Court Insider Says Judge Reali Wanted Distance from Case Because of Election; Now the Fight Moves to the Record
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Look, I’m not writing this as an unbiased, detached reporter pretending I have no personal stake in what happened. I’m writing this as Matt Greminger; a father who waited in the halls outside of a Cleveland courtroom on January 12th, surrounded by subpoenaed witnesses and prepared for a custody trial centered on the safety and well-being of my children that did not happen. I am also writing this as someone whose case is still ongoing, whose family is still living with the consequences of this process, and who now has another decision to make that I never wanted to make in the first place. A Magistrate’s Decision has been issued in my divorce, there are findings in it I believe are wrong, and I intend to file objections because, truthfully, I don’t believe I have much of a choice. If I object, I remain locked inside a system that has already consumed an almost incomprehensible amount of my family’s time, money, stability and emotional health. If I don’t object, findings I dispute can become part of the final judgment, and issues I could have challenged can become extraordinarily difficult or impossible to challenge later. Cuyahoga County’s rules require objections to a Magistrate’s Decision within 14 days, and factual objections generally have to be supported by the relevant transcript. The court currently charges $4.50 per transcript page, and the person requesting it is ordinarily responsible for that cost.
Someone once told me that if you don’t have time to do something right, you had better have time to do it over. I didn’t have time for any of this to begin with. Now, after everything this case has already taken, I somehow have to find the time, money and emotional bandwidth to go back through days of testimony, exhibits and decisions and fight all over again. Ideally, I should have an experienced attorney beside me doing that. I cannot afford one anymore. I need transcripts to properly challenge factual findings, but after years of attorneys, hearings, property problems, interrupted income and the general destruction that seems to follow prolonged litigation into every corner of a person’s life, I am looking at the cost of proving what happened in the very proceeding that helped exhaust the resources I would need to prove it. That is one of the cruelest things I have learned about this process. That eventually, the system begins asking people for resources that the system itself helped deplete. Objecting keeps me in it. Not objecting requires me to live with words I believe are wrong until those words become orders, those orders produce consequences, and those consequences become real. I am scared to keep fighting, but I am even more afraid of what happens if exhaustion is allowed to become acceptance.
When I brought my case to the investigative team we built at Cleveland 13, I wasn’t looking to become part of the story. I was a parent trying to protect my kids. The newsroom had already spent nearly a year investigating the Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Court through cases completely unrelated to mine, but when investigators saw who was assigned to my case and began comparing my timeline with records, recordings, transcripts and information they had already gathered from people inside the court, things started lining up in ways none of us expected. My case was not simply an isolated headache involving an overburdened court. It appeared to fit into much larger questions our investigators were already asking about delays, judicial delegation, magistrate workload and discrepancies between what families were being told in court and what the underlying records later showed. January 12th became one of the clearest examples of why those questions deserve serious scrutiny.
My case was never a routine divorce. The central issues involved serious and ongoing concerns about my children, and for months our family lived under temporary orders while people who had firsthand knowledge of what was happening waited for an opportunity to put those facts on the record. January 12th was supposed to be that opportunity, and we were overly prepared for it. I had my ex-wife’s mother, a local police officer, a social worker, neighbors, family friends and others ready to testify. These were people with no financial stake in my divorce and, in many cases, no reason whatsoever to take my side. People took time away from work and rearranged their lives to be there. Others made significant financial sacrifices, including one witness who traveled across the country. We were doing exactly what people are told to do. Follow the process, gather evidence, bring witnesses, show up when the court tells you to show up and trust that, eventually, somebody will listen.
Because Magistrate Jason Parker had previously warned that an older case, Dengler v. Dengler, could potentially interfere with the schedule, I called the court on Friday, January 9th specifically to make sure our trial was still going forward. The clerk transferred me directly to Judge Colleen Ann Reali’s chambers, where her staff gave me the very clear answer that Magistrate Parker was handling Dengler and Judge Reali herself would personally preside over my trial Monday morning at 9:00 a.m. Opposing counsel and the Guardian ad Litem received the same information. That call can be heard here. So Monday morning, everyone showed up ready to try the case. Instead, Judge Reali came into the courtroom and told us the trial could not begin. We have the courtroom audio. On those recordings, she described Dengler as an approximately eight-year-old case that she said had been assigned through the Ohio Supreme Court and therefore took precedence over everything else. She referred to it specifically as “this case that I’m in trial on now” and told us she was tied up finishing Dengler and could not begin ours until that proceeding was completed. It might take an hour, she said, or it might take three days. My witnesses waited. People who had taken time away from their jobs and families waited. People who had traveled to Cleveland waited. By the afternoon, everyone was sent home. 9:21 AM Courtroom Recording | 11:55 AM Courtroom Recording
That is where what we were told began running into the official record. The transcripts from Dengler identify Magistrate Parker, not Judge Reali, as the judicial officer conducting the evidentiary proceedings on January 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13 and 14. (Those transcripts are here) Months later, Reali’s own signed judgment entry said the same thing, describing the matter as having been “heard by Magistrate Parker.” Fairness requires acknowledging that Judge Reali could have been working on Dengler outside the courtroom. Judges review filings, handle administrative matters, discuss cases and perform work that never appears in a transcript. Dengler was assigned to her, and it would be irresponsible for me to pretend the transcripts can tell us everything she did that day. The problem is simply that this was not the explanation my family was given. We were told she was in trial and that she had to finish that trial before ours could begin, while the official record identifies Parker as the person actually conducting the evidentiary proceeding.
