It took more than a month, and desperate pleas to the court, before Dr. Kreslyn Barron Odum saw her daughter again.
One day, last fall, she dropped her six-year-old daughter, Barron, off at school in Wayne County, Georgia. Then, without prior warning or approval, her ex-husband picked their child and took her away. Dr. Odum has seen her only four times since, each under the watchful eye of a court-appointed supervisor.
No emergency hearing. No formal custody change. No allegations of abuse. Yet, Dr. Odum remains sidelined in her own child’s life, with no scheduled court date in sight.
“I want to see my daughter,” Dr. Odum says.
While Dr. Odum’s story may sound shocking, she’s not alone. Across the country, more and more mothers are being removed from their children’s lives without traditional due process—no criminal charges, no findings of abuse, no jury. Instead, civil family courts wield broad discretion, often allowing one parent to take full custody without a full evidentiary hearing or a court-reviewed change in circumstance.
In Dr. Odum’s case, there was no warning that her parenting time would be cut off so abruptly. “It was like someone flipped a switch,” she says. “One day I was doing bedtime, and the next I was being treated like a stranger.”
The ordeal has left her emotionally and financially drained, but she says she won’t stop fighting for what’s right.
In the months since losing access to her daughter, Dr. Odum, a respected local optometrist, has formed a grassroots support group for other Georgia mothers facing similar situations. What started as a small Facebook group has turned into real-life meetings at her neighborhood eye clinic, where more than a dozen women now gather regularly to share legal tips, resources, and support.
“We cry, we strategize, we lean on each other,” she says. “Because no one else really understands this until it happens to you.”
Danielle Pollack, policy director at the National Safe Parents Organization (NSPO), a nonprofit that advocates for protective parents and reform in family courts, says these kinds of cases are becoming increasingly common.
“Family court is one of the most underregulated systems in our country,” Pollack explains. “And too often, it’s punishing the very parents who are trying to protect their children.”
The trauma, she adds, ripples far beyond the courtroom.
As for Dr. Odum, she’s still waiting. Still hoping. Still fighting.
“I’ve done everything the court asked,” she says. “I’ve followed every order, filed every motion. I’ve spent thousands of dollars I didn’t have. And I still don’t know when I’ll get to tuck my daughter in at night again.”
But she refuses to give up.
“I know I’m a good mom,” she says. “And I will keep showing up and fighting to get Barron back home.”