Latest / Divorce Dialogues / What Family Court Gets Wrong About Parenting Time | André Rainey
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- André Rainey (00:00): Nobody is going to love your children the way you do. Not a judge, not an attorney, not a mediator, not the officer in front of the court, so you can't expect them to make the decisions that you would make. If you love your child the way you're supposed to, you're going to have to work with the person that you procreated with, whether you like it or not. If you put the love for your child over the hate for the other parent, you'll always be able to work things out. Katherine Miller (00:24): Welcome to Divorce Dialogues. I'm Katherine Miller. This is where we have honest, thoughtful conversations about divorce, the emotional, financial, legal, and family questions no one prepares you for. From deciding whether to separate, to navigating the process with dignity, to rebuilding what comes next, Divorce Dialogues is here to help you find clarity, perspective, and a better way forward. When parents separate, they're not actually just ending a marriage or relationship. They're also trying to figure out how to remain a family in a really different form. And for parents, one of the most difficult questions can be, what is my relationship with my children going to actually look like now? Who's going to make decisions? Where are the kids going to live? How much time are they going to spend with each of us? Those are practical questions, but they're also really deeply emotional ones because parenting time isn't experienced simply as time on the calendar. (01:28): It can feel connected to your identity as a parent, your relationship with your children, and sometimes even to whether you're still an important part of their everyday lives. And once those questions enter the legal system, they can very quickly become framed as a dispute, one parent asking for time and the other parent responding to that request on a very deep, visceral level, but also on a more shallow legal level. Does starting from that framework itself affect the way parents approach each other. And should we begin from a different assumption about the role both parents will continue to play after the separation while still recognizing that families are different and that safety, caregiving history, and children's individual needs really do matter? My guest today, André Rainey, comes to those questions from both personal experience and from advocacy. André is chair of the New York chapter of the National Parents Organization, which advocates for shared parenting and family law reform. (02:28): He's also a father of four and former mayor of Peekskill, New York. His own four-year experience navigating the New York family court system to secure equal custody of his children became a driving force behind his advocacy work. Today, we're talking about what shared parenting actually means, how the custody process itself can shape the relationship between parents and where a shared parenting framework works and where it might require a little bit more nuance. Welcome André Rainey. It's really a pleasure to have you on the show. André Rainey (03:02): Katherine, thank you so much. It's an honor to be here. It really is. Thank you sincerely. Katherine Miller (03:06): Well, you have quite a history and I know that your advocacy grew out of your own experience navigating family court. So would you mind sharing with me and the listeners what happened and what that experience taught you about the way the custody system, at least in New York, works? André Rainey (03:22): Yeah, absolutely. I was the former mayor of my hometown city. I've always been recognized as a person that gives back to his community, does the work that he can, and always trying to find solutions versus complaining about problems and issues. During my last term as mayor, I went through a separation. Me and my oldest daughter's mother, we went through a separation and we decided that it wasn't going to work out. It happens. Sometimes things are unpredictable, but it happens. Once we confirmed that our relationship can no longer hold this bridge over the water, she decided to move to a different county without informing me where she moved to. So right after my daughter was born, it took about three weeks for me to find out where she moved to. And then I finally found out, I spoke to the police in the local area saying I haven't seen my daughter in almost three and a half, four weeks now. (04:11): And they told me there's nothing we could do without a court order. I said, okay, fine. So I'll go through that process. So I filed a petition just seeking, I wanted to see my daughter and create some sort of custody arrangement. Courts gave me about a date that was, I'd say about two months later. So after the three weeks of not being able to see my daughter, I had to wait an additional two months to even discuss what's going on. So my daughter was born in November and we didn't have a court date till March 6th that year. When we got to the courtroom, we explained to the judge what happened and the judge, she was very sympathetic. I'll say that. She was very sympathetic. "I can't believe you haven't seen your daughter. I don't understand how somebody can do that. So I'm going to give you guys a temporary joint custody schedule. (04:53): We'll come back here in about two months to discuss possibilities of what the arrangement's going to look like permanently. I said, "Beautiful." So she asked us to wait outside the courtroom and that's when it all started. I waited outside the courtroom. The lady comes out with a piece of paper with the joint custody schedule. Joint custody schedule is I see my daughter on Wednesdays from five to seven and every other weekend. Now I didn't understand that. I didn't realize that this is a national template for custody. So I immediately said," This is not agreeable. I can't go from not seeing