Greyson's Legacy with Ali Kessler: How a Mother’s Love Is Changing Laws
Content warning: This episode discusses domestic abuse, murder-suicide, and child loss.
In this deeply moving episode, Seth and Pete welcome a special guest, Ali Kessler, to share her story and discuss the groundbreaking Greyson's Law. This episode was requested by a listener who wanted to hear directly from Ali about her experiences and advocacy.
Ali's four-year-old son, Greyson, was tragically killed by his father in a murder-suicide just days after Ali sought help from the courts and police due to disturbing threats made by Greyson's father. Ali has turned her grief into powerful advocacy, working tirelessly to pass Greyson's Law in Florida to better protect children at risk of harm in divorce and custody cases.
Seth, Pete, and Ali dive into the details of Greyson's Law, discussing how it aims to address the gap between the realities of domestic abuse and the family court system. They cover the challenges Ali faced in trying to protect Greyson prior to his death, and how the new law empowers judges to better consider threats and abuse directed at a parent when making custody decisions.
The conversation also delves into the complexities around identifying abuse, especially coercive control, which leaves no physical scars. Ali shares her hopes for expanded training for judges, lawyers, and law enforcement to improve understanding of domestic violence and how it impacts at-risk children.
Questions we answer in this episode:
How does Greyson's Law aim to better protect children in family court cases?
What challenges do abuse survivors face in the court system?
How can coercive control be identified if it leaves no physical signs?
Key Takeaways:
Greyson's Law requires Florida courts to consider threats against a parent when making custody decisions if there is reason to believe the child is also at risk.
Survivors of abuse often struggle to be heard and believed in family court.
Expanded training on domestic violence and coercive control is needed for judges, attorneys, and police.
While Greyson's Law is specific to Florida, Ali is working with advocates in other states to help change laws and potentially enact protections at the federal level.
This episode is a must-listen for anyone who wants to understand the real-life impacts of domestic violence in family court and how legal reform, however hard-won, aims to protect the most vulnerable. Though Ali's story is heartbreaking, her courage and tenacity in honoring Greyson's legacy through advocacy is deeply inspiring.
We encourage listeners to visit Ali's website, Greyson’s Choice, to learn more about her organization's vital work and consider donating to support their mission to protect children at risk in divorce and custody cases.
Links & Notes
Visit Greyson’s Choice and donate today!
Got a question you want to ask on the show? Click here!
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Pete Wright:
Welcome to How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships from TruStory FM. Today on the show, Greyson's Law.
Seth Nelson:
Welcome to the show, everybody. I'm Seth Nelson. As always, I'm here with my good friend Pete Wright.
Three years ago this month, four-year-old Greyson Kessler's life was taken in a murder-suicide event at the hands of his father. Just days prior, his mother sought help from the courts and the police as Greyson's father sent multiple disturbing and threatening communications to her, but Florida law at that time did not connect the threats directed at a parent as a threat to the child.
In July of 2023, the Florida Legislature passed Greyson's Law to safeguard children at risk of potential harm thanks to the tireless work of Ali Kessler, Greyson's mom. She has become an inexhaustible voice for protection of children at risk in a divorce process.
Ali, welcome to the Toaster.
Ali Kessler:
Thank you for having me.
Pete Wright:
Ali, we're honored to have you here frankly. We have talked about Greyson's Law over the last six months. We've mentioned it. We have had people write in to the show. This most recent was a direct request, "Can you please interview Ali Kessler on your show and hear her story?"
Ali Kessler:
Oh, wow.
Pete Wright:
So this comes at great request for both us, we're honored to have you here, and our listeners who want to hear this story.
So maybe we start just with a little bit about Greyson. This is three years now. What do you carry with you about Greyson?
Ali Kessler:
Yeah, this is a hard week for me. His angelversary, as we call it, was on Tuesday. So the whole week is just... Obviously it puts me in a space that I don't like to relive, being that there's the day that we think he passed away, the day that his death certificate says, and the day I found out, so it's a horrible time.
