The fight for 50/50 custody. How Family Court Fail Families. The Doctor, Lawyer speaks out.

Today's guest is a man whose story might stop you in your tracks. Today, Dr. Mike Newdow joins us to talk about what really happens when intelligence, success, and logic meet a broken family law system and how we can fix it. Thank you for being here. You've had an extraordinary career in medicine, law, activism, but you've said your custody battle was the most painful and unjust experience of your life. Why is fixing the court system so personal to you?

It's personal to anyone who's been through it. Anyone who's been through it and treated unfairly, which is a lot of people. Sometimes I imagine everybody's treated fairly. It's, it's the, it's a fundamental constitutional right to be a parent. And the Supreme Court has said it's perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by this court. They destroy it. They interfere with it. And they do it in the alleged belief that they're helping the child, and they're not doing any such thing. They're injuring the child simultaneously. So I think it's horrible.

And you've also questioned the phrase best interest of the child. It sounds noble, but you've also said it's vague, a loophole for bias. So if we replace the system with a default 50/50 custody and financial parity model, What do you think would change for families?

They'd be much better off. I think we encourage people to fight and they do. You know, there's, you, you, you put people in this boxing ring. You say, here, we're gonna give you vengeance. We're gonna give you money. We're gonna give you time with the child. We're gonna give you power. We're gonna give you all this stuff. Okay, now go. All right. And they, and so two people start fighting. It's, it's, it's in, I mean, it's insane. I always think about, you know, you hear what comes after custody, custody fight, custody war, custody battle. People also, let's go to a different similar related thing with, with relations between two people. You never hear, how come you never hear, there are lots of times where people are going to get married. They get engaged. They promise each other, I'll be with you forever. And then before they go, they say, yeah, nah, actually I didn't like you all that much. Forget it. I mean, they break up, right? Also a horrible devastating blow to whoever doesn't want that. How come you never hear fights like that? How come you never hear broken marriage battle? And the reason is because you can't. In California, there's a law. It's in Civil Code. What is it? 3043.4, 3043.5. Twice it says the same thing. There's no cause of action for breach of promise of marriage. All right? You can't go. Go to court, you can vent. It gets thrown out because there is no, no battle. Don't you think these people would be battling if the state put in a thing and said, yeah, we're going to use some best interest of whatever you want to use it. Okay. And here, go to court. They'd be fighting like crazy, right? Just like they do here. If you design the law not to fight, you don't fight. If you design it to fight, people fight. I'm talking about before marriage, before two people get married and there's a promise of marriage. And these people have been dating for 5 years or whatever, and they promised to get married, and one of them says no. Those people never fight because there's no— you can't go to court to fight. There's nothing in there. And they go on and live their lives. That's what would happen here.

Right, right. So let's go back to the beginning, before the filings, before the lawyers. What was your relationship with your daughter's mother in those early days?

We were a good friend. So that's why we spent time together. So, um, it was fun. I don't have a lot of friends. She was probably my best friend at the time. I think I was probably her best friend at the time. And we got along fine.

I see. And was there a moment when things shifted, when the dynamic went from kind of partnership to opposition?

Yeah, I told her I don't love her and I'm never gonna marry her, but I still wanna be good friends. And she didn't like that, that response. Oh, okay. That was the moment. So, and then it, it went on and, and I said, let's, let's share our child. And she said she had already done this once before with another person. She had another child, but even if she hadn't, but I think she was very experienced and knew, knew how to deal with the system. System and how to take advantage of the system. And so she said, I'm not going to do anything. I'm going to get back at you. I'm going to get my pensions. I'm going to get more money. I'm going to get my time with my more extra time with the child. And she's encouraged to do it. That's the whole point. The system encourages her to do that. If they didn't have that, she would just be like breach of marriage. You'd go on your ways, be friends if you wanted to, otherwise not. But you wouldn't be fighting. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

And how did the custody battle start? Was there a single disagreement?

You, I, I do, there was a, an issue that arose, which, which I maybe, well, I, well, first of all, I, I prefer, I mean, we can talk about my, my, my individual thing, but it's, it's, I don't, I don't argue it from that. I argue it from, you know, forget me. Okay. I, I'm pretty much out of it now. I'm, I'm, I'm ancient, so I don't have to worry about this thing. Anymore, but, uh, my child's grown. Although it still affects you.

One of the reasons I'm asking is just that from the story background is just to let other dads understand if they're going through the process, how you dealt with it, uh, from an emotional standpoint, or even how you dealt with it to begin with, because a lot of these dads have this issue right now coming at them, right? And they need to know that there is an end to it somewhere, right? That's an end. Even if you get raped.

