After nearly 20 years marriage, a San Antonio-area man has found himself in a contested custody battle over their children. Now, he’s banging his drum outside of the Bexar County Courthouse and inside the Texas Capitol calling for justice for dad’s he believed are overlooked in custody cases – a claim not entirely backed by the Texas Family Code or by account of a local family law attorney.
Goerge Zachery married his ex-wife in March of 2004 in Bexar County, according to a marriage license on the county records website. Just over 18 years later, divorce paperwork was filed in Kendall County, about 30 miles north of San Antonio. Now, George Zachery is appealing to a higher court, looking to overturn a Boerne-area judge’s rulings.
“I’m out here so my son don’t have to be out here when he gets to my age,” told MySA, with a marching bass drum strapped to his chest. “I’ve done everything that I thought in my mind a man and the role of a father would play. But I was treated very, very differently by the court system and how they looked at mom and they looked at dad.”
He was banging the drum across the street from the Bexar County Courthouse, a drum which had the words, “Texas: Your ‘family’ court laws are hurting our children – Dad,” plastered across one side and, “Dad’s rights are equally important,” across the other. It’s a message he’s been hammering home from San Antonio to Austin, pleading with Texas legislatures to draft policy change.
Zachery says he was given “standard possession rights,” which usually equates to custody of the kids every other weekend, alternating holidays and a midweek visit for a couple hours. Though, terms can be negotiated and changed by a judge and parents’ request. This particular dad takes issue with the judges’ order for him to get a therapist to sign off on him getting more visitation rights.
He feels the judge took his ex-wife’s allegations, which he says are false, as a fact, allowing these allegations to sway the final decision. He also says the judge failed to spend adequate time unraveling the intricate details of a nearly 20-year marriage. So, he bangs his drum in public spaces advocating for dads’ rights in custody cases. Hundreds of signatures line the metal shell of the drum connecting the heads.
“When I started drumming, I started running into so many other dads and families, and moms too, who realized how corrupt the system was,” Zachery said. “I’ve been asking many of them to sign my drum.”
In a conversation with Kevin “Buck” Sralla, of Sralla Family Law on the Southeast Side of San Antonio, he says the idea of dads being overlooked or under considered in custody cases is something he hears a lot, though it’s not something he described as some rampant issue or broad act of injustice. In fact, he says Texas Family Code (which judges operate by in custody and divorce cases) doesn’t provide any preference for a parent based on gender. Though he admits biases can play a role even in impartial judge decisions.
“In custody cases, there’s no explicit bias toward the mother. But having said that, we all bring our life experiences to the table whenever we make these decisions. And judges are human beings,” Sralla told MySA, noting many folks involved in custody cases grew around a nuclear home model where mothers were main caregivers. “So, many people still, as human beings, operate as that being kind of a default model where, all things being equal, the mother probably does have a slight advantage.”