What is behind the malfunction in the family courts? One answer is money.

This post was first published on Substack on 7 April 2023. It is based on a Facebook post written by Darren Cassidy, a New Zealand lawyer. Darren is just one of a number of activist professionals and parents in New Zealand who are suffering harrassment, lawfare and imprisonment by judges against whom they are alleging malpractice.

People who have not experienced the reality of the family courts find it very difficult to believe what they are told by victims.

It is difficult to understand why it is happening, as there is more than one complex reason: it is an intertwining set of complex reasons which together create a perfect storm of human rights violations.

Simply put, the reasons boil down to:

1.     Profit

2.     Ideology

I welcome contributions to understanding the problem: it is a Pandora’s Box and it will take many perspectives to correctly identify the causes and propose the best solution. I believe the only solution is to urgently dismantle the entire family law system. In the words of a dear friend, you cannot reform a concentration camp.

More and more serious lawyers, academics, activists and victims of the family courts who were for a long time reluctant to talk about corruption are now prepared to state that this is what it happening. I am republishing here, with his permission, New Zealand lawyer Darrin Cassidy’s Facebook post about the problem which resonated with many people as an excellent description of their experiences.

When you move children from one place to another unlawfully and for profit, it is called child trafficking. I have also been writing to the Croatian and British Government since 2020 reporting that what has been happening in my children’s case is a form of child trafficking. In Croatia in 2023 it has become clear that full blown trafficking has been happening systemically in the courts.

Child Services and Family Court are a State sanctioned cesspit of child trafficking.

By Darrin Cassidy

All power must be subject to restraints. Currently, Family Court Judges have unbridled power, and no restraints. Family Court Judges on a regular basis flagrantly go beyond the law knowing they are untouchable. That is not democracy. That is not natural justice, it is the law of an ugly covert jungle.

Child Services and Family Court are an industry where children are the currency, and taking children is extraordinarily lucrative.

Mothers have a higher percentage of children in their care than fathers. Hence so many more single mothers are targeted by Child Services and Family Court as the single mothers are deemed easy pickings.

When it’s a Family Court dispute between parents the game is set against the concerned parent because that makes the concerned parent fight harder, which entangles the parties in court battles that will drag out for years guaranteeing all the gamers have another stream of income.

Most concerned parents will be mothers because males are often the abuser in relationships and so mothers file the concerns. The players turn on the concerned parent. That makes the concerned parent fight harder to prove their case.

Hence the legal fight has had petrol thrown on it by the industry gamers.

The Family Court has been hijacked, and the Family Court Judges whom previously were Family Court lawyers playing the same scam are now the Mafioso Dons at the head of the Cartel.

The custody switch, by targeting the concerned parent, banks on the protective/concerned parent most likely willing to spend any amount of money to continue fighting for the safety of their child while the Family Court players and scammers rake in the cash.

Without a doubt the Family Court has been hijacked by an orchestrated Family Court Cartel, whom are committing corrupt commercial domestic terrorism through the use and abuse of law for pecuniary gain.

In the Family Court and Child Services children are a commodity. They are withheld so the legal fight will drag on and keep their industry healthily employed and their coffers full.

Families and the wider community need to understand the alienated parent is most often not the abuser!

The Family Court can be a toxic environment that entraps parents in a web of entanglement.

In most businesses, you want to harvest the low hanging fruit, as it is cost effective, requires minimal output, and generates good income. Lawyers know this, its their bread and butter.

Family Court lawyers have mastered the art of gaslighting the parties once in the Family Court. They then create a legal entanglement, and milk the parents in a web that will often drag proceedings out for 2-5+ years. By the end of it one if not both parents will have lost most of their accumulated wealth, and at least one is likely to have lost a home.

The lawyers will have moved the wealth to them via streams of Court filings, and applications. Often the concerned parent will be targeted with accusations of malicious notifications, and “emotional” abuse.

Lawyers will even run “Potential emotional abuse”, they don’t even have to prove it in the Family Court. It’s enough that they raise it as a possible risk. Not probable, nor likely, but “possible”.

These lawyers, and the parent not being targeted can even accuse the other parent of mental illness, and the Court will act on that concern. Then Specialist report writers will come in and often back up that concern and rubber stamp it for the majority group targeting the sole parent.

Why do they do this?

If you target a genuine concerned parent, and disbelieve their concern for a child’s safety that will cause the concerned parent to try harder to prove the concerns are valid and real.

The lawyers, Child Services, Expert Witnesses and Judges then push back harder on that parent defending the safety of their child.

Eventually they push the parent into supervised contact, or no contact at all. That causes the parent to fight even harder for the child, and meanwhile the cash registers keep ringing.

Its an evil system that is abused by those on the gravy train. They hold children for ransom over the heads of parents that will spend every last dollar they have attempting to save their children.

Many of these parents run out of finances in the first 1-3 years, and then if lucky they secure Legal Aid, but either end up with a junior lawyer, or if they are lucky to have a senior lawyer, that lawyer often wont put the necessary hours in that the web of entanglement requires.

Your legal aid becomes depleted before you get to the substantive Hearing. Your lawyer becomes difficult and you are pushed until you remove your file from the firm and look for another lawyer.

Because your legal aid is now gone, you have to prove further legal aid is justified. Now you will struggle to get a lawyer, because a new lawyer will be reluctant to pick up the file left over from a previous lawyer. These lawyers prefer fresh picking$…

So, you self represent. At this point the lawyers and Judge’s whom were previously senior

Family Court lawyers playing the game, see you as a hopeless case that hasn’t come to accept you have lost.

You are now bumped around in the court with numerous judicial conferences and round table meetings, reports undertaken, and pressure put on you.

You either break, and then they gleefully say “see, we called it right early on, they have mental issues…”, or you give up and walk away from your child, or at worst, take your life.

If you survive, they will beat you down with an award against you for Legal costs, which they will throw on you now you aren’t protected by legal aid.

This is the sad reality of the destruction caused by Child Services and the Family Court gravy train Rort where children are the commodity.”

Slightly amended Facebook post from Darrin Cassidy, New Zealand Lawyer, with thanks.

Related links

Please sign Darrin’s petition to the New Zealand Government

Please sign this petition to the UK Government

UK Government Report: Assessing risk of harm to children and parents in private law children cases

Article: Making Divorce Pay

Article: The Facilitating System of the Family Courts

Book: AFCC net: People, Policy, Practices that Intrude in Child Custody Determinations

See Resources for more information about the family court crisis