There, there's an end. I mean, I still, I, I, I still scream at walls and, and at this judge, not infrequently. It's just such a horrible system. It's so wrong. There's no benefit. There's harm. I, there's best interest of the child. There's clear harm to those children. Okay. Who are put in this situation. You just treat, I mean, people behave normal when you treat 'em fairly. Okay. It's the not being treated, you know, people go to prison who, who, who are caught and know they're caught. They're fine with it. They say, okay, I did it and I served the time. Okay. I understand that. They get angry when they didn't, when they think they didn't do something wrong and then they fight. Right. But people, if they're treated fairly, they go, okay, I screwed up. I don't mind. But here, there's no screw up. All of these, these are people who want to be parents to their children. And the idea that some court knows better than you, never even seen the child, okay. Knows nothing about anything. There's no evidence whatsoever. None. That shows this benefits children. Okay. But they still talk about it so nobly. Oh, I'm the best interest of the child. It's, it's crazy.

And it's crazy. How many judges or jurisdictions did your case move through before it was over?

There was one judge at the beginning and then it switched to another judge and I was with that judge the whole time. And then I appealed fighting the system. I brought appeal challenging the constitutionality of this. And I lost ridiculous arguments. I mean, they didn't address any of the issues. Then I appealed to the Supreme Court of California. And as always happens, they— you get a one word, denied, and it's over. Although I'm still trying again. So if there are people out there who want to join in another challenge, I plan on doing that since I get a little more time. But before I die, that's one of my plans.

You've said the family law system rewards the conflict. The mediators, evaluators, and the attorneys often benefit financially from keeping the fight alive. Walk us through how that works and how you experience that firsthand.

It does benefit them. I mean, they, for, they make a living on this. And I, I was, uh, I'm an attorney, so I joined California Bar that has these subsections of, of things, you know, so probate law and, and corporate law and whatever. Um, there's a family law section, so I signed, signed up for that one and never, you know, occasionally I'd get a, a comment from somebody saying, yeah, yeah, we know what you You know, so, but almost everybody else stands up for, no, no, these children need us. And when they make a fortune, you know, these ridiculous prices and the, and they won't ever address the issues. I mean, I'd sit there, okay, let's go through this. Show me how this benefits. Oh, you need us to benefit the child and all this stuff. Why? And you use this best interest standard. What does that even mean? No one could ever answer that. Always. If you go to a conference, I've gone. They have conferences on best interests of the child, family law, and you go, they never talk about best interests of the child. And you raise your hand and say, wait, I thought we had best interests of child here. Well, you know, and they can't, there is no best interest. What does that mean?

I'm just saying. What are they talking about in those conferences?

They talk about everything except best interests. They'll talk about how you do this in family law and how you go this route and strategies. Never did they talk about the best interests of the child. Okay. 'Cause it doesn't mean anything. How can they talk about it? What is best? Is it best to be a parent who believes we should walk in nature or to be a parent who says you should play chess or a parent who says you should do sports? Or, I mean, how do you rate those things? How do you, how do you measure them against one another? And how do you integrate the billions of things that go in with raising a child? What does that mean? How do you come up with the best? It's so stupid. And I've, you've heard me say this before. Okay. If these family law judges are so good at what's best for the child, why don't we do away with elections and we'll just get family law judges and they can tell us what's in the best interest of the, of the country. 'Cause that makes as much sense. It's insane. It's just, it's crazy. The whole thing is just nonsense and nobody addresses this stuff. Nobody who has the power to do something about it, except we do in the courts. But then you get judges who are all, you know, in the same belief system that, oh, you need us to, to do what's best for the child.

Absolutely. Definitely a money racket.

Well, everything's a money racket. We all like to make money and we all, game it and see it. Our views get changed by the, you know, that's why we have conflict of interest laws because, you know, people do things differently when they know they're going to get paid. So I'm not holding it against the family law judges or the lawyers or the experts or anyone else, but we have things called science or the scientific method. Okay. And we need to go and say, wait a second, is this stuff really benefiting anybody? We have these rules and these people make a lot of money off these rules, but we have no, No data showing that this is beneficial. And if you can show me it's beneficial, fine. And then everybody points at, well, neglect and abuse. That's okay. We have laws for neglect and abuse. We don't need— why do you have special laws for neglect and abuse in family law? We, we have definitions of neglect and abuse. These people who, by the way, were usually working together for 10 or 5 or whatever many years it was, nobody was complaining about neglect and abuse. All of a sudden, all this neglect and abuse stuff comes, arises. Why? Because it's not neglect and abuse. It's two parents who are getting fi— who are fighting each other. And this is one of the ways you win in the, in the, in in the courts.

Mm-hmm. So in, in your case, you were making like 25 times more than the child's mother. Did that financial disparity change the energy of the fight?

