How to Win the Baby Mama Drama Dilemma: The Most Ultimate Guide to Winning the Drama without Hiring a Lawyer

By Leopole A. McLaughlin III

You've reached a breaking point. The ongoing tumultuous drama with your child's mother has left you feeling powerless and lost, uncertain of how to regain control over your life and your relationship with your children. Somewhere along the way, you've grown weak and afraid, tolerating endless arguments, berating, belittling, and control, all while yearning for a strong and healthy bond with your kids. You're desperate for change, but the exorbitant cost of hiring an attorney, with retainers starting at $5,000, leaves you feeling trapped in a cycle of enduring her behavior and hoping for a day when civility reigns and she grants you the right to be involved in your child's life. In this struggle, you unknowingly surrender your power while failing to recognize the strength that resides within you.

"How to Win the Baby Mama Drama Dilemma" is a transformative book crafted specifically for fathers facing these challenges. It serves as a guide to help you assert and protect your rights as a father, equipping you with the tools to regain your mental fortitude and overcome the drama that has plagued your life. This book empowers you to reclaim your position as the confident and assertive man you once were.

Through the pages of this invaluable resource, you will discover strategies to navigate the complexities of co-parenting, enforce your rights within the legal system, and foster a mindset of resilience. It will provide you with insights on how to rise above the chaos, set healthy boundaries, and establish a nurturing relationship with your children—a relationship based on love, trust, and mutual respect.

Within these chapters, you'll learn how to harness your inner strength and regain control over your life, no longer held hostage by the drama that has consumed you. You'll uncover the power you possess and discover the steps to assert yourself as an active and involved father, providing the stability and support your children need.

No longer will you succumb to the whims of your child's mother. Instead, armed with newfound knowledge and confidence, you will rise above the chaos, protect your rights, and forge a positive path forward. The journey to triumph over your child's mother's drama begins now, and this book will be your steadfast companion along the way.

It's time to reclaim your power, rewrite your story, and build the healthy and loving relationship you deserve with your children. Let "How to Win the Baby Mama Drama Dilemma" be your guide as you embrace your role as an Alpha father and emerge victorious from the challenges that lie ahead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leopole A. McLaughlin III
• Release date: Jul 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005636890

Leopole A. McLaughlin III

Leopole A. McLaughlin, III, is a serial entrepreneur with several ongoing business ventures and non-profit organizations. He is the founder and Chief Executive of Progeny Life which created child support insurance. The founder of The Venture Biz Kid Foundation of America which is an organization that teaches children entrepreneurship, and he is the founder of the Walk with Strength Foundation, which is an organization that helps young African American males expand mentally, emotionally, culturally, and physically.His other books include:Zero to a Million in 12: The 12-Step Guide to Making a Million Dollars in a YearPlaying the Game: An African American Guide to Success in the Business WorldAlpha Dads: The Most Ultimate Guide to Winning the Drama Without Hiring a LawyerTwo Strands of Light: A NovelWhen Dealing with Snakes become a MongooseThe Super Achiever

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HOW TO WIN THE BABY MAMA DRAMA DILEMMA

The Most Ultimate Guide to Winning the Drama Without Hiring a Lawyer

by

Leopole A. McLaughlin, III

PUBLISHED BY

Elopoel Publishing at Smashwords

How to Win the Baby Mama Drama Dilemma

The Most Ultimate Guide to Winning the Drama Without Hiring a Lawyer

Copyright © 2021 by Leopole A. McLaughlin, III

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

Copyright © 2021 Elopoel Publishing. All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional advice.

* * * * *

How to Win the Baby Mama Drama Dilemma

The Most Ultimate Guide to Winning the Drama Without Hiring a Lawyer

Introduction

Part I

Chapter 1 – The Drama

Chapter 2 – Who’s Your Daddy?

Chapter 3 – Batter Up

Chapter 4 – Dapper Dan Court Man

Chapter 5 – Your Kid

Chapter 6 – Darn Child Support!

Chapter 7 – In Contempt? Lock Her Up!