my daughter at all to seeing her for four days out of the month. This is never going to work for me. "So long story short, we came back to court. My attorney said," Just accept this for now. When we go back to court, we'll talk about it. (05:36): "We came back to court and we spoke about it. She said," I think this is a good schedule for now. "And I said," What planet would think that this makes sense for a child? You're going to see your parent for four days out of the month. How does that make sense? "So it took about two years. I mean, my daughter's mother, she hired my predecessor as her attorney. So you walk in the courtroom and you see the guy who you challenged. Katherine Miller (06:02): Great. André Rainey (06:03): The mayor, I'm like," Oh, hey, how you doing, man? How's it been? "He's like," No hard feelings, but I'm kind of representing. "I'm like," What? (06:12): No hard feelings like politics. I get it. No hard feelings, you lost. "But my daughter, this is different. So the allegations, the accusations, several things to this day, I'm still trying to understand how these things weren't challenged and addressed in family court. One of the statements she made, just to give you an example and a listener as an example is she told the judge, her attorney actually said it on record, Your Honor, Mr. Rainey shouldn't have custody. He's a threat to us. We think that he may be a threat. He comes to my client's job threatening her and harassing her. And I'll never forget in the courtroom when the attorney said that, I looked over like, who's she talking about? (06:53): Who's it? What? So unfortunately in family court, what a lot of fathers don't know is whenever there's an allegation of any sort of threat or harm to the child or the mother of the child, judges have to address it. So what happens in these situations is in most cases you're almost automatically put on a temporary order of protection, which is what happened to me. So they put an order of protection on me. I couldn't be around her and my daughter for a couple of months till we came back to court. We came back to court. There was no evidence to prove. The judge didn't even actually ask for any evidence to prove what date this happened, when it happened, was anybody else scared? Were there witnesses? Was there footage on the cameras at the place where she works at? There was no questions. The judges said, based on the information, I've been informed we're going to dismiss this. (07:38): And I was just like, how do we just dismiss it? No investigation, no information. And that's where the divide from most domestic violence groups versus shared parenting, father's rights groups, that's where it comes from. Domestic violence groups feel like when they complain about domestic violence, judges don't take them seriously. Father's rights groups, they feel like when people make up false allegations on domestic violence, judges don't take them seriously. They don't address them. Nobody's ever held accountable. So the process just got prolonged. We couldn't even talk about custody for about seven, eight months because now we're talking about allegations and if they're true, if they happened at all. So the other thing in New York state and most states as well is the judges claim to be overwhelmed. Let's just say you file a petition today in September, you might not get a court date in the courtroom until early January. (08:30): So something that could be resolved in probably two days of conversation ends up taking about a year or sometimes even longer. And during that process of the year, one parent is missing out time with the child. Katherine Miller (08:41): Yeah, it's really a conundrum. And I think that the court system is really overwhelmed and poorly equipped actually to engage in that conversation as you call it. And that if there was some department or system or subsystem in the court where people could come and mediate and really talk this stuff all out, I think that a lot of these things would go away. And ironically, André, I think then people could have shorter adjournment dates. Instead of waiting two months, they might be wait two weeks because a lot of these cases are then taken off the court's docket and the court can do what the court is there to do, which is to make decisions for people who might not actually need them made if they were able to have a supported conversation. André Rainey (09:25): I'm excited you said that. I didn't want to cut you off because I love the thought, but you hit a heartbeat when you said something. But after going through the whole process, I went back and forth with my attorney, with the judge, with the support magistrate. I was just arguing with everybody. I had seen a side of me that I'd never ever witnessed in my entire life. There was just a side of me that was so passionate, I was willing to become angry and speak to everybody with that tone. So I spoke to the judge how I felt. I spoke to the support magistrate. I spoke to my attorney the way I was feeling, because this is my daughter we're talking about. Finally, the judge recused herself. The support magistrate, she recused herself. They all recused themselves saying that I was rude and everything. I got a new judge, I got a new child support judge. (10:04): The new judge gave me everything I asked for. The interesting thing was the only thing I asked for was equal time. I didn't want more days. I didn't want more holidays. I didn't specify specific holidays. If she wants Mother's Day, if she wants Easter, she got whatever she wants. I just want equal time. Our schedules are very, very, very similar. Once we got the new judge and he granted me everything, they removed child support and all of these unnecessary add-ons, the new judge said, "If you guys come back here rather than coming before me, I'm going to suggest mediation." And I'll never forget, I said to him, this is probably two years ago, I said to him, "I wish somebody