At our divorce hearing, my husband sat there acting calm, his lawyer painted me as the unstable mother, and I could feel the room starting to lean his way. Until my 7-year-old daughter stood up in her little blue dress, clutched her purple tablet with shaking hands, asked the judge if he would please watch something I knew nothing about

I asked her why she would say such a thing, but she just hesitated and said that she simply knew it to be true. I thought she was just trying to comfort me in her own way, so I kissed her forehead and let the moment go without asking more.

I really should not have ignored her intuition because Patrick’s lawyer was incredibly aggressive from the very start of the legal proceedings. They pushed for full custody of Macy while claiming that I was unstable and financially irresponsible in front of the court officials.

Every single thing they said was a total lie, but they insisted that Macy would be much better off living in a home with him. I wanted to scream because Patrick barely saw her anymore and he never even called to check if she was doing okay after school.

My own attorney was a kind woman named Eileen Fitzgerald who warned me that Patrick was likely planning a secret strategy to win. “Audrey, something feels very wrong here because he is acting like he has a hidden card to play,” Eileen told me while we sat in her office.