The Respondent Book

A True Story

Exposing the Cartel of Family Law

My new book - The Respondent - is the harrowing story of how divorce court stole my children and toppled my Hollywood dream.

Part memoir, part meditation, part manifesto, The Respondent is also a noir “true crime” thriller chronicling my unimaginable, forced removal from my home and mental facility detentions, all premised on a false claim my wife levied against me that the system reflexively believed.

Ten false words can ruin your life… welcome to family law.

One phone call in March 2015, and ten false words to the police officer on the other end of the line.  That’s all it took for my wife to unleash a cataclysm on me. I was thrown from my home, physically restrained, locked away,  and ripped away from my children not for a few days or weeks, but for what is turning out to be their entire childhoods. Powerless and penniless, I was frozen out of my own life.

They stole my Freedom. Kidnapped my children. Murdered my family.

I survived that moment of almost unimaginable terror, but I bear the scars of the marital and psychological battle I endured in the process.  By sharing my story and coming to terms with the overwhelming gamut of emotions visited upon me, my hope is that I may assist other families experiencing similar vertiginous trauma to realize that they are not alone, despite the fact that these are profoundly isolating experiences that can easily make one feel exactly that – alone.

I call out all the conspirators responsible for my demise—including himself. Along the way, I expose ugly truths to corrode the corrupt, gender-biased, $55 billion-a-year divorce underworld more focused on keeping money flowing than on the best interests of our children, revealing it as an organized crime syndicate that pits one parent against the other, rewards toxic abuse, and destroys families in plain sight.

A Forsaken Father’s Fight for Justice in The American Divorce Machine.

I also visit the darker side of our collective psyche to explore the question: what is driving us to devalue fathers and perpetuate such a draconian divorce system?

I hope the result is an essential contribution to what has thus far been a starved discourse on a punitive, prejudicial authoritarianism destroying American families—Divorce Court.

We must Revitalize Fatherhood and Reform the System for the good of Millions of Lost Children.

For any parent concerned about their children and the preservation of fatherhood in America, I encourage you to read The Respondent. 

My story is unresolved. But I have reached resolution concerning the forces unleashed by that single phone call, a resolve that empowers me to face the uncertainty my life begs.  I was certain of everything on March 5th, 2015, and yet I knew nothing. This book is a discovery of my own ignorance, and the resulting enlightenment I discovered after my life was ruptured and that ignorance was exposed.  Divorce is war, a lesson I learned through hard and bitter experience.  But like all wars, it must eventually end.  In this case, in a truce with myself.

We have all been the respondent––the person summoned to respond to the allegations of a petitioner. This book is my legacy petition.  I am the respondent.  And this is my story.

- Greg Ellis