Then Cleveland 13 obtained another public record. Official Cuyahoga County Board of Elections records show Colleen Reali signing into the Board of Elections at 1:21 p.m. that same afternoon and signing out at 1:33 p.m. This was less than an hour after she told us to leave and come back the next day because she was too busy on Dengler to handle our case. The Board’s candidate records also confirm that January 12, 2026 was the date Reali filed her candidacy for another six-year term on the Domestic Relations bench. Board of Elections Sign-In Sheets Can Be Viewed Here | Reelection Petition/Filing Can Be Viewed Here. Going to the Board of Elections is not misconduct. Running for reelection is not misconduct. Using magistrates is not misconduct either, and a 12-minute visitor log obviously cannot tell us where someone was or what she was doing every other minute of the day. What matters is the chronology when the records are placed next to each other. My family was told our trial could not proceed because the judge said she was tied up in another trial; the official transcript identifies her magistrate as the officer conducting that proceeding; and later that afternoon an official government record places the judge at the Board of Elections on the same day she filed to keep her seat.
Those records raised questions, and then people from inside the court began talking. A court employee with direct access to Reali told Cleveland 13 that my public criticism of the Domestic Relations Court was well known inside the building and that Reali discussed my case directly with Magistrate Parker. According to that source, Reali told Parker she intended to give him my case because, “I can’t be anywhere near it.” When later asked whether Reali had specifically connected that concern to the election, the court insider said she had, recalling Reali saying, “If I have to keep it, I can’t be anywhere near this because of the election.” That is whistleblower testimony, not a recorded statement, and Cleveland 13 is treating it accordingly. I am not asking anyone to accept those words simply because someone who works inside the court says they were spoken. What makes them worthy of examination is that they sit beside the January 9 call, the January 12 courtroom recordings, the Dengler transcripts, Reali’s own later judgment entry and the Board of Elections records.
Whatever the ultimate explanation for January 12th is, my family did not get that day back. When our trial finally happened months later, the witness panel was not the same. Some people who had already spent money and rearranged their lives to appear in January could not afford another round of airfare, missed work and travel. Some local witnesses became unwilling to continue participating after events that followed their appearance at the courthouse, circumstances Cleveland 13 is continuing to document as part of the larger investigation. I also filed a motion asking for important witnesses who could not return to testify remotely by Zoom, and that issue was not resolved in time to provide those witnesses with a functioning remote path into the trial. A continuance sounds almost meaningless when reduced to a docket entry, but in real life it is another plane ticket, another attorney bill, another lost day of work, another witness deciding they cannot put themselves through the process again and another month of children living under temporary decisions while everyone waits for somebody to finally hear the evidence. You do not get those days back, and children do not put childhood on hold while adults argue over a court calendar.
When our trial finally went forward, Magistrate Parker heard it, not Judge Reali. Parker appeared visibly exhausted, and he was handling substantial contested matters coming through Reali’s docket. That observation does not establish why he appeared exhausted or prove that Reali caused his workload, which is precisely why Cleveland 13 has been examining records instead of simply making that assumption. Magistrates are an essential part of Ohio’s judicial system, and there is nothing inherently improper about a judge referring appropriate matters to them. The important questions are how much substantive work is being delegated, whether the resulting workload is sustainable and whether families receive the independent judicial review the law requires when deeply consequential decisions are challenged.