would've offered that from the beginning because I think that we could have literally just discussed this probably in two hours after the separation rather than going and come back and forth in this court seven times in the last four years." So I'm happy you said that. (10:55): That should be something they start off with. Katherine Miller (10:56): I mean, it's kind of interesting. I don't want to go too deep down this rabbit hole, but there is a presumptive mediation system in New York that went into place a few years ago and it's starting to gain some legs, André, but it's definitely courthouse by courthouse, judge by judge, how willing they are to utilize the system and to see what's going on. I'd like to just back up for a few minutes for the listeners because you said something about your own story that I think might be confusing for people. And you said the judge said you're going to have joint custody, but then you also said that you're a shared parenting advocate and legally those things are very different. So could you help the listeners understand the difference between joint and shared? Because it sounds like a synonym, but legally it is not. André Rainey (11:38): I'll never forget it. When the judge gave us the joint custody schedule, the look they had when I looked at my attorney, he was shocked like it's going to be okay. I said nothing about this schedule is okay. When you have joint custody, joint custody simply means both parents have access. So joint custody could be one parent has the child every Thursday night and every Saturday night. As long as both parents have some access to the child, that's considered joint. Shared custody or even equal custody is when both parents have equal time with the child. So currently the schedule, for example, with me and my children is a two, two, three, which is mom gets two days, dad gets two days, then we alternate the three-day weekends. So they'll be with mom for Monday, Tuesday, they'll be with dad for Wednesday, Thursday. And then Friday they'll go with mom for this weekend. (12:29): And then next week, Friday, they'll go with dad. So we each end up actually getting five consecutive days with our children. So it goes Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday for her. Then it goes Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday for me. What we do when we do shared custody is we try to get, if not equal, maximum time with each parent. So the children don't feel like once the divorce or separation occurs, the children have to be with one person and one person automatically becomes what they call a visiting parent. And that was something I wasn't willing to accept. And unfortunately, most commonly, a lot of parents, especially fathers, accept a joint custody arrangement for whatever their reasons are. Some are because they work more, which is normal. Some because they just don't have the time because they're trying to get things together to get back on their feet. (13:13): They lost everything from the divorce. And some honestly, some just don't want to be full-time parents, and that's normal too. So we try to encourage every judge to take every case on a case-by-case basis. Don't just start us off with a joint custody schedule with one person becoming a visiting parent. If there's no domestic violence history, there's no issues between the parents, there's no parent seems to be deemed unfit. If both parents are fit and their schedules permit and allow it, we should start off with what we call the shared parenting arrangement or equal parenting time arrangement. Katherine Miller (13:44): Divorce Dialogues is brought to you by Miller Law Group. We believe divorce isn't just a legal process, it's a human transition. At Miller Law Group, we help people navigate divorce with dignity, clarity, and respect, focusing on conversations that lead to better outcomes for families. Learn more at miller-law.com. The standard for judges, the instructions to judges, which is basically the law, is that the judge is supposed to determine the best interest of the children. And there are a lot of father's rights organizations. I guess there's some mother's rights organization. It seems like... I remember being told years ago by a mental health professional who worked with a lot of children that a kid said to her, "Listen, my parents are arguing about whether or not it's mom's weekend or dad's weekend, but you know what? It's my weekend." André Rainey (14:35): There you go. Katherine Miller (14:36): And so what about that idea of the children's right to live their best life? What do you think about that? André Rainey (14:43): So that's one of the reasons why I chose shared parenting. We don't align ourselves with father's rights groups. We support them and recognize them, but we don't align ourselves with them. We don't align ourselves with mother's rights or domestic violence groups either, but we support them and recognize them. Part of the reason is because once you get in court, a lot of these advocates in these different worlds are advocating based off their emotional experience. They don't necessarily see the best interest of their children because they're focused on what they went through. Some fathers' rights groups are just saying fathers deserve this and fathers deserve that, and they never speak about the child needing the mother because they're still a little upset about what they went through. And the same thing with domestic violence groups and mothers rights groups. They come in and they say a child should be with the mother. (15:26): In the early 40s and before, children being with the mom after divorce and separation was common. But now fathers these days, including myself, we want to be full-time. We want to be active. So we do say the best interest of the child is our main priority. However, unfortunately in most cases it's subjective to the person's opinion and judges don't do a lot of background checks. They don't