Pay Attention, Corporate America: Custody Battles Could be Costing Revenue
10/12/21 • 36 min
Casey Sowers followed 14 years of military service with a long career as a project manager in the private sector. During this time, he found himself fighting for equal shared custody of one of his daughters.
Prior to this, it had never occurred to Casey to look into the custody industry, or to consider the custody rights of divorced fathers. But after the stress of his own custody battle seriously affected his mental health and job performance, he started to get more involved. Now, Casey is Executive Director of The Fathers’ Rights Movement, a nonprofit made up of parents who advocate for 50/50 shared custody.
At first, Casey thought the impact of his own custody battle was all psychological. However, when he stopped to think about how many times he’d had to take a call from a lawyer, or find evidence related to his case during work hours, he began to wonder whether custody battles are costing corporate America significant amounts of revenue.
This motivated him to launch a pilot study to test this theory. So far, it includes 4,300 people.
The groundbreaking study is being released to addresses the impact that inequality in the United States Family Court System has on corporations. This is the most comprehensive research project of its kind that observes the effects that shared parenting and the court system has on not only families, but also corporations and communities.
Companies are growing increasingly concerned about the negative effects of divorce litigation on their employees and families, including emotional hardship and mental health issues that lead to decreased productivity and time away from work. Additionally, subpoenas are causing taxing issues for companies to produce massive amounts of documents and testimony under these duress cases.
Casey hopes to prove that poor mental health — such as the kind he suffered during his custody battle — affects job performance. And since job performance is tied to corporate revenue loss, it’s in corporate America’s interest to advocate for a system in which fathers have a fair chance at gaining equal custody of their children.
Tune in to this episode of Divorce, Healthy! with Ashley-Nicole Russell, Collaborative Attorney serving Beaufort, Raleigh, and Greenville, NC.
💡 Featured Guest 💡
Name: Casey Sowers
What he does: Casey directs The Fathers’ Rights Movement, a group of fathers and mothers who advocate for divorced parents to receive equal custody of their children.
Words of wisdom: “My duty as a father is to do whatever I need to in the best interest of my child. It's about being patient, not being reactive, and staying mentally healthy. Even if you're not able to see your child, you need to be complete and whole as a person.”
🗝️ Key Points 🗝️
Top takeaways from this Divorce, Healthy! episode
★ Consider collaboration instead. In North Carolina — which the National Parenting Organization awarded a D- in its 2019 Shared Parenting Report Card — it’s not unheard of to pay $150,000 for child custody litigation, depending on which county you live in. Casey spent $140,000 over the course of two years for his litigation in Florida. Settling through a collaborative legal approach is far less expensive.
★ Understand what you’re signing up for. If you choose to litigate instead of collaborate, keep your expectations realistic. It’s a long, arduous, costly process. If you take that as a given, it will be easier to manage your emotions and be there for your child.
★ Put your child’s well-being first. Don’t fall into the trap of making yourself the victim during your custody battle. Prioritize your child’s well-being.
⚡ Episode Insights ⚡
[03:33] The Fathers’ Rights Movement works for parents of all genders: The name comes from the proportion of men to women who are affected in these kinds of custody cases: 65% are men, but the organization also advocates for the 35% of women who are fighting for equal shared parenting.
[07:15] Child custody battles are big business: This is a $55 billion dollar industry — and attorneys get the lion’s share.
[12:37] All states are not created equal when it comes to custody decisions: The National Parenting Org...
Casey Sowers followed 14 years of military service with a long career as a project manager in the private sector. During this time, he found himself fighting for equal shared custody of one of his daughters.
Prior to this, it had never occurred to Casey to look into the custody industry, or to consider the custody rights of divorced fathers. But after the stress of his own custody battle seriously affected his mental health and job performance, he started to get more involved. Now, Casey is Executive Director of The Fathers’ Rights Movement, a nonprofit made up of parents who advocate for 50/50 shared custody.
At first, Casey thought the impact of his own custody battle was all psychological. However, when he stopped to think about how many times he’d had to take a call from a lawyer, or find evidence related to his case during work hours, he began to wonder whether custody battles are costing corporate America significant amounts of revenue.
This motivated him to launch a pilot study to test this theory. So far, it includes 4,300 people.
The groundbreaking study is being released to addresses the impact that inequality in the United States Family Court System has on corporations. This is the most comprehensive research project of its kind that observes the effects that shared parenting and the court system has on not only families, but also corporations and communities.