It changes the whole outlook. Okay. So, so because one person makes a lot more, okay. So when two people are together, who goes out and works? They, they, they make the, the custodial parent, well, she in this case, but whoever it is, Parent A is the custodial parent and we say, well, that parent was raising the child. We, we can't suddenly now have you equal. I said, no, first of all, the reason that parent was raising the child wasn't because that parent's a better parent. It's because that parent is a worse wage earner. Okay? So I went out and worked, or whoever it is, the one who can make more money goes out and work. Okay? And then you penalize that person 'cause he wasn't with the child or she wasn't with the child. Okay? Because she could, I mean, who, so you want the family, I mean, you guys with this child support stuff, don't you want the family to have more money? It's so important to you guys, right? So We do that, okay? And now you get penalized. And now, of course, you weren't there. Oh, it would be too traumatic to suddenly have you equal with the other parent. What are you talking about? People, you go over, the children all of a sudden go to a friend's house and then start going to, we don't have an analysis. Oh, it's too traumatic for the child. The grandparents, you put 'em away for 3 weeks of the summer. Nobody's, oh, let's go with these poor child. But go to the parent who has been working but still comes home every night and sees the child. Oh, that's too traumatic. Where do they come up with this crap? It's just unbelievable. The whole thing is just meaningless. It makes no sense.

Absolutely. Did you ever feel like your success made you a target, not apparent?

I had a lawsuit that, that was unpopular by some things. It was a religion, religious freedom lawsuit. I don't like things that aren't fair, that aren't right. And so there are things that our government does that, that favor religious belief, and we see it now, especially with Trump. I had a case and the judge turned out to be a very religious person. And you could hear in his— I actually have the transcript where one of the things I always wanted for a child before I ever was a parent, decades before I ever was a parent, I, in my mind is I want my child to learn multiple languages. All of you kids, I mean, it's, it's, it's a gift. It's unbelievable and it's free. All you have to do is put 'em out and let 'em go play with other kids. It's the simplest thing. And my kid was fluent in Spanish. We had her put placed when we were getting along, my idea. And so the, my child's mother was fine with having her go get taken by a caretaker who had kids, a Spanish family, and she was fluent in Spanish. The kid was perfect. Kids suck this stuff up. You can't keep them from learning and you can explore as many languages as you want. They'll pick it up. It's no problem. So I wanted her to learn Chinese and Spanish and maybe Russian in addition, and English and whatever else. That was my plan. We had a Chinese person coming to start to tutor when we were still getting along. And this was really important to me because it's a free gift and, you know, the social ability, the joy of just being able to speak multiple languages. It's a great thing. I can't, you know, I learned some Swedish. I can, I can speak Spanish, but I can't speak Greek. It's just such a wonderful thing to have. So that became an issue. And the judge tears into me on the, on the, on the fact that, that I, I keep pressing for this, this gift that my child is running out of time to get because every, because the mother is refusing this. There's a bilingual school between where she was living and where I was living. She refused to let her go to the bilingual school. I wrote a 62-page brief. I did all the research on, on bilingual education. It turns out that kids who go to bilingual schools Obviously are better in Spanish than the other ones. They're better in English. They're better in math. They're better in— for whatever reason, maybe because they get better teachers in bilingual schools. I don't know what it is, but there are data that show the kids that go to bilingual schools are better at everything. Okay. They're better at English than the ones who don't go to bilingual schools. Why would you not let your kid do that? I don't know. You'll have to talk to the mother, but I can't understand why she would do it. Anyhow, I went to court. And the judge goes, oh, what's this with you and the bilingual education? I said, your honor, I think it's very important. I want to give my child that gift. He, being the religious person, it was clear he had, I had gotten on TV a couple times, lots of times, on this religious freedom thing. And I'm sure he saw me on TV because nothing else accounted for his language. And he says, that's it about you. You're so sure. Because I was very sure that the government's violating the Constitution with the religious freedom stuff. And he's religious, so he doesn't see that. So, you know, he says, that's the problem. You, you're so sure that she's gonna, and, and I, I can read this thing to you. He's telling, you know, I said, you're wrong. I'm sure if she doesn't enjoy it now, which I think she will, okay, when she's 18, she's gonna wish she knew, had, had learned Spanish. He says, that's the problem. You're so sure that she, that she'll know it. There's another person here. Wait, you think she won't wanna learn Spanish? What is this argument we're having here? This is crazy. He's on, he's on the record. It's nuts. So at the same, in the same discussion, at which time he says, he says, 'cause I argued that there's a fundamental constitutional right of equality. Okay. Where do we get this? First of all, to begin with, and this won't be a popular thing to say, but why are children suddenly have more rights than parents? Every, all of us have equal rights. Okay. Well, you destroy a parent's life for this marginal imaginary illusory benefit that you're claiming anyhow. Okay. You shatter somebody's life versus this thing that you can't even prove shows any benefit. And we say, But that's so good because it's the best interest of the child. We care about children. I'm not caring for everybody like you. He's on the record as saying, I don't care about the parents. Okay. He says, and then he goes, well, that's not really true, but he says it's right there. And I had another, when I was doing this stuff, I remember I spoke to an ACLU judge, a member of the ACLU, and it was at a meeting with the ACLU. And we're eating dinner and he tells me he's a family law judge. I said, I hate you already. He's telling me, and I said, I said, cause they don't care about the parents. He says, you know, you have two parents involved. He says, this is a quote. I don't give a shit about the parents. Can you imagine a judge like, and this judge with me said, I don't care about the parents. Can you imagine if we go into a criminal, a criminal case? Okay. Can you imagine a judge who said, I don't give a shit about the criminal, the defendant? I mean, that, that would be outrageous here. Those are people who we think did something wrong. Okay. Here's two parents who haven't done anything and I don't give a shit about the parents. This thing's crazy. It's just nuts, I think.

