Through no-fault divorce, one parent can now declare unilaterally that the marriage has "broken down" and invite the state in to take control and remove the other parent without the parent having committed any legal transgression. What the government then offers to the parent who invites it in is the promise that her invitation will be rewarded; the state will establish her as a puppet government, a satrap of the state within the family. This requires that not the faithless but the faithful parent be punished.

What is taking place here should be made very clear: Citizens who are completely innocent of any legal wrongdoing and simply minding their own business--not seeking any litigation and neither convicted nor accused of any legal infraction, criminal or civil--are ordered into court and told to write checks to officials of the court or they will be summarily arrested and jailed, Judges also order citizens to sell their houses and other property and turn the proceeds over to lawyers and other cronies they never hired. Summoning legally unimpeachable citizens to court and forcing them to empty their bank accounts to people they have not hired for services they have neither requested nor received on threat of physical punishment is what most people would call a protection racket. . . Yet family court judges do this as a matter of routine. This is by far the clearest example of what we political scientists term a "kleptocracy," or government by theives.