Companies are growing increasingly concerned about the negative effects of divorce litigation on their employees and families, including emotional hardship and mental health issues that lead to decreased productivity and time away from work. Additionally, subpoenas are causing taxing issues for companies to produce massive amounts of documents and testimony under these duress cases.
Casey hopes to prove that poor mental health — such as the kind he suffered during his custody battle — affects job performance. And since job performance is tied to corporate revenue loss, it’s in corporate America’s interest to advocate for a system in which fathers have a fair chance at gaining equal custody of their children.
Tune in to this episode of Divorce, Healthy! with Ashley-Nicole Russell, Collaborative Attorney serving Beaufort, Raleigh, and Greenville, NC.
💡 Featured Guest 💡
Name: Casey Sowers
What he does: Casey directs The Fathers’ Rights Movement, a group of fathers and mothers who advocate for divorced parents to receive equal custody of their children.
Words of wisdom: “My duty as a father is to do whatever I need to in the best interest of my child. It's about being patient, not being reactive, and staying mentally healthy. Even if you're not able to see your child, you need to be complete and whole as a person.”
🗝️ Key Points 🗝️
Top takeaways from this Divorce, Healthy! episode
★ Consider collaboration instead. In North Carolina — which the National Parenting Organization awarded a D- in its 2019 Shared Parenting Report Card — it’s not unheard of to pay $150,000 for child custody litigation, depending on which county you live in. Casey spent $140,000 over the course of two years for his litigation in Florida. Settling through a collaborative legal approach is far less expensive.
★ Understand what you’re signing up for. If you choose to litigate instead of collaborate, keep your expectations realistic. It’s a long, arduous, costly process. If you take that as a given, it will be easier to manage your emotions and be there for your child.
★ Put your child’s well-being first. Don’t fall into the trap of making yourself the victim during your custody battle. Prioritize your child’s well-being.
⚡ Episode Insights ⚡
[03:33] The Fathers’ Rights Movement works for parents of all genders: The name comes from the proportion of men to women who are affected in these kinds of custody cases: 65% are men, but the organization also advocates for the 35% of women who are fighting for equal shared parenting.
[07:15] Child custody battles are big business: This is a $55 billion dollar industry — and attorneys get the lion’s share.
[12:37] All states are not created equal when it comes to custody decisions: The National Parenting Org...
Previous Episode
How to Pick a Better Partner and Prevent Divorce with Bela Gandhi
Dating can be daunting. Some people go for the same type of partners time and again, ignoring red flags and gravitating toward drama. It doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, it shouldn’t be that way.
On this episode of Divorce, Healthy!, dating coach Bela Gandhi discusses her successful career in matchmaking. Although it started as somewhat of a party trick, Bela’s ability to successfully match those around her eventually led to her passion. In 2009, she started the Smart Dating Academy, a coaching and consulting company that teaches people how to find the happiest and best loves of their lives.
“[We] help people stop doing the same thing over and over again, which is picking partners that aren't good for them, and instead, start picking partners that are going to make them happy, and be a real partner in their life and make life easy and fun,” Bela says.
Bela also discusses the current marriage rate in the U.S., which is the lowest level on record. She attributes this record low rate to people waiting longer to get married.
“I think now, with women being in school in record numbers, even outpacing men in schools and in the professional world, we're more equivalent in so many ways. So people want to put that education to good use, climb that ladder a bit, and marriage is something that people are choosing to do later,” she explains.
Despite the low marriage rate, people are still choosing to “partner up.” After 12 years of business, Bela has not had a single divorce among her clients. Looking at childhood environments and individual desire, Bela has discovered a successful algorithm for matching people.
Tune in to this episode of Divorce! Healthy with Ashley-Nicole Russell, Collaborative Attorney serving Beaufort, Raleigh, and Greenville, NC.
💡 Featured Guests 💡
Name: Bela Gandhi
What she does: Bela Gandhi is the founder of Smart Dating Academy, a coaching and consulting company that teaches people how to find the happiest and best loves of their lives.
Words of wisdom: “My mission is to put more love into this world.”
Connect: Website | LinkedIn | Instagram
🗝️ Key Points 🗝️
Top takeaways from this Divorce, Healthy! episode
★ Smart Dating Academy helps people find love and avoid making the same mistakes again. Dating can be difficult and isolating. Bela’s company helps determine clients’ true wants and needs, helping them avoid red flags and find lifelong partners.
★ Set yourself up for success. Seeking help from the Smart Dating Academy can prevent divorce later on, as it pairs people based on their upbringings and deepest needs among other points of interest.
★ Social expectations of marriage have changed but the desire for love remains. Now, more than ever, people are prioritizing themselves and putting marriage on the back burner. This has led to record low marriage rates but has not slowed down people’s desire to partner up and find love.
