Our Family Wizard keeps a record of everything. Here is what that record shows.
By Michael Phillips | Father & Co.
Our Family Wizard is a co-parenting communication platform designed for high-conflict custody cases. It is often court-ordered, as it is in this case. It is not free. Every message is timestamped. Every message shows when it was viewed. Nothing disappears.
As of April 29, 2026, Christina Avgerinos and I have exchanged 7,077 messages on the platform dating back to February 2020. I have read through all of them — well, as many as I could. What they show is not a communication breakdown. It is not a misunderstanding. It is a documented, timestamped, systematic pattern of noncompliance with a court order — and the record exists in its entirety.
What the Early Record Actually Shows
It would be inaccurate to describe the period before January 2024 as functional co-parenting. The record does not show that.
What it shows is a longer pattern — one that predates the current denial period by years. Appointments I was excluded from without advance notice. Activities and milestones I was never informed about. Dylan’s baptism, organized and completed without my involvement. His birthdays, each one passed without an invitation. Court-ordered visitation that was denied, delayed, or made logistically impossible through a steady accumulation of obstacles — weather used as leverage, my questions twisted, my words reframed against me, no matter how carefully I chose them.
When I pressed for accountability, the response was predictable: new allegations, new concerns, new reasons why the order didn’t need to be followed right now.
This pattern has a documented precedent. From March 2021 through April 2022 — over a year — Christina denied or severely restricted visitation. The only period during which any visits occurred was between September 2021 and March 2022, and those visits happened only because we engaged a co-parenting coordinator through the National Family Resiliency Center — a paid third-party professional whose sole purpose was to facilitate what the court order already required. Even then, Christina ignored the coordinator’s recommendations and guidance, found reasons to resist the process, and continued to frame every obstacle as originating with me.
Eventually, a court had to intervene and order her to resume visitation. She was not found in contempt despite more than a year of documented noncompliance. There were no consequences.
That outcome matters. It established what the system would and would not enforce. It told one party that the order had teeth only when a judge was actively watching. It told the other party something, too.
What Changed in January 2024
On January 23, 2024, my car broke down. It happened after a court hearing. I reached out through Our Family Wizard to explain the situation and asked to reschedule my next visit until I could get it repaired.
That is what I asked for. A reschedule. Makeup time. The kind of accommodation co-parents make for each other as a matter of course.
What followed instead was a string of denials, a refusal to bring Dylan to Frederick for a visit, new conditions, new excuses. The broken car — a temporary, fixable problem — became a permanent justification for cutting off court-ordered access entirely. Suddenly, I was “absent.” Suddenly, there were “documentation concerns.” Suddenly, the library offer materialized as the only acceptable alternative to the court order both of us were supposed to be following. She has been trying to force me to accept short visits, supervised by her. There are heavily documented reasons why that is highly inappropriate and unnecessary.
The pattern was not new. The pretext was.
The Pattern After January 21, 2024
Starting in late January 2024 and continuing through the present, the record shows the same exchange repeating, week after week, month after month:
I send a message confirming my court-ordered visitation. I note the date, the time, the schedule. I ask for confirmation. I state that if I don’t receive a response, I will document the denial.
The message is viewed.
No confirmation comes.
Sometimes a response arrives, redirecting me to the library offer or Chuck E. Cheese so she could watch. Sometimes there is no response at all. Either way, the visitation does not happen.
This is not an isolated incident. It is the structure of the last fifteen months of this record.
What Gets Responses and What Doesn’t
The record reveals something beyond the denials themselves. It reveals a pattern of selective communication that is, in some ways, more telling than silence alone.
Messages requesting court-ordered visitation: ignored or deflected.
Messages about Dylan’s school assessments and report cards: responded to promptly, with attachments.
Messages requesting advance notice of medical appointments: acknowledged but not acted on.
Notifications of out-of-state travel — skiing in West Virginia, a trip to New York City, skiing in Pennsylvania, skiing in Colorado — sent as courtesy notices, often with little or no advance warning, frequently overlapping with my scheduled parenting time.
The capacity to communicate exists. The choice about what to communicate about is deliberate.
The Family That Went Silent
The isolation did not stop with Christina.