But Greyson, Greyson was the light of my life. He was the light of everyone's life that knew him. He was just the happiest, cutest, funniest little boy that any parent could ask for, and I was blessed to have had him even just for four years.
Pete Wright:
I have to tell you, I spent a couple hours before recording the show watching some of the videos on Greyson's page, on YouTube, and I watched the first angelversary, and I've watched the... I mean, it is just an extraordinary... I feel like I knew him. It's just such an incredible and loving outreach.
The thing that gets me, I think, is when we're talking about, in this case, Florida family law, at some point, I mean, you're not the first person, sadly, to have gone through this, but at some point, you made a turn and became the advocate, somebody to take up the mantle and make change.
Ali Kessler:
Yeah, it was not by choice.
Pete Wright:
Well, how did that manifest for you?
Ali Kessler:
Honestly, I just woke up. I just woke up every day and got out of bed even though I didn't want to. I had a large community of family law advocates and senators and house representatives that wanted to see change. So together, we met. I told them my story. The senator and a couple other people got the Florida Bar involved to help write Greyson's Law the second time around, and it just came from there.
I started Greyson's Choice, the foundation that I created, a nonprofit, to be a resource for other parents or people going through something similar so they can at least read our story and see some maybe contacts, who they can call. But then it just morphed into there and we just had our first fundraiser and just trying to figure out the best way to help all of the people that do reach out to me as well.
Pete Wright:
Greyson's Law, I imagine, just my understanding from, I guess, Schoolhouse Rock, "I'm Just A Bill," which is pretty much the extent of my understanding of how these things happen, I imagine your experience, that there were a lot of things you wanted to accomplish in this law. Can you walk us through what the law is and how that compares to what you intended when you started?
Seth Nelson:
And what was it before?
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Ali Kessler:
Right after it happened in the first year, we tried to get it passed, it did not pass through. It didn't even go to the House at all. It went through the first round in the Senate and that was it. In it, we talked a lot about coercive control because I wanted to make sure that the definition was changed because part of the issue for me was that they said there wasn't enough evidence of abuse and that the threats were to me and not my child.
So second time around, we worked with the Florida Bar so that we can come up with something that they thought everyone would agree with. They took out a lot of verbiage about coercive control, which I'd like to see, at some point, be amended.
But right now, it just basically says that the court can be required to consider threats against spouses or ex-partners when making their child visitation and custody determinations in court. They could actually look at the evidence of domestic violence, whether a parent in the past or currently has reasonable cause to believe they or the child are in imminent danger of being the next victim of domestic abuse.
Seth Nelson:
Ali, I want to talk about that point because it's super important. It's whether the parent, Pete, who is hearing the information, not the one that's saying it, the one that's hearing it, do they have a reasonable threat? Can they perceive that as a reasonable threat in their own mind?
So in the law, through the law everywhere is a reasonable standard. And in law school, it's very common for someone to raise their hand or the professor to ask through the Socratic method what is reasonable. And one of my law school professors said, "Whatever Harry would do." Whoever the hell Harry is-
Pete Wright:
Who's Harry?
Seth Nelson:
Exactly. Just an average, normal guy. Whatever Harry... And that becomes reasonableness. And then you go to court and you say, "This was reasonable," and the judge agrees with you, then it gets appealed and the appellate court says, "no, it wasn't," or, "yes it was," and now you have an example with facts and then it gets developed over time. But reasonableness is throughout.
But the key point of this is the reasonableness is of the person hearing the information, not the person saying the information.
Ali Kessler:
Correct. Which a lot of times, they would not say that is reasonable.
Pete Wright:
Well, this was the real, I think, deciding factor on why this was controversial because you had gone and asked for help days before this event, and they had no legal recourse. There was no... I mean, they had nothing they could do?
