A common tactic is to falsely accuse someone of child abuse in order to secure custody of the children. These accusations are often accepted without proof.
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I've seen both sides -- deadbeat dads skipping town to avoid support and I've seen greedy, vindictive women ruin their ex-husbands/boyfriends over child support and custody. My cousin (living in Kansas at the time) was dragged out of a meeting at work in handcuffs when his miserable ex-wife accused him of abusing their son. Presumably, he was exonerated of the charges, but his visits with his son had to be monitored by family social services. Really sad the lengths some people go to hurt each other...and the children are the ones who really suffer. The bitter divorce and child support/custody fight left my cousin and his son estranged for a long time. Now that the son is an adult, he and his father are finally starting to get along. But there is still a lot of residual damage and it's a question mark as to whether any of it will heal.
"A common tactic is to falsely accuse someone of child abuse in order to secure custody of the children. These accusations are often accepted without proof."
This happened to me in my recent divorce. Ended up being dropped, my ex and her attorney were warned in open court not to ever try anything like that again, and in the end, Court Services made the recommendation to the Judge that I be given primary custody, she was to pay child support, and have 7 days a month visitation.
There is justice when you have a fair judge.
I went through a long bitter divorce with accusations and and a lot of harm to my kids. I am glad it is over, it is difficult to adequately describe to emotional strain of this process, and I can not say a single good thing about the many lawyers and court characters that were involved. I recently came across a picture of myself at the worst part of the case, and I looked like a concentration camp victim, I weighed seventy pounds less than I do now. People thought I had cancer or something. It was just day-to-day emotion stress.
You would be foolish to underestimate what people go through during this process, especially if there are false accusations involved.
I am happy to be single and free now, and work hard on my relationship with my kids. Yes, the truth came out eventually, but not until after a lot of irreversible damage had been done.
Oddly, I am doing so well now that I can say in retrospect, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. My children suffered, though, and continue to suffer as a result of the process. I have no sympathy for family court lawyers, judges, therapists, and the whole rest of the crew of leeches that lives by sucking the life blood, the very souls, out of our children.
Hmmm... I suppose posting this might make me, too, a "person of interest" in this case. Seems silly, though, I am just stating what about 5 million other people know to be a fact.
I believe that any person involved in a divorce who makes allegations of abuse, unfit parenting, etc they cannot prove (or are later proven false) should experience whatever they were trying to foist on their spouse, e.g. loss of visitation/custody, payment of child support and/or alimoney.