In the years since our separation and divorce, I have had no meaningful contact with her family or friends, notably her parents Dennis and Kay — people I knew well, got along with, and had no reason to be cut off from. Every attempt to reach out for help, to ask someone in Dylan’s extended family network to assist with communication or co-parenting, was met with silence.
The only exception came from Christina’s brother Nick, who told me directly that their family had been instructed by her not to talk to me. One message. Then again, silence.
Not that they had chosen to step back. Not that they were uncomfortable. That they had been told.
That is half of Dylan’s family. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends — people who were part of his life and mine — coordinated into silence. I did not lose those relationships because of anything I did. I lost them because one person decided I should.
Dylan is growing up in a family network where his father has been made to disappear not just from the schedule, but from the people who surround him. That is not a byproduct of a difficult divorce. It is a choice, made deliberately, enforced explicitly, and confirmed by someone who was subject to it.
Medical Care: A Separate Pattern
In September 2025, I learned that Dylan had been having hearing problems for several months. Christina informed me after two ENT appointments had already occurred — in August and September — that I knew nothing about.
In October 2025, Dylan had ear tube surgery. I was informed after the procedure was complete.
In November 2025, parent-teacher conferences were held. I was not notified in advance. I found out afterward, when Christina mentioned she had attended, and thought I would reach out if I wanted to join.
In April 2026, I learned — through a routine well-visit summary sent the morning after the appointment — that Dylan had been in therapy for six to nine months. The court order requires that I be informed of healthcare providers and treatment. I was not.
The timing of the therapy enrollment is worth noting alongside another fact from the record. In April 2025, Dr. Mechak recommended that Christina and I engage a family counselor or mediator. That recommendation — one that would have required both parents to participate — was ignored. Two months later, in June 2025, Dylan was enrolled in individual therapy without my knowledge or notification. I was not told when it began, who the therapist was, or what was being addressed. I found out ten months later, as a footnote in a well-visit summary.
She did not follow the recommendation that would have included me. She acted unilaterally on the one that didn’t. That is not a coincidence. It is a pattern.
Each of these incidents is discrete. Together, they form the same structure as the visitation record: one parent in possession of all information, the other structurally excluded from it.
A Specific Exchange Worth Reading
In June 2025, I formally requested that Christina comply with the court-ordered parenting schedule. Her response is worth quoting directly from the record:
“I have read your recent article regarding your legal strategy, so I understand these renewed requests are likely more about building your case.”
This was June 2025. Nearly a year before her most recent demand that I stop writing. She was already monitoring my Substack, already using it to characterize my parenting requests as pretextual, already treating my documented attempts to see my son as performance rather than genuine effort.
The message was a reply to a request to spend time with my child.
What Happened When I Went to Court
The record on Our Family Wizard does not exist in a vacuum. It exists alongside a court docket.
In March 2024, I filed for contempt following repeated documented denials of court-ordered visitation. What followed was not relief. It was over 100 motions — contempt filings, enforcement requests, emergency motions regarding out-of-country travel during my parenting time, requests for evaluations, discovery enforcement, ADA accommodations, attempts to correct fraudulent mischaracterizations of my ADHD diagnosis in court filings, requests for protective orders to prevent interference with my employment, and attempts to remove a false prior protective order from my record in an attempt to restore my prior government clearance.
Twenty different judges handled pieces of this case.
The court granted nothing. Hearings were canceled without notice. Motions were dismissed, denied, or deferred into silence.
For most of that period, I was not only filing motions. I was showing up.
The court-ordered exchange location was Christina’s house — my former home, the house I was removed from under allegations I dispute entirely. I drove there for scheduled visitation, 35 minutes to sometimes over an hour each way, depending on traffic on Maryland highways that are never predictable and frequently shut down entirely. I drove there knowing what was likely waiting.
She would not bring Dylan to the door. Sometimes she manufactured reasons not to come out. Sometimes she simply didn’t respond at all. I would stand there, having driven an hour, and nothing would happen. I would hear our dog Otis barking at the door, or see him jumping up and down by a window, excited to see me. Then I would drive home.
This happened repeatedly. It is in the record. The drives are not in the Our Family Wizard log — Our Family Wizard does not track mileage or time spent standing outside a house where your son lives — but the message confirmations are there, and so are the documented denials that followed each one.