Wow. Wow. So from your perspective, was this ever really about parenting or was it about more about money and positioning and power once you got involved?

I don't know what the money thing— I mean, the money thing is there. It may have— I'm sure. Yeah. I mean, it's there. The whole framework, forget about the money. I mean, the money is a horrible thing. If you mention the money, so I'll mention, so I'm cheap. I don't like to spend things. So I had an attorney. Cost for my attorney was $7,000. The total cost for my wife— my, not my wife, for my mother's child, her attorney's fees, $500,000. I had to pay $500,000 for attorneys to take away my fundamental constitutional right. There is case law in California that says you can't be forced to pay to take away your own rights. Doesn't happen here. I raised that issue. Judges don't care. We make law that says you can't do that. They still do it. Right. Oh, cause it's for the child.

That's nuts. Half a million dollars.

Half a million dollars. That was back in 2005-ish, 2008. I don't know. Somewhere around there. Okay. So that's a million dollars now. Um, so that's a long time.

So you spent half a million dollars and he, and he still walked away defeated. Now, what was the deepest cost for you personally? Was it the money, the time?

I never had a chance to parent my child equally. That's what the worst thing is. My child can't do a lot of things I could have given her the benefit. She can't speak Spanish, right? I could have given her the benefit of that, right? She can't do a lot of things that she wasn't exposed to.

What was the custody at the end? Was it 100%? She had 100% custody?

No, no, no, no, no. 30%. I said, so you, how does the system start off? You have to mandatory mediation in family law. So I went to mandatory mediation. I said, what am I mediating here? They said, well, we're going to figure out the custody. I said, she can have as any, she can do anything she wants. She can have any schedule you want. I just want to be 50%. So I want to be equal. So they said, so they said, well, you have to mediate away your right to be equal. I said, I said, I'm not mediating it away. It's a right. Okay. She can do anything he wants. I'll play. She can make a schedule. Okay. I just want to be an equal parent. They said, well, you can't. I said, what am I mediating here? I'm not mediating away my fundamental constitutional right, which, which got the judge upset and get everybody back. But you're not playing the game. You have to go to mediation. Mediate. Give me, just give me my right. And then, oh, it's all about you. No, it's about, why is it more about me than this person who's trying to take more time away from me? I don't know. The whole thing is ridiculous.

And so the reasoning behind the split was because you had to work more. What was their reason or excuse or whatever? What was it that brought them to that non-50/50 conclusions?

So one of the things that, that really, I went on a trip with my daughter alone. My parents had a 50th wedding anniversary in New York City. My parents were pretty well off. The mother of my child wanted to go. Then we started having the, told her I don't love you anymore. I never loved her. Sorry. I told her I've never loved you. You're a lovely person. I like spending time with you, but this isn't the love thing for me. And this is not my dream. So anyhow, so she said, I'm not going to go to the, and she was invited to go to the wedding anniversary. She didn't go. She said, I'm not going. I said, fine. I'll go with our daughter alone. And we went, had a great time. On the way back, she goes, we land in Kansas City, Southwest Airlines. I don't think they had the family bathrooms at the time. This is 2004 or so. And my daughter says, Dad, I gotta go to the bathroom. I gotta, I gotta go. I said, I said, fine. And you want to go to the women's room by yourself? I think she was either just be— she was right around her 5th birth. Um, she says, I want to go. I said, I said, you want to go to the women's room in there? You want to go in the men's room? Not a second hesitation. Women's room. So I walk her to the door of the women's room. I'm standing like 10 feet away from the door. I'm thinking that they're going to get me as being a pervert because I'm standing there making sure because I'm afraid, you know, she'll walk out and she'll get lost. So my eyes are glued to the door. Um, I wait, I wait, go in there as a woman comes out. I said, little kid in there? She says, yeah, yeah, she's washing her hands. She'll be out in a minute. It's fine. She comes out. Oh, well, mom, you'd be such a big girl. That was so great. And she'll say, mom will be so proud of you. So fine, we go home. Not only not that day, but I think the next day, um, I remember about her going to the bathroom and, uh, the mom was upstairs. She was down here. I said, go tell mom you went to the bathroom by yourself. She'll be so proud of you. So the kid, they go up, they take a bath. I go up there, how's everything going? And the mother starts tearing into me in front of my daughter, which she had never done before, um, about I never should have let her go to the bathroom by herself. I said, I'm leaving. I'm not doing this in front of her. I don't know what you're getting bent out of shape for. You never mentioned that to me before. Anyhow, we'll discuss it later. And that became a major issue, the major issue. So then you have to, after the mediator, you have to go, we need, we need an expert evaluator, says the judge. I said, why do we need an expert evaluator? Do you have any—

So that incident happened while you guys were still—

Still together, yeah. So that was what triggered that.

