It is a unique kind of grief—one that never fades, never heals, and never finds peace. It is the grief of a parent who has been erased, whose child is still alive but held just out of reach by a system that calls itself “justice.” You won’t find a gravestone to visit or a funeral to mourn at. Instead, there is a living, breathing child somewhere in the world—laughing, learning, growing—without the parent who aches for them every day.

This is the pain of parental alienation. And the courts are complicit in it.

Parents like Marc Fishman and Jeff Reichert are not the exception. They are the rule. Loving, stable, devoted fathers—cut off from their children by biased court rulings, false allegations, and a legal system that would rather silence the truth than confront its own dysfunction. Despite years of presenting evidence, calling witnesses, and showing up with nothing but love in their hearts and the law on their side, these parents are met with cold indifference from the very institutions that claim to protect families.

Instead of compassion, they are met with contempt.

Instead of remedy, they are handed punishment.

The family court system—across this country—has become an engine of destruction. It manufactures estrangement under the guise of “best interests,” all while ignoring the most obvious harm: severing a healthy child from a healthy parent.

There is no due process for grief. There is no equal protection for love.

And the injury is not just emotional—it’s systemic. When a father cries out in pain after years of being denied access to his child, that emotional response is twisted and weaponized. Judges write it down as “instability.” Opposing attorneys call it “anger.” The very act of loving your child becomes suspect. The more you try to prove you care, the more the court punishes you for it.

What kind of system turns a parent’s suffering into evidence against them?

The answer: a broken one.

These parents become legal scholars out of necessity. They study statutes late into the night, not because they want to be lawyers, but because they want to be fathers. They file motions. They attend hearings. They try to speak calmly to judges who barely look up from their desks. But no matter how well they present their case, the outcome never changes. The doors to their children remain shut.

And behind those closed doors, time is slipping away. Childhood is not a renewable resource. You don’t get those years back.

The irony is chilling: Family court claims to protect children. Yet it destroys their relationship with the one person fighting hardest to be in their lives. Judges sit on the bench, shielded by immunity, while children grow up fatherless—not because of abuse or neglect, but because of bureaucracy, bias, and blind arrogance.

How are these judges so numb?

How can they look a parent in the eye and ignore their humanity?

How can they justify the permanent psychological injury they inflict—not only on the parent, but on the child?

There is no healing in a courtroom where the truth doesn’t matter. There is no justice in a system that operates on assumptions and rubber stamps.

These parents live in torment. Every missed birthday. Every silent holiday. Every school play, recital, or scraped knee they weren’t there for. Their hearts break a little more each day, while the court—stone-faced and silent—moves on to its next docket number.

This isn’t family law. This is state-sanctioned trauma.

It’s time we said it out loud: The family court system is hurting families. It is producing fatherless homes not by accident, but by design. Judges and attorneys who ignore evidence, dismiss witnesses, and reward false allegations are not preserving the family—they are dismantling it.

Parental alienation is child abuse.

And the court is the abuser’s weapon.

To the judges who claim to care: Do better. Look in the mirror. Look into the eyes of the parents standing before you. Ask yourself what kind of legacy you want to leave behind. Will it be one of compassion—or cruelty?

To the public: Wake up. This could happen to your brother. Your son. Your friend. Your neighbor. It could happen to you.

To the alienated parent reading this: You are not alone. Your pain is real. Your love is not a liability. And though the system may try to erase you, your child will one day see the truth—that you never stopped fighting, never stopped hoping, and never stopped loving them.

And to the children lost in this nightmare: Your parent is still out there. Still loving you. Still waiting. Still believing.

Because real parents don’t give up.

And neither will we.