Chapter 8 – Your New Boo!

Chapter 9 – Mom’s New Man

Chapter 10 – Answers to Your Issues

Part II

Custody and Visitation Schedule Guidelines per State

Introduction

Imagine that one day you came home from work and found a note attached to your door from someone saying that they have your kid and want money for your child’s return. How would you feel? What would you do? Knowing yourself, you’d probably be extremely angry and would do anything to get your kid back. You’d want to find this person and rip their heart out. You’d be like a lion on the attack!

So why don’t you have that same energy and strength when it comes to your child’s mother? Instead of being strong, you became weak and scared, and it is as if she had ripped off your nuts and are using them as Chinese Baoding Balls in her hand. You become afraid that she will get upset and make it hard for you to see your kid, so you play along with her antics until it gets too frustrating to continue to deal with her, and then you end up leaving in despair with your tail between your legs.

You had obviously picked up this book because you are having issues with your child’s or children’s mother, and you do not know where to turn or what to do. You figure that whatever grief and crap that your child’s mother is dishing out, you have no choice but to gobble it down and ask for another because you feel that if you compromise and take it and be a good obedient little boy, she will start to work with you so you can see your kids so you would be able to build that relationship you always wanted with them. Well guess what? That ain’t happening. The more crap you take, the weaker it makes you appear, and she will just dish out more crap just to make your life more miserable. The reality is, there is nothing that you can do to make her make it easier for you to have a good relationship with your kids.

Frustration. Anger. Disappointment. Hostility. Does that accurately describe how you feel whenever you try to pick up your children or get involved in their life? Good! Then you are definitely at the right place. Here is where you will learn how to turn that frustration, anger, disappointment, and hostility into happiness, enjoyment, attainment, and peace without having to pay thousands of dollars on an attorney or even a shrink!

First, before I thoroughly begin, I do want to tell you that although I have literally written hundreds of pleadings and motions for clients in my career, I am not here to give you any legal advice and if you decide to use any of the motions that I put in this book it would be at your own risk. I am just here to provide you with options in a situation that can look very bleak, unhopeful, and expensive.

Now that I got that out the way, I need to tell you that you became weak! Now don’t take that the wrong way, and surely don’t be offended. It is natural for this to happen. I used to be weak as well. But just like a broken arm in a cast where the muscle had atrophied, you can heal and become super strong again. You were once very strong, you were the Alpha, that is why your Ex wanted to be with you, but now after having children within a broken relationship you had weakened. You weaken because of the immense love that you have for your children, and you are now afraid that the mother will try to take that away from you. Now you allow that love to turn into fear. You give her the power that she does not deserve.

What you do not realize is that you have a lot more power in controlling this situation than you may think. Nowadays the Courts push for equal parenting and frown upon mothers who try to dominate and control the situation. Many custody cases have been granted to the father just because the mother’s bad attitude had made it seem that the child’s best interest would not be ideal in her care. Let it be known that fathers do have a right to be in their children’s lives. Just because women give birth to children, children are not properties owned by the mother. Mothers do not have a right to dictate everything regarding the child’s wellbeing, nor do they have a right to dictate when a father can see his child. Yet all too often, mothers threaten the fathers with court and the availability of the child, using the child as a pawn or a tool in order to take control of the situation for their favor.

In the past few years there has led to an increase in fathers vying for the rights to their children. This fathers' rights movement is a movement that affects fathers and their children regarding custody, visitation, and child support. Many supporters of the father’s rights movement are fathers who desire to share the parenting of their children equally with their children's mother – either after divorce or as unwed fathers. Although supporters also include women as well, oftentimes they are the second wives of divorced fathers or other family members of the fathers who have had some engagement with the baby mama drama that often occurs with the non-custodial fathers.

Many of the supporters of the fathers' rights movement had little prior interest in the law or politics, however, as they felt that their goal of equal shared parenting was being frustrated or inhibited by the child’s mother, many fathers took an interest in family law, child custody and child support.