That incident happened—

So we were never— we were, we're together. We lived in, I had a house, they, my daughter and my daughter's mother lived there. And we were doing fine. Then, then we got to the thing, the love stuff, and I told her no. Um, and that's when she got upset. And then we went on this trip and we were still together. We came back, but we were still living together. And then the, the, the thing with the bathroom triggered this whole, well, the, that was when she, she went berserk. Um, not berserk. She just, she got furious that I, my child go to the bathroom by herself. So, and I think that was just 'cause she was still upset 'cause I wasn't in love with her and, and she said she didn't love me. She already had experience in, in breaking up and had attorneys and, and her, the father of her, of her other child has, has never seen his, his, his son since then, since she did, since he, he couldn't take it. Wow. The, the issue with this is, so we have to go to get an expert evaluator. So I call, so they have a list of expert evaluators at the court. Okay. This list nobody's kept up on, like 90% of the people don't exist anymore. I mean, it's so important that we have family law and they give you this thing. So I had to go calling around figuring that I actually straightened out their list for them and I handed it to 'em. I said, this is an up-to-date list. You might want to use it. And so, and I'm calling people and I, and I'm, and I've already started taking child psychology courses and child development courses at the local college. 'Cause I wanna see what's going on. Yeah. I mean, I'm a physician. Okay. We use science, real science, not bullshit. Excuse me. Not poppycock. Okay. And this, and these courses are, there was a text, one of the texts, and I'm reading this thing and it's supposedly the second most popular child development text in the nation. Okay. And I'm reading this thing. I have the, I can read, I can provide it to you if you want to see. And they have this book with footnotes all over the place. And I'm reading this thing and constantly saying, can't be right. This can't be right. And finally gets to one section. I say, this is nonsense. So I took my time and I went into the library and I started looking up the citations that this guy had. Again, he had citations, like, you know, every sentence was citation, which is really good if you're using it. This guy, first of all, couldn't have gone through this many citations because there's so many of them. He couldn't have, never could have finished the book. Second of all, they say nothing about what he's citing. You know, he'll say here and he puts a citation. He clearly just went to a database, said, oh, here's something on, and just threw the thing in there. This guy, I mean, it's clearly fraud. So I brought this to the class's attention. I said, I just want you to know this book that you made us get here to the teacher. Professor, whatever she was. Um, I said, did you go out and check this thing? Cause I'm, I mean, and cause this whole thing was just nonsense. And I said, here are all the citations this guy has in this section. Look at what they say. None of them say what this person says. I said, this is what you're having as bias. And nobody cared. But then the teacher didn't check. The other student said, would you stop? We just want to get through the, I just want an A in the course. I said, do you don't care what you're learning? No, nobody cares. And that's the people who were growing to become the child development experts. I mean, this is not science. It's just crazy. So, and that's, so, so I, so having gone through that, and this is 20 years ago, this is 20 years ago. Yeah. It's no change now. It's still, there are, there are people who are on my side who, who do child development and best interest stuff, who write articles that say best interest is nonsense. This is not real. So, and, and in courts they have tests that you have to go through. If you're in a, a malpractice case or something, you have to bring data and the, the, the people who testify have to show that their data is real. You can't just say, I think this. There's no such thing like this for best interest of child. It doesn't exist. These courts that impose this best interest standard is a standard that they would never accept in any other case. Okay. But they, but the whole thing is nonsense. Absolutely. So anyhow, so I had to find an evaluator cuz the judge says, I say, can't I just get one of the ones on the, on the, uh, on your list? They're a lot cheaper. He says, no, you're rich. You can have, uh, uh, more expensive one. I said, do you have any of the, what, any data? I said this in court. I said, do you have any data that shows that a more expensive person on this fraudulent stuff is better than a non— than a cheaper? You're going to get an expensive one. So I called through the list that I, that I came up with. And everyone I asked, I called. I know you're not going to like this for a second, but, but I believe in data. People say a lot of stuff and I've been through this already. So I just want to know, do you believe in following