Ali Kessler:
I mean, you would think that it would be common sense that if they thought he was harming me enough to approve my restraining order for me, but why would it be okay to let a four-year-old be in that person... We would've had to do our exchanges at the police station. I mean, that is not okay.
Pete Wright:
Well, and we should add that some of the threats that he was sending you were not just to you, but they were about Greyson. Right? They were threatening language about him.
Ali Kessler:
I mean, he never in so many words said, "I am going to kill Greyson." But his behavior, erratic behavior in the months leading up to this event was alarming. Definitely not the norm. There were plenty of red flags, many patterns of behavior that a judge should have looked at, not just the one time I was going down for the restraining order where I literally wrote in big letters, "I'm afraid for my life and most of all my child's life," and gave them a 250-page document of every text and everything that's gone on, and they just didn't find it to be warranted of abuse. And they said, because like I said, it was to me and not Greyson, that he would still have to go for his regular time-sharing.
Pete Wright:
This is the thing, and I wonder, Seth, if you could comment on this because I think in my head, everything that Ali's talking about highlights this massive hole between reality and the courts, and I cannot wrap my head around it. Can you comment?
Seth Nelson:
I'm happy to comment and the comment's not positive.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Sometimes you cannot reconcile what I tell my clients of if we are sitting, having a meal together, I'm agreeing with you 100% of the time, but if I'm in the courtroom, it is a different outcome. The law, in the legal system, in the presentation of evidence, in what the judges hear and how the judges interpret the law with all their unconscious bias, in whether they're brand new to the bench, just gets in the way of common sense.
And I see it unfortunately to this day, every day, when I deal with the court system. Part of it has to fall on judges not doing their job. Part of it has to fall on the system where we elect judges, they get sent into domestic violence court or family law court, and they've never practiced family law ever. The last time they saw a family law hypothetical or a question was on the bar exam, and here we are with bad decisions.
Ali Kessler:
Yeah. I had three different judges touch my case in the course of two days while this was going on, and they weren't the same judge that we used for family court. So a part of it is, yes, the judges are not trained properly. They have no idea of what this type of abuse is or what to look for, which is part of what I want Greyson's Choice to do and provide training to not just judges and lawyers, but police because the police will not intervene if they find out that you're in family court.
Seth Nelson:
That's right. It's a family court matter. "It's a civil matter, not a criminal one. We are not getting involved."
Ali Kessler:
Yeah, they would not help me. I said, "I believe my son is stranded in the apartment, he could be dead. They're missing." He was missing for two days. He wasn't in school and his father was missing too, and his father's family in Jersey were the police in Fort Lauderdale saying, "My brother may have killed himself and there's a toddler," and they still said, "No, we can't touch it. It's family court. You have to get an emergency pickup order," which was denied by another judge.
Pete Wright:
Wow. Wow.
Seth Nelson:
And let me be clear what an emergency pickup order is.
Pete Wright:
Please.
Seth Nelson:
We deal with this frequently. So you're in a family law dispute and you believe that the child is in danger, and for it to be emergency, we've talked about the before, in Florida, there's a case called Smith v. Crider. So you have to meet the elements of Smith v. Crider, which is you believe this child is going to be in harm's way or is currently in harm's way. It's happening, so you can't file an emergency motion for attorney's fees. That's not an emergency, but this is when they're in harm's way. And you're then saying, "What we need is a police officer to go to where the child is and get the child and give it to the mentally stable healthy parent, remove them from the dangerous situation."
Pete, this is unbelievably difficult to do.
Pete Wright:
What are the constituent requirements?
Seth Nelson:
Well, you're supposed to show that there's immediate threat, but now that there's Greyson's Law, you can show, "Look, I have a reasonable fear that this is happening." It changes the standard, but you have to educate the judges on that. And they are getting emergency motion after emergency motion after emergency motion on things that don't even have to deal with safety of children. And so when they see an emergency come through, they are literally numb to it. And what we see a lot is if you denied, but if you think the child's in danger, call DCF, Department of Children and Family. Go for a wellness check.
