From stay-at-home mom
to national advocate
Twelve years. Five children. Two states. One federal lawsuit. This is why My Court Guide exists.
How it started
In 2013, I was a stay-at-home mother in Missouri, raising five young children. On paper, my life looked stable. Behind closed doors, it was something very different.
When I discovered I was being surveilled — including a GPS tracker placed on my vehicle — I did what the system tells you to do. I sought protection through the courts. I filed for an Order of Protection. Criminal charges followed. A lengthy divorce proceeding documented what I had been living through, and the court's findings supported my account.
On paper, that ruling should have meant safety. In reality, it marked the beginning of something else entirely.
What the system actually is
What followed was more than a decade of family court proceedings across two states. Custody battles. DCF investigations. Guardian ad Litem control. Court-appointed therapists. Temporary orders that stretched into years. And a financial system that conditions access to your children on your ability to pay.
The proceedings looked like due process from the outside. Inside, they often weren't. Decisions were made in hearings without sworn testimony. Reports were relied on without being tested. I was excluded from processes that directly determined my relationship with my children.
On January 29, 2024, all five of my children were removed from my custody. I would go 290 days without seeing any of them.
Later, the state agency investigating the allegations found them unsubstantiated and documented concerns about what had happened. That information did not restore my rights. The separation continued anyway.
“My four-day custody trial was canceled because I could not prepay over $13,000 in fees. My right to a trial became pay-to-play.”
— Testimony before Kansas legislators, 2025
What I discovered
Fighting for your own family teaches you things no one tells you in advance. I learned to read statutes. I learned to write motions. I learned the difference between what the law says and how it gets applied in practice. I learned what arguments hold up, what evidence matters, and what procedural moves change outcomes.
None of that knowledge was handed to me. I found it buried in legal databases, scattered across court websites that weren't designed for regular people to navigate, and written in language that assumed I already had a law degree.
The information existed. It was just locked behind access that most people don't have — time, money, connections, or the right vocabulary to even know what to search for.
The gap isn't in the law. The law is public. The gap is in who gets it explained to them clearly, who gets practical strategy, and who walks into a courtroom understanding what they're walking into.
Going public
In April 2024, I stopped waiting for the system to correct itself. I started speaking.
On November 14, 2024 — after 290 days without seeing my children — I testified before a Kansas state legislative committee. I have since appeared four times at the Kansas Capitol, each time with more data, more families' stories, and more specific demands: end the pay-to-parent system, bring accountability to court-appointed professionals, and restore due process for families who currently have none.
The numbers are real. Nearly 1 in 3 Kansas parents in custody cases reported having no contact with their children. I filed pro se civil rights actions in state and federal court. I built a national platform — Stand With Meg — that has reached more than 200,000 people. I am still fighting. Not because I wanted this role, but because too many parents are trapped in systems that reward silence over truth.
Why I built this
I built My Court Guide because I spent 12 years learning things that should have been available to me from the beginning.
Not legal advice. Not a replacement for an attorney. The real law, explained in plain English — with the practical strategy that helps you understand what's happening in your case and what you can actually do about it.
Every parent who walks into a courtroom without understanding their rights is starting at a disadvantage that doesn't have to exist. The system is hard enough. It should not also be a mystery.
— Meg, Founder of My Court Guide
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