the literature and using data? And I remember one guy hung up on me, a professor at UC Davis. He says, I don't need this. So I'm asking him, do you have data for this stuff? I mean, I was nice. It can be, obviously I'm not trying to alienate the guy. I'm sure I may have to use some. So I finally get to one person and she says, yes. Yeah, I understand what you're talking about. I use data. It turns out she went to some, I don't even know if it was a credentialed school for this thing. I remember calling them up, people supposed to say, and I had this discussion with the guy about using data. And I remember with one of the deans and the dean said to me, he said, I don't think you'd be a good fit for our school. I said, I could be, you could be dying to get somebody who wants to get science in here. I get to this woman, she says she believes in data. I say, fine. And we get this, and so we have the meeting. So it turns out she had seen the mother before she saw me. I didn't know that. And I get, and she was very friendly on the phone. I get to the door and she doesn't even say hello. It's like ice. She turns around and she just walks in there. I said, okay. So I walk in there, I sit and she starts this, you know, what do you think the problem is? I said, well, I think the problem is people like you, that there's this thing that's best interest and no one uses it. And they come up with these proclamations about what's best based on nothing. She said, I said, I get grief because I was I let my kid pee in a bathroom. She says, I heard about that. That's child neglect. I said, excuse me? What? She said, that's child neglect. I said, are you outta your mind? And so this was the person. And we went in, we got into verbal fisticuffs. She started citing, there was a case, a kid got murdered in a casino in Nevada, like a few months before This happened. Okay. The kid was left alone, the kitten, and I think it was a little girl and her brother or sister, someone like a 6-year-old and a 4-year-old or something like that. And they were left alone in the casino. The father was gambling the whole time. Didn't watch him for hours and the kid got murdered. I said, you're comparing that to a father standing outside a door in a restroom. And he goes, yes, you could have gotten murdered. That's child neglect. And, and, and that was your— that was, and so I had that person and it ended up mother to have sole, she underlined sole custody. I mean, it was crazy. She lied about stuff. We got to trial. He said that I interfere with the teachers. We had the teachers on the thing. She said, no, he didn't. I, I, one of the things I did is I, my kid was in kindergarten. We had one of those big balloons you bounce on, you know, the exercise thing. So one day I said, If that were the sun, okay, how big would the Earth be? And it turns out the Earth would be a marble and Jupiter would be a tennis ball. And how far out would you be? And I had never done this for myself and it was a very independent. So I said, why don't I? So I went to the teachers once. I said, this thing I want to try with this kids, would you mind? They said, no, go ahead, do whatever they're out playing anyhow. So, no, I did. So I had this thing and I said, talked to all the kids in my daughter's class. I said, look at this thing. She says he forced the children of teachers to do this. I mean, they were fine and they testified. No, they said he was fine. He said, we had no problem with this. This is a good one just to show how outrageous it is. It's my daughter's birthday. It was my day to pick her up from school. And at the last minute, I got a great idea. I'm going to go buy tubs of ice cream, a billion ice cream cones, get a table. And this was like, I didn't think about this until like an hour before I had to pick her up. So I gathered all the stuff from my garage. I ran to the grocery store. I even remember cutting in line and said, You guys mind? I got my daughter's got to get— they said, yeah, fine. I came in and put all the tubs of thing. I put the, ran down there, put the table out there, had a thing, happy birthday, and all this stuff right outside her door. It was a place where they can— she came out. She was thrilled. She saw this, all her friends. She helped to put ice cream in there. I mean, you know, who would criticize this? This expert evaluator, he puts this, he didn't check with the parent, with the teachers. That's true. And I can understand that objection. Somebody could have gotten a larger reaction and died. Okay. First of all, even if that's true, okay. My, no, my child doesn't. It's okay. Keeping me from my child. Okay. Keep me away from all the other children. It was, it was just crazy. This whole thing. That was the stuff that was in there. And so the judge, so finally we had a hearing. The judge says, yeah, you're right. After 4 years, um, that the, uh, should go into the bathroom. He says, no, you did fine on that. Her suggestion, the expert evaluator. Which I said, so what was I supposed to do? Said you should have taken her into the woman. Now, now I'm not sure that's a bad idea, but I'm sure that's not the greatest idea. Yeah.