Ali Kessler:
Which I did.
Seth Nelson:
I was about to say, Ali, talk about that experience.
Ali Kessler:
I mean, the day I was searching for Grey, it was just a [inaudible 00:14:11] point, I called for the Fort Lauderdale Police to give me an escort in the morning to go to John's apartment to get Grey. It's a gated community. So they knocked on the door and they said nobody answered. I said, "Well, break it down." And of course they said, "No." And they said, "Even if we found him, you would need an emergency pickup order." And we just did a whole song and dance.
Throughout the course of the day, I spoke to Child Protective Services. I spoke to Broward County Sheriff's Office and the Suicide Prevention Hotline. I mean, I was calling anyone that I can think of that could help escalate this to the degree that I believed that we were in.
Literally the police told me that they just can't send another cop out there, that they'll have to do another wellness check tomorrow because they sent five and all they did was knock on the door. And I actually saw the body cam footage of a few of them who just thought it was a joke and were laughing in the elevator and just being completely out of line. And yeah, nobody really did anything at the door. They knocked. They didn't hear anything. They went on their merry way.
Child Protective Services said the same thing that, "We'll call you tomorrow. We'll keep a lookout." But I knew that this could not wait. Greyson was still missing. John was still missing. I found who the owner of the condo was who lived in another state, and I coordinated a FaceTime and I found a locksmith that would agree to take this liability on because they didn't have permission. But I got the owners to grant him permission via FaceTime, and I had the Fort Lauderdale Police meet them at the apartment and the locksmith broke this door down, the one that I paid for. And the police went in and sure enough, they were both there, like I said they would be.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Maybe this is the before and after impact of Greyson's Law, but it feels like with Greyson's Law in place, would you have had more agency to escalate to this point sooner?
Ali Kessler:
Well, I think they at least would've been able to say, "Okay, the threats were to me, let's at least get in front of a judge and explain the situation." I would've kept Greyson home. We would've had a hearing right away. That's all I really wanted when I was trying to get my injunction was just to be heard and say, "Well, because of X, Y, Z, I don't feel safe." I had a tracker in my car. I mean, I was tracked for months. He knew my every whereabout and they didn't deem that enough, even though it's illegal, and even though they granted my stalking injunction.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, he put the tracker there. You weren't just using Find My. He put an illegal tracker in your car.
Ali Kessler:
Yeah, he put a black tracker underneath my car and he was rotating them out every two weeks. The police found at least 10 trackers in his apartment. And after, I'm now the account representative of his estate, so I was granted a Google order and I have all of his emails and I see all of the locations of where I am in his email, and it's pretty insane.
The fact that I wasn't heard, I wasn't believed, it breaks my heart because I didn't want to be the Guinea pig and I didn't want this, and certainly a four-year-old does not deserve this, and all I could hope for is that his legacy does live on. He does save other families, children, parents.
And like I said, I did not want this. I did not ask to do this. This is nothing that... I was just a normal person, I had a normal life, and that is now completely different. My world is completely different. I am not the same person that I was three years ago. I never will be, and now I just have to learn to live with this new self.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Well, how do you deal with that in managing your grief and your continued advocacy because you are a different person?
Ali Kessler:
Yeah, no, it's hard. Not only am I grieving Greyson, I'm grieving myself. I don't recognize myself anymore. I used to be funny. I used to do sketch comedy. I used to teach sketch comedy. I don't have the personality anymore. I try a lot, but I lost Grey, but I also am not a mom anymore to the extent where I don't have to get up and take someone to school and make lunches and whatnot. I will never have grandchildren. I will never have special moments looking forward to a family. I was robbed of all of that, and yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot.
Pete Wright:
I mean, you mentioned early on that you have hopes for continued training and development. What is the kind of work that you're doing now to continue the investment into what you've gained with Greyson's Law?
