Why Brad Pitt Lost His Kids (Even With Unlimited Money)

Transcript

You're in this contentious custody battle, and you're going to hearing after hearing, filing motions, doing discovery, hiring experts. What's the problem with your case? Brad Pitt found out the hard way. July 12, his case just came to an end. He spent 10 years fighting, but he did some things wrong, and I'm here to explain to you what you should do and not do what Brad Pitt did.
I'm Jim Kraayeveld, founding attorney at Kraayeveld Family Law here in West Michigan. Been doing this for 30 years. And I want to at least explain to you what to look out for in your case. Brad Pitt spent a decade, custody evaluations, even had a private judge. They filed motion after motion. You all probably know Angelina Jolie filed this back in 2016, days after the plane incident.
2021, five years of fighting, they got joint custody on paper, but the private judge that they had got replaced, and that order got rescinded, fixed, and it went back to the way it was before that. In the end, five of his six kids stopped using his last name, didn't have a relationship with his kids, and the reality is, money can't buy you a custody win.
Both sides had unlimited funds. Now, West Michigan, there aren't that many people with that kind of money. So, the typical case is, well, you may not have that kind of money to spend, but it's not an issue of money. Money isn't going to have you win or lose. Brad Pitt had years, money, legal orders, but he didn't get his kids to exercise their choice to have a relationship with him.
So, here's the issue. You have to recognize parental alienation as soon as possible to be able to fight strategically to rebuild that relationship instead of just fighting for the sake of fighting. That's the difference. And you need to have the right strategy. If money isn't going to buy you results, time isn't going to buy you results; in fact, time is your biggest enemy. You need to employ all of your options.
In Michigan, judges under MCL 722.27 have a whole toolbox of options to at least impose in your case. They can order supervised parenting time. They can order limited parenting time. They can order all kinds of things. They can have GALs appointed. What you want, you can have the courts order that you can be available and attend all public events, school events, et cetera.
They may order that a qualified mental health professional be involved. All of these things are at your disposal, but you need to recognize them as soon as possible. Judges even have the right to change custody, so when there's alienation seriously occurring, and one parent is just running a campaign to erase the other parent, a court can remove the child and say, "Nope, we're going to fix this.
We're going to reset things." So, you have all of those options, but you only have those options as long as your kid is a minor because after age 18, which is what happened to Brad Pitt's kids, his twins, on July 12, you're all done. And the bridge to having a relationship with your kids is that you just simply can't sit back and say, "I'm gonna wait for things to calm down."
Every month of delay is another month of parenting time that you're never gonna get back. It's another month that the other parent's version of what's normal becomes the child's normal. The research on kids that are alienated through years of conflict isn't good to read. It's not good. The damage follows them into adulthood, into their relationships, and alienation compounds.
The longer a child goes without real contact, the more natural the distance feels to them and the harder it is to reverse. But the court can't act on a problem that it hasn't been told about, so sitting back, hoping for the best isn't neutral. It's lost ground. So, your biggest return on investment, the payoff, is the window is widest at the earliest opportunity because it becomes narrower every day.
Acting early and knowing how to act early and what to do is exactly how you can at least fight against parental alienation. So, some practical tips. Document every missed parenting time. Document unanswered calls. Document what the kids are saying, not saying, what they're doing, not doing. All of these things are stuff that you can show to an expert who can show it to the court system.
But exercise your options before you run out of time because at some point, the clock will run, and that's the end of your custody chances. So, if this is helpful to you, please subscribe, like it so that other parents who are going through this can also find this and get the help that they need. Until next time.