I agree with what you did though, because I would have done the same exact thing.

I'd done the exact same thing. But it took him 4 years to agree with it. In the meantime, I had this mother to have sole custody thing. It was really not that she underlined. That's nuts. So anyhow.

That's crazy.

There were so many things that could have gone on. It was nuts, the whole thing. It's horrible. It's just, it's torture.

You know?

Absolutely. So, anyhow.

So let's talk about solutions then. Right? Let's talk about solutions.

The solution is to treat people equally and to adhere to the Equal Protection Clause and to understand fundamental constitutional rights. Basically, we have two legal systems. There's a lot of different things, but in what I'm talking about now, right? We have all the laws that exist. All right. And then we have fundamental constitutional rights. They're different. If you don't like the law that exists, if you don't like the speed limit being 60 miles an hour, you can go run for office and change it. You can go lobby, you can gather your fellow citizens. Right. But that's the law. Okay. You can't go and say, I think it should be 45 miles or 80 miles or whatever. Okay. You can say it, but you're not going to get anywhere. Okay. All right. We have a system of democracy that that makes law, except when it's fundamental constitutional rights involved, right? Then it doesn't matter. Right. It doesn't matter what the legislature does. It doesn't matter at all. If the legislature says we need black and white water fountains, okay. It doesn't matter if 100% of the population agrees with that. You can't do it because it's not equal protection. And so you can pass all the laws you want. You should be able to go to court. And when you go to court normally to, to win in a, in a normal lawsuit, if you want to change the law, you can't, but you'd have to come up with some some incredible harm. You don't have to do that in fundamental. The burden of proof is not on you in fundamental constitutional rights. The burden of proof is on the government, right? And you need a compelling interest, a real compelling interest, best interest of the child. I mean, best interest of everybody. What does that even mean? No, that's not a real compelling interest. And the burden of proof is on the government to show that you are serving that interest using this method. They don't meet any of those. It's the best interest isn't a real interest. And then there's a compelling right. You've taken away somebody's right to be with their, you equal right to be a parent, right? So you need to meet all three of those requirements. You need a compelling interest, you don't have it. You need to narrowly tailor your laws to serve that interest. You certainly don't do it with this. You take everybody and the burden of proof is on you. They've never proven anything. They don't even prove that this is a compelling interest to begin with, right? But you certainly, so, right. A, I would, my origin, my ultimate goal would be to have the government admit that they're not meeting the requirements for compelling state interest in the right of parenthood. And they should just say, okay, This is wrong. Okay. But if you're not going to do that, at least go try to get to the part where you show it's compelling and you have the data to show that you're serving that interest. So my thought is, and I'm actually in trying to get my congressman to do this, is to go, okay, do the study. Take all the patients that get litigants that come in for family court. Okay. Every single time you get one of these cases, you do a randomization, a computerized randomization, and the judge gets flipped. Keep doing it the way you want to do it, or flipped up 50/50, get them out of the courtroom. If you need to work the schedule out, fine, you get involved. But if they both get the right to 50/50, if they don't want it and they want to negotiate among themselves, fine. But they both have a right to 50/50 unless there's neglect and abuse. That happens with everybody. You don't need family court for that. And do the study and go for 5 years and go look at those, those families. I feel quite convinced I may be wrong. All right. But I feel quite convinced that you would be far better off with that 50/50 automatic, get out of this courtroom. You wouldn't fight anymore. You wouldn't have any of these battles and they get along and they just go on. Like, like what we have now when the law says don't fight with, with the broken promise of marriage, same thing here. All right. Don't fight and just go on. There's no benefit to fighting anymore. So, and then, and then look, I mean, we certainly know that the, the amount of money the family has, this, this child support is such an important thing. You got to get money from the child, right? Well, you just took half a million dollars, a million dollars today. You took from my child. All right. How, how did that benefit? That's right.

That's right.

That's right.

And what, what metrics would you go by? Like what metrics would choose the metrics beforehand?

So teenage pregnancy, high school dropouts, incarceration, educational development, socioeconomic status, whatever, choose whatever you want to do. Happiness. Okay. Do the, you can get your psychologists who don't know what they're doing anyhow, and then do whatever scales you want to do. And then look at the end of 5 years, be like, like you do when they do a medical experiment or any, any experiment. You sit there, you design the experiment, you come up with what you're going to check, right? You, you adhere to the, you, you make sure you're not biasing anything and you get, get the data at the end and you say, okay, who's, which one did better? I have no doubt. Mm-hmm. I'll always have to think about it, but my guess is overwhelmingly that those people who are 50/50 get outta the courtroom. Will do much better. You won't have the— first of all, you won't lose all this money on lawyers because you don't need lawyers. There was no benefit. That's my solution. Get something.

Yeah.

But then you should be able to come up with— put some science. Yeah. I mean, especially since the burden of proof, you're interfering with a fundamental constitutional right, requires you to have that until you get data that shows this is best for the child. Even if you account and forget about the best interest of a parent versus the best interest of a child, even if you forget all that stuff, you You have a burden to show this. You haven't shown anything yet.

I'm going to shift over a little bit, uh, over to your other battle that you've done, right? So you fought big battles before, including, you know, in front of the Supreme Court, challenging how religion mixes with public institution. Like, what drives you to keep challenging power structures, whether it's Washington or family courts?

I, I, I just hate when things, things are wrong. I, I spend so much of my life, like, I just yesterday I wrote to the local newspaper. They had two, their two main articles, they were written so poorly. I mean, it was just unbelievable. You couldn't follow the thing. So I wrote to them very nicely. I said, look, I don't mean to complain, but you know, you need an editor or something. This is really lousy. And then they, their page numbers aren't consistent. So I mean, it bothers me when things could be done so much better, so easily. So I always get involved. And when there are big issues, like taking away people's fundamental constitutional rights, and it's a clear violation, at least to me, I fight, you know, I do what I can to change it. So I still want to do it with family law. I mean, it's not going to affect me anymore. I don't have any more kids coming. But it's such a horrible thing. It's the government hurting people. And, you know, think how much tax dollars go to family courts. Okay. We're all paying for this thing that doesn't help, that hurts. Absolutely. It's nuts. So that's it.

