Family Court Injustice: Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

How Family Court Turned Me from a Six-Figure Father to a Starving Peasant

By Michael R. Phillips

They say “robbing Peter to pay Paul” like it’s just an old idiom, some harmless phrase you toss around when you’re juggling bills. But in family court, it’s not a figure of speech. It’s a business model.

And Peter? That’s me. I used to have a six-figure job, a stable home, and most importantly—a relationship with my child.

Now I live off food stamps.

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Family Court Injustice: The Lie of “Best Interests”

What kind of justice system weaponizes your love for your child? What kind of courtroom denies you basic due process—notice, a chance to speak, even to be seen—then cloaks it all in a feel-good phrase like “the best interest of the child”?

It’s not justice. It’s performance art.

And it’s not about the child. It’s about control, compliance, and cash flow.

Because while I sit in a hotel room trying to make rent and rationing food to make sure I can still afford a bus pass to court, my ex thrives. She lies, manipulates, and uses the system as her personal bulldozer—flattening any resistance, silencing me, and enriching herself with child support I can’t afford, while I’m kept from my child.

Meanwhile, the court? Silent. Complicit. Paid.

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Family Court Injustice: From Provider to Pariah

Let me tell you what “robbing Peter to pay Paul” looks like in real life:

• You lose your job because court hearings dominate your calendar.

• You sell your belongings just to pay a lawyer who won’t fight for you.

• You’re accused of being unstable because you dare to show emotion in court.

• You’re denied access to your own child because someone said you raised your voice once.

• And when you beg for the court to enforce its own orders—its own words—you’re ignored, mocked, or punished.

All while the other parent spins narratives that fit neatly into the court’s confirmation bias: The father must be the problem. The mother must be the victim. The one crying must be lying.

I’m not unstable. I’m exhausted.

I’m not angry. I’m heartbroken.

And I’m not a danger. I’m a dad.

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Family Court Injustice: A Caste System in Robes

What is this system, really?

It’s a modern caste structure with a velvet gavel. A system that strips the better, kinder, more emotionally grounded parent of everything—reputation, income, child, even identity—and hands it all to the one who plays the role of victim best.

And those of us who challenge it?

We’re punished. Silenced. Financially ruined. Emotionally destroyed. We are the Peters of the world—robbed daily, not just by Paul, but by a pipeline of professionals feeding on our grief.

Family court is no longer a place of justice. It is a place of revenue. A bureaucratic theater where the judge plays God, the attorneys act as gatekeepers, and your child becomes a prize to be hoarded, leveraged, or auctioned off to the more persuasive side.

And persuasion, in this system, isn’t truth. It’s money. It’s power. It’s manipulation.

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Family Court Injustice: Where’s Robin Hood?

Where’s the outrage?

Where’s the reform?

Where’s Robin Hood when parents like me are watching their bank accounts, mental health, and parent-child bond bleed out in front of a courtroom audience that doesn’t blink?

We’re told this is justice. That this is what we deserve. That we must have done something to end up here.

But the truth is: we were good parents. We were stable. We were trying. And we were punished for not being perfect in the face of abuse, deceit, and judicial indifference.

This is not justice. This is theft. This is systemic financial strangulation dressed up in legal robes. This is a slow erasure of parenthood, dignity, and hope.

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So What Now?

I keep writing. I keep fighting. I keep surviving—barely.

Not because I believe the court will change.

But because my son deserves to know that I never gave up.

Even when Peter was penniless, punished, and pushed to the edge—I never stopped loving him. I never stopped trying to be his dad.

Even in a system that tried to take that away.

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🛑 Enough Is Enough.

If this story resonates with you, share it. Speak out. Let the world know: we’re not criminals. We’re not failures. We’re parents—robbed of our place, and still standing.
If this story hit home—if you’re Peter, too—don’t stay silent.

📢 Share this article to pull back the curtain.
🗣️ Speak up if you’ve been silenced, erased, or economically destroyed.
💬 Comment with your experience—let’s make sure we are no longer invisible.
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Because we’re not just telling stories.
We’re building an army of parents who won’t be robbed anymore.

💔 “They took everything. But not my voice.”
💡 Let’s make that voice so loud they can’t ignore us anymore.