experience both, and being okay with that and understanding that is the human experience, I think is where peace comes from.

Sol (39:55)
Derek, thank you for your wise words and for sharing your experience with us today. Speaking now to that mother or father that's listening that's just really in it right now, maybe they're in a similar situation where they've temporarily lost custody. What do you have to say to them that might help them?

Derek (40:13)
I would say lean on family. I think the biggest problem we have, and we always like to say this is men, men don't like reaching out for help, but I think this is true for everybody, man or woman. It's hard to reach out, especially when you've reached out to a friend 20 times over the same thing. You've called your friend 20 times because your wife left you or your husband left you, and you're like, I can't call them again and just be like, nothing's new, but I just want to complain again that I'm going through this.

⁓ There's going to be times they need that from you and I'm sure you can think of times that you've given that to other people. Reach out to friends, reach out to family, use any and all network you can. Therapy is great. Men, therapy is great. It helps. It helps 100%. Doesn't mean you got to go your whole life but

if you're going through the hardest thing in your life, maybe check it out for a couple of sessions and just see if it can help you out. But the therapy is great. And then again, I have to say it, God, at the end of the day, seek God. If you have a problem with God, it's probably you have a problem with religion or people, not God himself. So maybe just try to talk to God directly and see where that goes.

Sol (41:11)
Derek, thanks again so much for being on with us today. For those listeners that would like to connect with you, learn about your book or your work, how can they reach out?

Derek (41:19)
The best way if you want to find out what I'm doing in terms of fathers' rights is the website FathersForFairCustody.com. You can find links to my socials. I have a YouTube channel. I was actually doing that before I got into fathers' rights. That personal brand name goes by OMG It's Derek. You can find me on social under those names. But again, if you just go to FathersForFairCustody.com, you'll find links to my socials.

The book it's on Amazon, it's also linked on the website. Also I did start, if I can plug one, it's completely free. I make no money with it. But I did also start a website called CustodyJournal.com. It is a free online custody journal. I believe documentation saved my skin.

Again, I talked in the beginning about how I vlogged my life Those vlogs showed things that were proof that couldn't be denied in the court system that I was an involved part of my son's life that I was at doctor's appointments, that we took trips, that we rode bikes around the neighborhood. It came in clutch for me. And so I'm a big believer in documentation, documenting everything. This is just a free resource where you can sign up and you can save receipts

for things you buy your kids, make incident reports. If a spouse is late, an ex-spouse, if they send a bad text message, you can log all of that. And then it has AI built into it that'll just basically take everything you put into it and give you a paper for yourself that says, here's all the stuff you've logged. Here's what it thinks is the most important stuff to bring up. And then

it goes from there. Again, completely for free. So check that out. I think it'll help a lot because it helped me out a lot.

Sol (42:43)
Awesome, that's so important. Thank you, Derek. I'll put those links in the show notes. And ⁓ again, thank you for being with us today.

Derek (42:49)
Thank you, I appreciate it.

Sol (42:51)
Thanks for joining us on the Coparenting Beyond Conflict podcast. To support our show, subscribe or leave a rating. Links for all books and resources mentioned on appear in our show notes or on CoparentingBeyondConflict.com. See you next time.

Sol (43:09)
The commentary and opinions available on this podcast are for informational and entertainment purposes only, and not for the purpose of providing legal or psychological advice. You should contact a licensed attorney, coach, or therapist in your state to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue or problem.