We'll go ahead and close up right now, but if you could rewrite one family law policy right now, what would it be?

I, it already exists that all people have equal protection. That's it. And just adhere to that. Right? So, and we have fundamental rights and we will protect those rights and we can't interfere with them unless we have a compelling interest. Laws narrowly tailored to serve that interest, and the burden of proof is on you, the government, to show that it's serving that interest. We don't have that. It exists right now. It's just, what I would do is just have the government adhere to the law that we've established. Hmm. It doesn't. Wow. And do the study. Wow. See if you're helping them.

And what do you want your daughter to know about your fight?

So one of the things I've always taught her is to question everything. I actually even wrote a song on it. Oh, I don't know how it came. This came out of the blue. I said, if there was anything that I've taught you or that you think I want you to know, um, what would it be? And it was like, it was like with the bathroom. She, no hesitation a minute. Question everything. I was so proud of her. Um, so, so she's got the message. She had, you know, question me. Maybe I'm totally wrong here. That's fine. Um, but let's get some data to show.

And finally, for the fathers listening out there right now. Who feel exhausted, broke, and hopeless, what do you want him to hear from you?

That it's a horrible system, that you're gonna do, you're gonna go crazy, and, uh, and it needs to be changed. And we all, I don't know, 90-something percent of us all want to try to change it. I did. And I went and it cost me all that, that attorney's fees. Um, Antine and going, it's wrong. So do what you can, you know, write to your congressmen and senators because, or go to the courts. The courts is the best way, I think, if you could, but you need to find judges who are willing to look honestly at what's going on. And that's hard. They're all in, you know, they're all trained. A lot of them are family law judges themselves. Now, somebody doesn't want to go through 10 years of being a family law judge and then admit that, oh yeah, you know, this whole time I was actually violating a law and and causing harm. So they tell themselves they're doing— the legislators tell themselves they're doing good, that these poor children need our protection, and they don't.

And— Any advice how to have them deal with it emotionally? From an emotional standpoint, going that without, you know, flinging themselves off a bridge.

Yeah, yeah, well, don't do that. I'm actually amazed. I, you know, when somebody goes off the wall and starts shooting or something, it's a father, you know, they're, oh, that crazy father. That's not a crazy father. It's amazing to me that there aren't like 50 times more of those people. I remember thinking constantly of ways to shoot the judge, blow up the courthouse. I mean, you know, serious stuff. I mean, you know, it's, I mean, the things that go through your mind. Um, it's, it's just, and you can't, I mean, there's nobody who can do anything. It's just, you're so powerless. It's, it's just, it's horrible. So just, just understand that all of us go through this. I mean, it's, it's the worst thing in the world. It, and try to change it. I, I, I'm still trying. I still plan on bringing that lawsuit again on, in different names and, and, and maybe I'll argue it better or maybe some people are open to it. Um, uh, if somebody wants to join the lawsuit, let me know. Uh, and absolutely.

And let's remind them, let's not do the violence, right? Let me make that very clear that you're saying not to do it, but you will feel it. You'll feel anger, rage, and all that constantly, uh, like 24 hours a day.

It's just so— my parents couldn't, couldn't talk to me. Um, you know, they say, well, just tell the judge, just tell the judge. What do you think I'm doing here? You know, they, they, they, they would, they never talked to me about, about the case, about the, the issue. I'd go crazy. I still go crazy. So horrible. Yeah.

It's crazy. So thank you, Mike, for spending your time with us today. I know this will help many men process their thoughts about custody, and I hope there's something that can be done about the system we currently have to live with. And men out there who want to join in, Mike is here putting something together. We don't know quite, it looks what it looks like yet, but there will definitely be some kind of movement because Dr. Mike here is both a lawyer and an attorney and has fought in the Supreme Court. There are a lot of things that can be done. We just need to get people together and like Mike said, write to your congressman and let's see what we can do with the judges. If anybody's listening out there who is a judge who is dealing with this, your help is definitely needed.

The, uh, I'll put together Yeah, I'll put together a plan for, you know, to see if you can get the California legislature to put in effect that a study that make it part of the law that from now on we're going to do this. We're going to randomly assign to continue the way we're doing it or 50/50 guaranteed, you know, if there's a real issue of neglect or abuse, which is very rare. You know, that will obviously get involved. But if there's not, then it's 50/50. Both parents have the right, they can negotiate with themselves, but they both always have a right to 50/50 and see after 5 years which group does better. So same tax powers. So I'll put that together and if people want to get a copy and send to their—

Great. We'll put your information below when you get that and then we'll get that out to the people, the listeners, the audience. Out there. And that was Dr. Mike Newdow, a man who spent his life trying to heal people in hospitals, in courtrooms, and now in the broken system of family law. If this conversation hit home for you, share it, because the only way we can fix this system is by talking about it out loud. You're not alone. You don't have to rebuild in silence. Thanks for watching Rebuild Dad. I'm Jerry. See you next time.

This is Rebuild Dad.