Ali Kessler:
Well, I've been very open about sharing my story with anyone that wants to know because I believe that it's so important even out of state. This is happening in every state. I actually worked with Kayden's Law, Kayden's mom, Kathy, over in Pennsylvania to get that passed. Federally, we're trying to possibly get some version of Kayden's Law amended into Greyson's Law so we can get some federal funding.
But I've been helping, I've been doing a lot of little webinars with law firms and CLE programs. I worked with the Broward County Florida Bar Division of Family Law. We did what is Greyson's Law? I shared my story. I'm doing everything I can to advocate and be that person, and then eventually, would like to set up trainings, workshops, get all of that going for, like I said, judges, lawyers, police officers, maybe do lunch and learns with the police to tell them about coercive control and things to look for and patterns of behaviors to look for when you don't have physical scars, stuff like that.
Pete Wright:
Let's talk just briefly about coercive control because you've talked about that and you mentioned that was in the first version of Greyson's Law and it was taken out in the law that was passed. Can we talk a little bit about what coercive control is in this context and why we need to be on the lookout for it?
Ali Kessler:
It's probably one of the hardest types of abuse to diagnose, is that the right word, to prove. Because like I said, there are no physical scars and it's just like using a lot of manipulation, a lot of gaslighting, a lot of using the child as a pawn, controlling the other person's whereabouts or finances and just having an emotional type of abuse. I was degraded. I was humiliated. I was-
Pete Wright:
Threatened.
Ali Kessler:
Threatened, yeah. I mean, I had a tracker in my car. He refused to pay for Greyson's school, camp, even though he was ordered to pay half. He just made every single thing difficult to the point where at one point, he literally called the police on himself because he just sat outside our house with Greyson home and honked the horn trying to pick him up on not his day, and just caused a whole scene.
It's, I believe, a type of personality disorder it could stem from, a lot of narcissistic behaviors where you believe I'm here and the other parent is here, and you just want to control the situation and get your way. That was a very roundabout definition, and I'm sure there's a more textbook one.
Seth Nelson:
Right. That's the exact problem, Pete.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
I'm in court and I show all of this behavior, and you've got counsel on the other side that says, "No impact to the kid, no nexus to the kid." That's prior to Greyson's Law. Now I get to say, "Judge, you get to consider this. You get to consider this. And the law just changed last year and we don't want another incident like this."
There's two things judges hate. They hate being overturned on appeal, they don't like being told they were wrong, and they don't want to be the judge that's in the press of denying the motion. These are human beings we're going in front of, and it goes from there. And it is extremely difficult in court because every day they hear stories like this, day after day, motion after motion, and they become numb to it.
Ali Kessler:
And they think it's normal. They think it's normal that parents are just arguing, bickering. They're like, "Oh, this happens to everyone." I'm like, "No, this does not happen to everyone," because first of all, John and I were never together. We never had that happy family unit. We didn't even really date. I was a single mom. He moved down here when Greyson was six months old and he just got 50% custody for just having DNA..
Seth Nelson:
And as we all know, that's the current presumption in Florida family law.
Ali Kessler:
Right. Which I think that if you're not married or living together, I should think that a separate set of rules should apply. I virtually had to hand my six-month-old over to a stranger.
Pete Wright:
Wow. Is there any way to judge over the last, I mean, now it's been what, 10 months since the law was signed, is there any way to judge or gauge how it has changed cases? Are you tracking that?
Ali Kessler:
I'm not tracking it, but I do get a lot of emails and messages, Facebook. A lot of people reach out to me through the Greyson's Choice website. They literally say, "My lawyer cited Greyson's Law in court and your child saved my child's life." I've gotten a few that said, "We tried using Greyson's Law and the judge has no idea what it is. Can you help? Can you help me?"
