Time Stolen, Bonds Broken: What Can’t Be Replaced Can Still Be Reformed

The moments lost between fathers and their children can never be replaced — but laws can be changed to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Every day in family court, a clock ticks away moments a father and child will never share: first steps, bedtime stories, birthday hugs. The system claims to protect families, but too often, it steals time through endless delays, biased rulings, and financial ruin, leaving fathers and kids estranged in a haze of bureaucracy.

Picture a father, Mark, waiting 18 months for a custody hearing. His daughter grows from a toddler to a kindergartner, her memories of him fading with each missed day. Court delays, motions, evaluations, mediation drag on, eating childhood like a thief. Time lost can’t be recovered, and kids pay most of the price.

The imbalance is hard to ignore: courts often lean toward traditional caregiving roles, leaving fathers to shoulder a higher burden of proof. They must demonstrate their commitment through endless evaluations and expenses, while legal fees drain their savings. Some give up, not for lack of love, but because the process itself can feel unwinnable. Mark would spend thousands, only to receive supervised visits for two hours a month.

The emotional toll is brutal. Fathers face grief and helplessness, their mental health crumbling under the weight of separation. Kids feel abandoned, confused, unsure why Dad isn’t there. The system’s delays and biases don’t just steal time, they fracture bonds that take years to rebuild, if ever.And while those lost moments can never be fully restored, there are people fighting to make sure the next generation doesn’t lose theirs.

Turning Pain Into Policy

One of them is Texas advocate Robert Garza, who spent more than a decade navigating family court and losing years with his own children. His story became the fuel behind what he calls the Family Equality Bill Stack, a set of legislative reforms designed to make family courts fair, fast, and accountable.

Garza’s first success came with Senate Bill 718, known informally as “Time Taken, Time Back.”
The law amends the Texas Family Code to ensure that when a parent’s time is suspended during a child-protection investigation that later finds no abuse or neglect, the court must compensate that parent with make-up visitation unless there’s good cause not to.

“This bill fixes a fundamental liberty and a parental right. It brings healing and allows the child-parent relationship bond to be rebuilt from the lost time that was taken only on precaution by the court.”
— Robert Garza, legislative testimony

For fathers like Mark, the law offers something rare: a legal acknowledgment that wrongful separation matters; and that rebuilding connection deserves priority.

Accountability Where It’s Long Been Missing

Garza’s next fight targets what happens when court orders are ignored.
His proposed “Three-Strikes” custodial interference law seeks to end the culture of impunity that allows one parent to block visitation without consequence. The measure establishes escalating penalties: a fine on the first and second offense, and a state-jail felony by the third.

“When it passes, it will revolutionize family courts,” Garza told The Texas Insider.
“It’s going to stop a lot of the fighting, it’s going to stop a lot of the bad behavior. It’s going to give a $500 fine to the offending parent the first time, the second time, and then the third time, it becomes a state jail felony.”

In tandem with related legislation like House Bill 3181, which strengthens contempt penalties and requires courts to modify orders after repeated violations, the reform would give teeth to custody orders that for decades have gone unenforced.

Protecting Tomorrow’s Time

No law can replace the bedtime stories missed or the birthdays spent alone. The clock that family court sets in motion doesn’t rewind.
But through Garza’s work (and that of growing advocates across states) there’s a blueprint emerging for how to protect the next father, the next child, from the same fate.

Expedited hearings. Shared parenting as a presumption. Transparency for evaluators. Accountability for interference.
Each measure chips away at the machinery that consumes family time.

Because time is a currency of love between parent and child.
And while the courts can’t return what’s already gone, they can stop stealing more…



-DavidB
Fathers Anonymous

-Texas Legislature, S.B. 718 (2023) — “Relating to additional periods of possession of or access to a child following the conclusion of certain child protection investigations.”

-Texas Family Code §157.168, as amended by S.B. 718 (2023).

-Garza, Robert — Written testimony to state judiciary committee (2025).

-The Texas Insider: “Texas Dad Advocates for Legal Changes to the Family Court System” (2024).

-Texas Legislature Online — H.B. 3181 (89R) and S.B. 2794 (89R) analyses (2025).