There’s a show called Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed streaming on Apple TV+ (not sponsored, although we remain open to possibilities) that caught our attention.
The series follows recently divorced single mother Paula Sanders, played by Tatiana Maslany, who manages to combine a contentious custody battle with an increasingly tangled murder mystery involving a “webcam professional,” blackmail, shady characters, and some genuinely questionable decision-making.
Throw all those things together and, naturally, you’ve got our attention. Family law by day, legal-thriller enthusiasts by night.
The show also raises a question we don’t encounter terribly often in practice: Can being investigated for murder cost you custody of your child?
Let’s ask Paula.
How Paula makes an already messy divorce much messier
When we meet Paula, her life is already somewhat untidy. She’s divorced from Karl, shares a daughter named Hazel with him, and is worried Karl may eventually move away with their child.
Then there’s Trevor, the online companion Paula pays for private sessions. During one of their calls, Paula appears to witness him being attacked. Rather than leaving the detective work to actual detectives — a choice television characters rarely make — she starts investigating and eventually discovers Trevor dead.
Things deteriorate from there.
As Paula digs deeper, she becomes tangled in a much larger conspiracy while Karl and his partner Mallory increasingly question whether Hazel should be in her care. Eventually, Paula faces supervised visitation and a custody hearing, all while dealing with the minor inconvenience of being implicated in serious crimes.
Can murder-adjacent chaos hurt a custody case?
Here’s where Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed accidentally gives us something resembling a legitimate family-law question.
Being investigated for a crime does not automatically cause a parent to lose custody. An accusation, after all, is still just an accusation. Courts generally have considerably more to consider than whichever headline sounds worst.
In Washington State, parenting-plan decisions involve factors such as the strength and stability of the child’s relationship with each parent, each parent’s history of performing parenting responsibilities, the child’s emotional and developmental needs, and other circumstances affecting the child’s welfare.
Unfortunately for Paula, this means the murder investigation is hardly the only thing worth discussing.
Her increasingly dangerous amateur sleuthing, disappearing acts, chaotic judgment, and general habit of finding herself near situations which may soon require police tape could all give an opposing parent plenty to talk about.
If you’ve read our piece on what to do when your custody order doesn’t survive September, you already know parenting arrangements can become complicated when ordinary life changes. Paula simply chooses a considerably more cinematic route.
Most custody battles contain far fewer dead bodies
Here’s some reassurance for anyone watching the show while going through a custody dispute of their own: family law is usually much less exciting.
Real custody disputes tend to revolve around residential schedules, school, transportation, communication, decision-making, relocation, and whether someone returned the child’s soccer uniform.
We do not regularly add “possible international blackmail conspiracy” to parenting plans.
Nor do custody cases typically feature paid online companions, amateur homicide investigations, mysterious assassins, or mothers conducting investigative work when they probably ought to be preparing for court.
Frankly, we prefer it this way. Boring is underrated in family law.
Paula’s bigger problem may be her judgment
Karl and Mallory eventually seek full custody, and the show spends plenty of time examining whether Paula’s personal life makes her a bad parent.
Fun fact: parents are allowed to have private lives after divorce. They may date, make mistakes, develop unusual hobbies, and occasionally make choices their ex finds objectionable. Divorce does not place anyone under a lifelong vow of dullness.
What can matter is whether those choices begin affecting the child.
Paula’s predicament becomes harder because her investigation repeatedly spills into the rest of her life. At various points, the chaos threatens her stability, her freedom, and her ability to be present for Hazel. From an opposing attorney’s perspective, that’s considerably more useful than simply announcing, “She talks to webcam professionals.”
Even Karl and Mallory are hardly models of restraint. Apple’s own episode description notes that Mallory “crosses legal lines” during the custody battle, proving once again that nobody on prestige television can simply behave themselves for 10 consecutive episodes.
Keep your custody battle boring if you can
By the finale, Paula’s custody dispute lands in court, where her parenting, personal choices, and post-divorce struggles receive the sort of public examination most people would understandably prefer to avoid.
The larger lesson is considerably less sensational than the show. A criminal investigation alone does not neatly answer who should have custody. Courts look at the broader circumstances surrounding a parent, the child, and their relationship.
Thankfully, most custody cases never become remotely as action-packed as Paula Sanders’ life.
At LaGrandeur & Williams, we work with Washington State parents dealing with custody and parenting-plan disputes that usually contain 100% fewer murder conspiracies. If yours has become complicated, we can help you make sense of what actually matters, preferably before anyone decides to start solving crimes on the side. Call us.