do a lot of research. And that's one of the things that I can say that I agree with some of the domestic violence groups is a judge kind of just says, "You know what? I see what's happening here and I'm going to let this person be the parent and this person be the visitor." So what we say is we always speak for the best interest of the child. When a child is with the person who's hurt, damaged, bitter, angry, or upset, if you put the child full-time with that parent, that parent has more time to influence that child. (16:18): That parent has more time to gain what we call an emotional attachment to that child. So after a year or two of going through court, now you're saying, "Okay, we're going to give you guys a different sort of custody arrangement." The child's already used to being with this parent, so it's even more emotionally difficult for the child to want to be over there with the other parent, especially if this parent is saying things to the child about the other parent. So mediation, like I said, one of the things that we always push for in my advocacy work is mediation prior to a judge's final court order to get an idea of where both parents stand and mentally and emotionally where both parents stand and ensure that they're not influencing the child to hate or dislike the other parent because they hate or dislike the other parent. (16:57): So the child's best interest is the key and the primary focus, but it's difficult when you don't start off with the fair arrangement. Katherine Miller (17:04): As you're talking, I'm thinking about how we are really talking about dividing up time, but what if we thought about it as figuring out what role each parent is going to have in the child's life rather than how much time they're going to have? Because if you could have a time and not be able to do it, right? So sometimes in negotiations, my clients are like, "Well, if you're going to have the kid with the babysitter, why don't you just let the kid be with me because I could be there instead of the babysitter and don't we agree that it would be better for a parent to be... Then the person who would have to have the babysitter feels," Well, no, that's my time. And why did you have my time? Now you're going to have a leg up on me as a parent. André Rainey (17:40): "That's also why mediation works, because those are things that you discuss in depth in mediation. I went through that. I work in a school, so I'm at a school at the same time my kids are at a school. My daughter's mother works in the hospital, so she gets out of her office around 5:30, 6:00 some night. So our daughter's on her days, our daughter's in daycare till about 6:30. On my days, as soon as she gets off the bus, I'm home. So before I had the custody arrangement I had, when I only had Wednesday afternoons, the court order, I had to get it modified because court order says I can get my daughter on Wednesday at 6:00 and I'm like, "Why do I get her at 6:00?” “Well, because she's in daycare and well, I don't work till 6:00." And I was like, "Oh, okay, we can modify that." And her attorney was like, "Well, Your Honor, he doesn't really need to pick her up at 6:00. (18:24): She's already accustomed to going to daycare." And it's like, "What? She's accustomed to going to daycare, but getting accustomed to view with her family is not a good thing for her, not the best interest of the child." And the previous judge who I had felt that if she's going to daycare every day with mom till six she should stay in daycare on daddy's days till six too. But again, finally, the new judge, and that's why I said it's all subjective. The new judge came in and he says, "Why is she at daycare all night?" That doesn't make any sense. And he simply changed it and said, "On your days, she could be with her family when she gets out." And he even suggested on her days, if you want to let him hang out with his family, do homework together as a family, that makes more sense to me than sitting in daycare till 6:30 every single day of the week. (19:06): So that's why it's so difficult to tell because an opinion, there's no standard. It's everybody's opinion on what's the best interest of the child once you walk in that courtroom. Katherine Miller (19:15): Divorce, obviously, it's a breakup and it's very emotional and people are angry and sad and anxious and a lot of feelings are floating around. So what do you think about the whole custody process that intensifies the dynamic and vice versa? Because I think that this idea of dividing up our children, it's tragic, right, André? The idea that we're not going to be full-time parents, whatever that means to us, we're not going to have every Thanksgiving, every Christmas, every weekend. I mean, it's a blessing and an obligation, but the idea of the loss of that can really be devastating to someone. And so it seems like those two things kind of in conjunction really can get in the way of people developing a really collaborative co-parenting relationship. What do you think? André Rainey (20:11): I say this all the time. I've said it on social media, I've said it in public conferences, pretty much anywhere and everywhere I go, that I didn't have issues with my children's mother as much prior to the court hearings that I did afterwards. And I feel like the attorneys drove us apart. And like I said, one of the things the attorney said is he's come to my client's job, threatening and harassing her. I'm just like, "Who is she talking about?" I've never ever done anything like that, and I wouldn't do anything like that. She knows I wouldn’t, that's why she wouldn't say it on record. When we had the trial hearing, that was never brought up. It just got dismissed, and several other allegations just got dismissed. But the attorneys, they go in there with the mentality of, "I have to win what my client wants," in most cases, not, "Let's try to figure out what's best for the child." It's, "You hired me, you want full