Unfortunately, because of the drama that is imposed on by mothers, African American men are more likely to avoid the situation entirely and abandon their children, although this trend has been declining rapidly. Thus, fathers' rights groups that fight for their rights are primarily composed of white, middle or working class, heterosexual men who advocate for strong relationships with their children and focus on a narrowly defined set of issues based on the concerns of divorced or unwed men. These father’s rights groups believe that the movement helps increase the number of children who are raised equally by both parents which in turn increases the child’s social, academic, psychological and physical benefits – in turn, it becomes a children's rights issue with fathers now acting as advocates.

The goal of this book is to help you have the desired relationship that you want not only with your child but also with the mother, (non-romantically speaking, of course). Although at this point you probably most likely can’t stand the woman that you had a child with, however, you must put aside all anger, hatred, and disgust, and realize what is best for your child. You deeply love your child, but you hate the drama. Learn to make it work for you.

Part One

Chapter 1 – The Drama

We seem to always hear a lot about the so-called deadbeat dads — those fathers who don’t claim, spend time, raise, or even support their children, however, we rarely hear about the fathers who want to be in their child’s life, but the mothers won’t allow them to? Mothers who want to control the father’s interaction with the child or who uses the child as a pawn in order to control the situation for the betterment of herself and not the child. Whether it’s fair or not, in some cases, how the relationship ends with the parents usually dictates how the father's relationship will be with his child.

You ask the mother to see your child, but she yells and screams at you because she needs more money, or she feels as though you do not do enough, or you were a few minutes late picking up your child, or she doesn’t want your new girlfriend around your child. It can be a countless number of things that causes, the drama. It does not matter how well prepared that you are or how well adjusted you are, it will always be something.

Welcome to the not-so-wonderful world of Baby Mama Drama, a place where an ex-wife or girlfriend isn’t quite ready to let go of her former man or is angry and bitter because of the past relationship failing and has no qualms about using their children to wreak havoc in the child’s father’s life.

She’s jealous, insecure, bitter, and angry, and she knows just how to push your buttons and likes nothing more than to see you lose your cool. Her goal: to gain complete control and to see your relationship with your kids go down in flames—or to at least make it as miserable as possible.

When the father wants to be in the child’s life yet the mother refuses to allow a good relationship to fester between him and the child, he usually ends up giving up and becoming an absentee father. The father does not want to deal with the drama caused by the mother and ends up avoiding both the mother and the child. This is not only unfair to the father but also to the child, who does not understand why they do not see their father anymore and feels as though their father had abandon them because he does not love them anymore.

This epidemic is treacherous in many families, especially the African American family. Parents cause drama among each other not realizing or taking into consideration just how this drama affects the child. Not realizing that both parents are needed in order to foster a healthy, well-rounded child. Not realizing that the way the child sees the parents interacting with one another can cause an imbalance in their mind and may grow up and interact with their own spouse in that same way.

Several years ago, when my son was about 4 years old, I went through a whole lot of baby mama drama in which eventually I filed for custody. This only led to a very brutal custody battle with his mother. Although, I was a model citizen, working as a high school math teacher at the time, and trying to do right by society’s standard of methods, I lost badly, and his mother was awarded sole custody of him. I had no rights to him, yet I still had to pay child support every month since the child support order was upheld by a previous court ruling.

One of the reasons that I had filed for custody of my son back then was because I knew deep in my heart that I was the better parent and I had believed that it was in the best interest for my son to live with me. I had believed that me being a Black man, it was indicative for me to raise a Black boy so that he could become a very strong and respectable Black man. Under his mother’s care, I felt that he would be in a very lackadaisical, disruptive, and abusive environment. I also got extremely sick and tired of her controlling everything dealing with him, even having him call another man Daddy, along with her saying very negative and abusive things to him about me.

After losing all rights to my son, I was devastated! I ended up relocating to another state 1500 miles away, trying to start a new life. I gave up because I did not want any more drama and I did not think that I had any rights to make a change. Just like many other fathers, I thought that the courts were very anti-father and that I did not have a snowball chance in Hell to get any changes made. So, I repressed, gave up, and moved on.

