The Price of Protection: When Money Makes You a Target in Family Court

Just before summer 2008, life as I knew it turned upside down, inside out, and exploded. It started with a phone call from our nanny. Her voice sounded strange as she told me there were IRS agents at our front door…they had left their card.

It was a Friday afternoon. Shortly after that call, I was at the gas station when my card was declined. The events that unfolded over the next few hours are a blur. I confronted my then-husband, confused and concerned, and he spoke to me in a condescending tone, making me feel small and foolish for asking questions. “It is a mistake,” he said. “I will take care of it.”

Later that evening, I searched through his office and found a letter from the IRS; he owed a significant amount of money. I discovered that our bank accounts were frozen. Still, I clung to the belief that he would sort it out once the IRS offices reopened. Except, it was a three day weekend and everything continued to unravel.

I was not immediately alarmed about the frozen accounts because I believed we had access to large lines of credit. One by one, every card I checked was maxed out - some of them, I did not even know existed.

I spiraled. I needed my monthly IV treatment to manage a chronic illness, and when I called to confirm our insurance was active, I learned it had not been paid in months. It was about to be canceled. I had to borrow two thousand dollars from my brother and drive several hours south to pay the premium in person, just in time to keep it active.

In the weeks that followed, I discovered that we owed tens of thousands of dollars to people in our community. He had taken out a second mortgage on our home without my knowledge. The most horrifying discovery: he had used his younger brother’s identity, just a college student at the time—to rack up one hundred thousand dollars in debt.

His business was collapsing. My small business was shuttered. He could not make payroll and was handing out checks to employees that he knew would bounce. I was terrified to go to sleep at night because I no longer recognized the person lying next to me.

Before the IRS showed up, I had already stopped questioning him. If I raised concerns, he would belittle me, call me “white trash,” or mock me for not being grateful for our “lifestyle.” In hindsight, I call this the “fake fancy” chapter of my life.

We lived in a gated community with a guard at the entrance. I drove a brand new Mercedes—it was one of five cars parked in our driveway at any given time. We had a nanny, housekeepers, and even a private chef. I now know that it was all smoke and mirrors. I did not grow up in that world. I came from a working class, blue collar household and a single father. We lived paycheck to paycheck. This new life felt foreign, but I acclimated.

The truth is, I was burnt out. While I tried to adapt to this uncomfortable world, I was quietly unraveling. My ex husband's financial highs were extreme and so were the lows. The roller coaster of boom and bust created constant anxiety, and I felt like I was holding my breath every day, waiting for the next drop. I remember begging for a normal life. A normal house in a normal neighborhood. I dreamed of kids riding their bikes, of backyard barbecues, of peace. I did not want luxury. I wanted stability. I wanted to inhale and exhale… without struggling to find my breath.

And then, within six months, it was all gone.
The house went into foreclosure.
The cars were repossessed.
The businesses collapsed.
The credit was ruined.
The marriage ended.

When I checked into a women’s shelter with one-hundred seventy-eight dollars to my name, that was truly all I had. Filing bankruptcy was the final punctuation mark on a chapter of total collapse.

At the time, I believed it was the most devastating thing I could ever experience but now, I can say this with absolute clarity:

Losing everything saved me.

When I entered the family court system, I had no money. I had no safety net. I did not even have the option to hire an attorney, and at the time, that felt terrifying. I remember looking at the forms, the deadlines, and the legal jargon and thinking, this is impossible. I was exhausted, overwhelmed, and scared.

But here is the truth: not being able to afford an attorney became one of the greatest gifts of my journey.

Had I been able to hire legal representation, I would have placed all my hope in that person. I would have given away my power. I would have waited for someone to save me. I would have become another business transaction to a family court professional - and my children would have become revenue streams.

Instead, I was forced to learn the system. I began reading, researching, and observing court hearings. I learned how to document strategically. I became my own advocate, not because I wanted to, but out of necessity. Most importantly, I became an advocate for my daughters.

And that changed everything.

When you enter the family court system, you are financially assessed. One of the very first steps is filling out an Income and Expense Declaration. The court gets a snapshot of your financial standing…and that snapshot determines how deep into the a la carte menu of family court madness you will be pulled.

If you are middle to upper income, prepare yourself. You are going to be introduced to the full cast of characters: minors counsel, parenting coordinators, custody evaluators, and endless experts. If there are abuse allegations, you will be fast tracked through the “alienation industry pipeline.” The more money you have, the more “alienated” your children will appear to be, at least according to the professionals profiting off the process.

If I had a dollar for every time I have heard one of these so called experts say, “This is the worst case of parental alienation I have ever seen,” I would be a wealthy woman today. It is an industry built on profit, not protection.

So when people comment on celebrity custody cases or families with wealth and say, “Must be nice to have resources,” I wince. Because the truth is, money does not protect you in family court. Sometimes, it paints a target on your back.

Would I wish financial devastation on anyone? Absolutely not. Poverty is not a protective barrier—far from it. The system fails poor families every single day. I have walked beside women who were denied protection, who were silenced, ignored, or punished for not having the means to fight back. I have seen survivors from marginalized communities, especially women of color, Indigenous mothers, and immigrant parents, endure unimaginable bias and injustice.

This is not a system that protects the vulnerable. It is a system that exploits them in different ways.

So when I say I am grateful I entered the system without money, it is not because I believe the poor are protected. They are not. It is because I have seen what this system does to families with money. I have seen how quickly abuse allegations turn into revenue streams. I have seen how wealth invites an entire industry of unscrupulous professionals to circle, ready to bill thousands in the name of reunification, evaluation, or co-parenting.

In my case, there was nothing to take. No one profited off of me. That is the only reason I slipped through some of the traps that ensnare so many others.

Sometimes our darkest moments become our saving grace. For me, losing everything…while devastating, freed me from the illusion of safety and forced me to fight with clarity and conviction.

If you are navigating this system with no financial resources, please know this: You are not alone. You are not weak. You are not powerless.

There is power in knowledge. There is power in community. There is power in telling the truth about a system that was never built to serve survivors or protect children.

We may come from different backgrounds and different starting points, but our fight is the same.

We are not broken, we are survivors.

Together, we will continue to rise.