Seth Nelson:
And here's the thing about that, Pete. It's not in the law as Greyson's Law. It's in Chapter 61.13, the parenting statute. So that's where, especially new judges, don't know, and so then you have to explain in court what it is.
Pete Wright:
And as the attorney, that's your job.
Seth Nelson:
As the attorney, and this is how I do it. This is how it gets done, is you explain the name of the law, when it got enacted, why it was enacted, and why it applies to this case. This is not rocket science. You move on and you make your arguments and you go from there, and judges get it wrong. I'm telling you now.
Pete Wright:
I imagine especially on new statutes, right?
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, new statutes, new judges, the whole thing.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah.
Seth Nelson:
The whole thing.
Ali Kessler:
That's why it's so important for the training and just to make everyone aware of it because granted my case was extreme and it's not going to happen to everyone, but you never know. You just don't know because it's happening at an alarming rate. I keep hearing all these stories around me. One just down the street, a murder-suicide. I mean, it's just absolutely bonkers.
Pete Wright:
Seth, has it come up for you, this particular statute, already?
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, and I can't comment on it, Pete, because it's literally currently pending.
Pete Wright:
Wow. Okay. Well, then I won't poke, Counselor.
Seth Nelson:
Well, I appreciate that, sir, but we're well aware.
Ali Kessler:
Well, if you can let me know the status after, I would really love to know.
Seth Nelson:
I will certainly let you know.
Ali Kessler:
Thank you.
Pete Wright:
I mean, you're just... I know you've said several times you didn't want this, but you ended up being an incredibly brave person handed a boatload of trauma, and I am just in awe of what you've gone through and really grateful that you've taken the time to talk with our audience today. Thank you so much.
Seth Nelson:
Pete, let's just point out, and we want get this exactly right. It's greysonschoice.org and it's in the show notes and there is a button, and I don't think we've ever done this on the show, Pete, and I'm going to ask for it now. There is a button on that website that says, "Donate now." We've never asked once in all of our podcasts for our listeners to donate to anything. Please, please give it serious consideration.
I know that us here at the Toaster have donated. I donated today and it's vitally important.
Ali Kessler:
Oh, that's very kind.
Seth Nelson:
It's our pleasure. It's our honor, especially this week, and please give it the serious consideration to donate and help kids and families.
Ali Kessler:
We're actually going to partner with Women in Distress in the fall. They're doing a golf tournament, so we're going to figure out ways to have the... Women in Distress run parallel, but there's a lot of type of abuse with women in distress, but we want to also focus on the coercive control type of domestic violence that a lot of women are facing.
And I am a big advocate to say that it's not mothers against fathers, women against men. I have seen it go both ways. I had a father reach out to me to say that Greyson's Law saved his child's life, so it's just people, parent versus parent.
Seth Nelson:
Well said.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, incredibly powerful stuff. Thank you so much, Ali Kessler, for being here, for joining us on this show. And as I mentioned, we're not going to do a listener question today. It's a bit of a heavier show, but I did mention this came as a result of a listener question, so to you, to that listener who wrote in specifically, thank you for giving us the idea and the opportunity to make this happen. We sure appreciate you.
Howtosplitatoaster.com to submit your future questions and ideas. Clearly, we'll take them.
Thanks again, Ali Kessler. On behalf of Ali Kessler and Seth Nelson, America's favorite divorce attorney, I'm Pete Wright, and we'll see you next week right here on How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships.
Outro:
How to Split a Toaster is part of the TruStory FM Podcast Network. Produced by Andy Nelson, music by T. Bless & The Professionals and DB Studios. Seth Nelson is an attorney with NLG Divorce & Family Law with offices in Tampa, Florida.
While we may be discussing family law topics, How to Split a Toaster is not intended to, nor is it providing legal advice. Every situation is different. If you have specific questions regarding your situation, please seek your own legal counsel with an attorney licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction. Pete Wright is not an attorney or employee of NLG Divorce & Family Law. Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in Florida.