custody, you don't want him to have her other than two days a month? (21:04): Okay, that's what we're going to fight for." And the idea of the best interest of the child from the attorneys gets lost in the sauce, if you will, and the focus becomes, "Let me try to get what my client wants because my client, this is what I'm hired to do." Katherine Miller (21:18): Okay. The mother of your daughter moved away without telling you. Why? I mean, I don't expect you to answer that question. And why would she not want you to be as involved a parent as you possibly could be? And I'm not asking you to answer that in public, I'm just saying that that question as to why are people doing this and that lawyers too infrequently ask that question. What is it you're really trying to accomplish? André Rainey (21:45): The interesting thing about that, I'm happy you asked that question actually, is because my mother did it to my father as well. My father and my mother separated when I was a little over one year old, and apparently their reasoning for separating is because he wanted to get a DNA test to confirm that I was his. He felt like she may have cheated on him, and because she felt that was an insult, she decided that if you don't believe this is your son, then you don't ever have to see him again. And my mom took me to Germany while two years old. I didn't see my biological father until I was 17. To some people, the why is more important. In my mind, there is no why. There’s no reason to take a child away from their mother unless it's some sort of physical abuse or some sort of danger or threat. Katherine Miller (22:24): I don't disagree with that. I do think though that if you lean into the why, the solution that they come to, whoever it is, to move really doesn't solve the problem that they have almost every single time. In your mother's situation, she was upset, and so she moved. Why? Well, she moved to punish your father, maybe. She moved because she wanted to be in Germany. Maybe that was really the thing, and so she just came up with an excuse. But if she wanted to move to Germany, she could have said, "I really want to move to Germany. Is there a way we can work this out that André spends summers with you here in the States?" You know what I'm saying? That would've been better for you? And so what I'm just saying is that the solution people come to, to solve their why question is often a poor solution for the problem, the question that they have, and that if they're willing to talk about what it is they're really trying to accomplish, not just go to the reactive thing, "Well, screw you. (23:18): I'm moving." That thing? André Rainey (23:20): Yeah, you are so on point. Any question, I'm happy to answer because I'm fully transparent. I have nothing to hide what I went through. I don't even share my story as much anymore after I heard what some of these other fathers are going through that I work with. When we separated, I didn't have much of a choice. My hands were tied. We got into a big argument about her. She has another son, and he used to do a lot of things that I didn't approve of. And something happened one night that he did that I just felt it was really, really something that she needs to put a hold on. And of course, he's a grown man at this point. He's like 18 years old, so it's hard for her to enforce certain things on him that a young man should have enforced on her, which I understood. (23:53): However, the older he got, the more I feel like he was getting less obedient to her rules in her household. We got into a big argument about that one day, and she left the house. She came back, and my doors were locked. I used to live in an apartment at this time. She pushed in my air conditioner and my window to climb in my window, and she just very frantic. I ended up calling the police, told the police what happened. The police came, they took her off the property, and the police told me that there was a little bit of a history with her with domestic violence that I wasn't aware of. So the police, he informed me that if there was another call to my house like this, he wouldn't just take somebody off the property. Somebody's going to get arrested. So I said, you know what? (24:32): At that point, I felt like I needed to back up out of the relationship because this was getting a little out of hand. So I filed for order of protection so she couldn't come back around. When I got the order of protection, the judge granted it for six months. During those six months, she found out that she was pregnant, and she felt like since there was an order of protection on her and she couldn't come around, I didn't need to see the baby either. So she tried not to inform me of any gender reveal events and everything. Fortunately, the order of protection was released prior to the baby being born, so I was able to be there when the baby was born. When we were in the hospital, she asked if we could try to work things out, and I told her, "I don't think we can work things out until you're mentally stable," because I was in office at the time. (25:14): I can't take risks of domestic violence or any craziness happening, especially while I'm representing 45, 60,000 people. It just doesn't look good. So she took that as a no, and she left the hospital and didn't tell me where she went. That's where it all started. That's the why. And again, emotionally it's understandable, but logically for the relationship and the sake of my child, it just is unacceptable. Katherine Miller (25:37): All right. So for listeners who are parents may be entering or in the middle of a custody conversation right now as we speak, what do you think that they can do to actually do what you're recommending, which is to focus on the children's relationship with both parents rather than getting into a competitive... André Rainey (25:55): I encourage every father, especially that I speak to in single parent or divorced parent and mother, if there's