⚡ Episode Insights ⚡
[02:19] Fix your picker: The tagline for Bela Gandhi’s Smart Dating Academy sums up the company’s mission, which helps people find the right kind of love for them.
[03:45] Pandemic partnering: During the pandemic, Bela saw more people forming deep connections via video calls. Without the “lure of premature physicality,” she observes that new couples had more honest conversations.
[05:16] Record-low marriage rates: The U.S. is seeing a record low in marriage rates, which Bela attributes to more equality between women and men.
[11:02] A means of preventing divorce: Bela sees her work as preventing the end of marriages by helping people truly find their perfect match.
[19:40] Marriage map process: Bela explains her consulting company’s marriage map process, which helps determine the client’s ideal match by taking into consideration the type of relationship their parents had.
[23:12] High success rate: The Smart Dating Academy’s success rate speaks for itself. T...
Next Episode
Curing the Next Generation: Why We Need To Fix Divorce Culture
Divorce, Healthy! was started to help people find a way to get through divorce in non-destructive ways. Ashley-Nicole Russell’s passion has inspired her personal mission statement: to change how divorce is handled in America.
Ashley-Nicole launched the Divorce, Healthy! podcast with a monologue. In today’s episode, she shares a new reflection of her journey thus far in achieving her goals and changing divorce culture.
“That statement grew over time. It started with my mission to change divorce in my small town, to my state, to my entire country. And I really want to make sure that I save families from the destructive effects of what happens during divorce,” Ashley-Nicole says.
On this episode of Divorce, Healthy! Ashley-Nicole shares her personal experience as an adult child of divorce and as a divorcee, why she wrote her book “The Cure for Divorce Culture,” and how she’s a living example of what she writes.
“As we say in the south, the proof is in the pudding, right? ... In the book, you get a big view of what happened [in my divorce]. There are some things that are a bit unsaid. And then, of course, there's the finished product of me actually moving on, having my own family, and curing [divorce] in the ways that I can for the next generation,” Ashley-Nicole says.
Ashley-Nicole reflects on child custody, support, the duty of HR and Alternative Dispute Resolution in divorce. Additionally, she touches on parental alienation, father’s rights, mother's rights and self-awareness.
Through her own personal journey, Ashley-Nicole has learned how to heal past traumas and find her own way to a happy and healthy life.
Tune in to this episode of Divorce, Healthy! with Ashley-Nicole Russell, Collaborative Attorney serving Beaufort, Raleigh, and Greenville, NC.
💡 Featured Guest 💡
Name: Ashley-Nicole Russell
What she does: Ashley-Nicole Russell, Esq. is an award-winning family law attorney, author, speaker, and host of the podcast Divorce, Healthy!. She has created a new area of practice for family law in North Carolina and wrote the book, “The Cure for Divorce Culture,” which is helping to change the way couples divorce in the U.S. Her mission is to change how divorce is handled in this country over the next four years.
Words of wisdom: “I have a beautiful passion that's fueling me. And that's to fix divorce in America.”
Connect: Website | LinkedIn | Instagram
🗝️ Key Points 🗝️
Top takeaways from this Divorce, Healthy! episode
★ Stigmas attached to divorce hurt children. Divorce as it has traditionally been viewed can have long-lasting negative effects on children that last into adulthood. This is why Ashley-Nicole knows it’s so important to change the culture of divorce.
★ Eliminate the battleground with divorce. Moving away from a litigation focus with divorce has opened up opportunities for parents to pursue shared parenting and allows families to come together and do what’s best for their children.
★ Model the behavior you want to see in your children. As a new parent herself, Ashley-Nicole has seen how important it is to model the behavior you want to see in your children.
⚡ Episode Insights ⚡
[01:14] The monologue, part two: Ashley-Nicole reflects on the start of the Divorce, Healthy! Podcast. In this episode, she shares a follow-up monologue about her goal to cure divorce culture in America.
[03:17] A personal passion: Ashley-Nicole opens up and shares her personal experiences as a divorcee and an adult child of divorce.
[09:35] Divorce is evolving: Divorce is no longer a one-sided litigation-focused event. There are now many different options including mandatory mediation.
[14:33] Combat issues in your life with love: This doesn’t mean you can’t get divorced, but it means that if you do, you need to maintain respect for the other person and think of what is best for everyone involved.
[17:56] Change divorce: With our lived experiences and the wealth of resources available today, it is our responsibility to do better and change how divorce is handled and viewed in this country.
[21:25] Col...
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