By October 2024, after more than six months of fighting every available legal channel while my health deteriorated, I stopped. Not because I stopped wanting to see my son. Because continuing on that path was going to kill me.
When I say I gave everything to not lose my relationship with my son, I mean it literally. I drove to that house. I stood at that door. I filed one motion after another. I did it over and over again until my body couldn’t anymore. These patterns began before Dylan was born, but I didn’t see them or put them together until it was too late to stop.
Two to Three Hours
In total, across more than two years, the in-person time with my son amounted to perhaps two to three hours.
That number is worth sitting with.
Not two to three hours per week. Not per month. Two to three hours across the entire period from January 2024 through the present. A doctor’s appointment in April 2024. A doctor’s appointment in April 2025. A small number of school events where I was able to show up because the information was public or accessible. The last time I saw my son was at a school open house in late August 2025. He was excited. He ran to me. It was hard for both of us when we had to part.
After that, the remaining access point closed too. When I asked about upcoming school events — whether Dylan would be there, what time, whether I could attend — the responses stopped. The Our Family Wizard record shows messages asking about specific events met with either silence or claims that they wouldn’t be attending, regardless of what the school calendar showed.
Christina’s consistent position has been that driving Dylan to Frederick is not something she is able or willing to do. But the record shows something worth noting alongside that position: I became aware, after the fact, that Christina had taken Dylan to events in Frederick — my city, where I currently live — without notifying me. Not to facilitate any contact. Not to let his father know his son was nearby. Simply to attend an event, and mention it later if at all.
She could drive to Frederick. She chose when.
The Christmas Denial
On December 22, 2025, I sent a message confirming my court-ordered Christmas holiday parenting time. Under our order, I was entitled to custody from 4 PM Christmas Eve through 4 PM Christmas Day.
Christina’s response: she was not comfortable with unsupervised time and suggested meeting somewhere Christmas morning instead. How am I supposed to trust being alone with this person?
I followed up. I asked for compliance confirmation. I did not receive it.
Dylan spent another Christmas without his father. It is in the record.
February 14, 2026
On January 30, 2026, I sent a message confirming my scheduled weekend visitation. On February 4, I sent another confirming my Wednesday visitation.
Both messages were viewed for the first time on February 14, 2026.
Fourteen days.
There is no explanation in the record. There is no response. The messages were simply left unread for two weeks, then opened, then left unanswered.
That is the record. A record that has repeated itself often since February 2020.
May 1, 2026
On Friday, I sent Dylan a gift — a newly released Lionel Messi Lego set, something a 7-year-old who just had a birthday would love. I know he received it.
I have not received an acknowledgment. No message through Our Family Wizard. No phone call with my son. No, “Dylan says thank you.” Nothing.
The same platform that produces 7,077 messages, the same parent who responds within hours when she wants to control what I write, had nothing to say about a gift from a boy’s father to his son.
That silence is in the record, too. Repeated often.
What This Document Is
I am not publishing this to relitigate every message in a 7,077-entry log. I am publishing it because the record exists, it is complete, and it tells a story that cannot be rewritten.
Christina Avgerinos reads my articles. She monitors my writing. She responds to demands about what I should and should not say publicly faster than she responds to requests to see my son.
The Our Family Wizard record shows every message I have sent. It shows every message she has sent. It shows what was viewed and when. It shows what was answered and what was not.
Courts sometimes fail to enforce orders. Narratives sometimes get distorted in litigation. But the timestamped record of 7,077 messages does not get distorted. It simply exists.
I have been asking to see my son, in writing, on a documented platform, for over two years. The record shows that. The record also shows what happened next.
Nothing.
Dylan turned 7 last month. His father has been asking to see him since he was 4, the age of their last court-ordered time together. It is all in the record.
Still Here is an ongoing series documenting one father’s fight to remain in his son’s life. Read the full series at Father & Co.
The communications referenced in this article are drawn directly from the Our Family Wizard message log, a court-designated co-parenting communication platform. All messages are timestamped and unaltered. This article reflects the author’s firsthand experience and documented record. All legal references in this series are informational only and do not constitute legal advice. Father & Co. is not a law firm. If you are navigating a custody matter, consult a licensed attorney in your state.
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