a way to seek support in mediation first, prior to thousands of dollars going down the drain to different attorneys who are simply going to fight for what the client wants rather than what the child needs, try that first. Anything you do for the children during the process of court, because court is so prolonged, document everything, whether you're buying the child's shoes, whether you're taking the child to the zoo, anything and everything. Because sometimes if you can show that you're working seven days a week and the other parent isn't working at all, the other parent makes it seem as if they're the ones that's more involved in the children's lives, especially if they're receiving child support and other sort of income and revenue. But I do encourage you to seek mediation first if it's possible. (26:48): That's the most important thing to me. Once you get past that, if it's not possible, understand your schedule so you can work with whoever the judge may be to come up with a timeframe that actually works for you to be involved in your children's lives. And lastly, I have to say this, and a lot of fathers get upset about this, but don't ask for more time just because you don't want to pay child support. Katherine Miller (27:08): Thank you, because that's not about the kids, that's about André Rainey (27:11): You. Yeah, keep the children in mind. If you don't have the time, if you're in the military or if you're an NBA player or if you work in construction seven days a week, 13 hours a day, it just doesn't make sense to keep your child with some babysitter or especially if the mom has more time and vice versa. There's a lot of successful women out there too that are just overwhelmed with work and they don't want to get embarrassed or social media says that dad's always with the child. Always try to focus on the child's best interest. The child's best interest, if the two parents are loving and fit parents, is to be with their parents as much time as possible, especially at young ages. Katherine Miller (27:44): I have a couple more questions that I'd like to ask you. What is a belief, do you think, about custody or parenting after divorce or after any breakup that you think we need to reframe in order to create healthier outcomes for families? André Rainey (27:58): I think one of the strongest beliefs, and I went in there and some call me naive now, but I went in there thinking that after divorce and separation, the person I'm with will simply just agree to an equal schedule or an equal timeframe. But I want people to realize that once emotions get involved, feelings get involved, people's hurt or bitter or upset or if things don't work out, if you don't have a great communication with that person, with the other person, just prepare yourself for the worst. But you have to be patient, you have to be understanding. The hardest part, I think, for some of the fathers at least is the understanding part. There's bitterness, there's anger, there's damage, and sometimes, unfortunately, that comes from experience. It's like you created this, you cheated 10 times or whatever the case was. So you created some of that emotion, so you have to understand it a little bit. (28:47): Is it right for them to keep the children away and everything else? Of course not, but do have an understanding because once you understand where it comes from, you can learn how to cater to it and work with it and fix it. But I think a lot of people think that after I break up or after divorce, we'll fight over the property and the assets, but custody will be fine. We'll get equal time and it doesn't work like that. There's often a template of one parent's automatically going to be the visiting parent and one parent's going to be the primary parent until we discuss a different custody arrangement that works for everyone. And usually, in most cases, the mother gets the primary parent role as soon as divorce hits or separation hits. Katherine Miller (29:21): All right, last question. What is one thing that you wish that every parent knew before they entered the custody process? André Rainey (29:28): One thing I wish every parent knew is you have to remember, nobody is going to love your children the way you do. Not a judge, not an attorney, not a mediator, not the officer in front of the court, the AFC, the attorney for the child. Nobody's going to love your children more than you do, so you can't expect them to make the decisions that you would make. If you love your child the way you're supposed to, you're going to have to work with the person that you procreated with, whether like it or not. If you put the love for your child over the hate for the other parent, you'll always be able to work things out. Once you start getting all these other people involved, they don't love the child. The best interest of the child is for them as long as the child is safe. (30:14): They don't care if this father is a high class educator, a teacher, and he was an attorney, he's going to give the child a great education. The mother is a famous superstar. She's going to teach the kid character things that the child needs to be successful. They don't care. All they care about is a time that they're going to be with one parent or the other, and that's all that matters if the kid is safe. So if you're a great parent, you love your child, love your children more than you dislike the other parent and you can work it out. Katherine Miller (30:42): I think that's great advice. André Rainey, thank you so much for being my guest on Divorce Dialogues. André Rainey (30:46): I appreciate you having me. It's fun talking to you. We should do this more often anyway. Katherine Miller (30:50): We should. All right, take care. If this conversation was helpful, share it with someone who might need it. And if you're navigating divorce yourself, you'll find more resources and episodes at miller-law.com. Make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.