This, of course, was a huge mistake that I had made and is a ridiculously huge mistake that many men make. They do not deal with the child anymore because they don’t want to deal with the mother, and they feel as though nothing would be accomplished by going to the courts. Fathers give up and give in.

The impact that the drama has on the child is very detrimental to their well-being which can cause social anxiety disorders, learning disabilities, physical and mental health problems, stress, high blood pressure, abusive tendencies, superior or inferior complexes, and child abuse and endangerment.

The effects of an absent father can be just as devastating to children as the impact that the drama has on them. Daughters can go through depression, have self-esteem and self-worth problems, have anger management issues, become promiscuous, show patterns of seeking approval from others with no satisfaction, have failed men-women relationships, and develop a fear of failure and rejection. Absent fathers can have a profound effect on the development of their daughter's relationships, especially when it comes to their relationships with other men. While the research on this topic may be lacking, what is out there is clear that fathers do play an important role in their development. What is known is that without the father’s role, girls normally become sexually promiscuous, have low self-esteem, have trust issues, or have difficulties with sustaining relationships.

Many sons abandoned by their fathers have difficulty developing and sustaining a high self-esteem, have difficulty forming lasting emotional attachments, difficulty recognizing their feelings, or difficulty being expressive with their adult partners and their own children. They also have a higher incarceration rate, tend to womanize, have a higher high-school dropout rate, and usually develop anger management issues.

CAUSES FOR THE DRAMA

If you are like me, you can be oblivious to why your child’s mother asks in a way that would be disruptive to the wellbeing of the relationship that you are trying to build with your child. Is she still angry over the broken relationship you both once shared? Is she angry over the fact that a child is being raised in a situation that can’t be mended? It would be understandable for her to be upset if the father is not present nor involved in any way with the child, however, what about the fathers who want to be involved in every way of that child’s life. Why would she make it difficult for that to happen? That is a question that unfortunately I will not be able to answer for you. Understanding how a woman thinks and operates is something that I have absolutely no knowledge of. All I know is how to be proactive and reactive. Being proactive before she thinks of how to cause the drama and being reactive for when she is currently causing the drama.

Studies have shown that there are four common reasons why the drama is exacerbated and knowing them is half the battle.

• Family Court System

Many fathers are afraid of the court system because they believe that family courts are biased against fathers and shared custody. Mothers know that fathers think this way and use that against them. These fathers believe that court-determined custody is not a right to parent one's child but is the power to prevent the other partner from parenting. Many fathers also believe that the courts provide advantages for women such as automatic custody of the children and financial benefits in the form of child support payments, and that it is slow in helping fathers enforce their parental rights, and also are expensive and time-consuming.

Ironically however, when asking many single mothers about this, they contest these conclusions stating that family courts are biased in favor of fathers and that the lower percentage of separated fathers as custodial parents is a result of choices made by fathers rather than bias of family courts. They believe that many fathers do not want to take the responsibility for their child, which unfortunately is reiterated on shows like Maury Povich.

• Child support

Child support issues are a major cause for a lot of drama that occurs among parents. Many states child support laws are based on maintaining the children's standard of living after separation, and on the assumption that the children live with one parent and never with the other. The current guidelines are antiquated and arbitrary which provides mothers with financial incentives to divorce which leaves fathers with little discretionary income to enjoy with the children during their parenting time. Many fathers’ rights activists propose guidelines based on a Cost Shares model, in which child support would be based on the average income of the parents and the estimated child costs incurred by both parents.

Laws should value a broader definition of fathering for poor or indigent fathers by reducing the focus on collecting child support and encouraging the informal contributions (such as groceries, clothes, toys, time with the children) of these fathers and counting these contributions as child support.

Child support should be terminated under certain conditions, such as if the custodial parent limits access to the children by moving away against the wishes of the other parent, gives fraudulent testimony, or if paternity fraud is discovered, adding that two men should not have to pay child