Now that decision has arrived in my case, and I am back in a place that feels disturbingly familiar. I have to prove that I followed the process by following even more of it. There are parts of the Magistrate’s Decision I agree with, parts I do not, and factual findings I believe do not accurately reflect the evidence that was presented. Ohio’s rules give me a mechanism for challenging those findings, and I intend to use it, but exercising that right has a cost. Under current Cuyahoga Domestic Relations Court Rule 27, factual objections generally require the relevant transcript; the transcript or permitted substitute must ordinarily be supplied within the rule’s timeframe, and the transcript request is filed when objections are filed. The court allows additional time for preparation and supplementation in appropriate circumstances, which matters, but it does not eliminate the cost of obtaining the record itself. My trial lasted days, and at $4.50 per page, the simple act of obtaining the official written record necessary to challenge factual findings can become another substantial bill.
That may sound like a procedural detail compared with everything else this investigation has uncovered, but to me it explains more about family court than almost anything else. I had resources when this started. I had businesses, income, property, credit and options. Every court date took time from earning money. Every attorney bill came from somewhere. Property remained tied up while expenses continued. Problems that could have been resolved grew while the case continued. The ability to create new income becomes much harder when days that should be spent working are spent preparing motions, collecting evidence, sitting outside courtrooms, attending hearings and recovering from whatever happened at the last one. Eventually a person reaches the point where the system tells him that, if he believes the system got something wrong, he must pay still more money to prove it. I understand now why people who passionately insist they will fight every injustice eventually sign something just to get out. I understand why people abandon appeals, walk away from property, stop hiring lawyers and accept findings they believe are wrong. It is not always because they suddenly agree. Sometimes they are simply out of money, out of time and terrified that another attempt to defend themselves will produce another hearing, another bill and another year of their lives inside a process that has already exhausted them.
I am there. There are days when the idea of filing another piece of paper in that courthouse makes me sick, not because I am afraid of facts, but because I have learned what another piece of paper can become. Another motion means another response. Another objection means another transcript. Another hearing means another day not earning money. Another delay means another month of consequences that continue outside the courthouse while everyone inside it argues over what should happen next. I want this divorce over more than I can adequately describe. I want whatever normal life is still available to my family after all of this to begin. At the same time, I cannot knowingly allow findings that are wrong to become the permanent official version of my family’s history simply because the cost of correcting them has become unbearable. That is not a meaningful choice. It is a choice between staying in a process I desperately want to escape and surrendering to consequences the record does not justify.
The hardest part to explain is that this entire case began because I told the truth. I have not lied to this court. I have followed its orders even when I hated them. I hired attorneys when I couldn't afford them, gathered documents, subpoenaed witnesses, appeared when I was ordered to appear, answered allegations, filed motions and tried to use the procedures I was told existed for exactly these kinds of disputes. I begged. I prepared. I cried. I fought. I tried to do everything people say a responsible parent is supposed to do when he believes his children need somebody to pay attention. Through that process I have been characterized in ways that are almost unrecognizable to me, including being called a “woman hater” by a judge who did not know me. I have felt ignored, dismissed, used, financially stripped down and forced repeatedly to prove things I thought evidence would make obvious. I know I am not perfect, and I do not expect a court to agree with everything I say simply because I believe it passionately. What I expected was that facts would matter, evidence would matter, truth would matter and following the process would eventually lead somewhere other than devastation.
That devastation is not something a docket can capture. There is no line item for what prolonged litigation does to children. There is no invoice for watching a family become unrecognizable while everyone waits for the next ruling. There is no refund for a childhood spent under temporary orders or for the months in which parents are too consumed with litigation to give their children the version of themselves they once had. I have lost money and opportunities, and I have watched things I worked years to build become unstable while the case continued. Those losses hurt, but they are not the part that keeps me awake. What keeps me awake is wondering whether I could have done something differently for my children, while simultaneously knowing I followed the rules I was given and brought the evidence I had.
Since Cleveland 13 released the first preview of this investigation, the response has been unlike anything any of us expected. Parents, former litigants, attorneys, sitting and retired judges and people who work inside the court have contacted the newsroom with case numbers, records, recordings, filings and stories of their own. Some complaints will undoubtedly turn out to have ordinary explanations. Some people will simply be angry because they lost, and losing a case is not evidence that a judge, magistrate, GAL or attorney did anything improper. That is why this investigation cannot be built around outrage. It has to be built around records. Cleveland 13 is going case by case, docket by docket, transcript by transcript, comparing what people allege with what the documents actually establish. If the records contradict a source, that matters. If they provide an innocent explanation for something that initially looked suspicious, that matters too. If they support serious questions about what happened inside a publicly funded court entrusted with extraordinary power over families, that matters just as much.
I do not know where all of this ultimately ends, and I am not going to pretend that I know the answer to every allegation that has reached our newsroom. I also do not know exactly what happens next in my own case. What I know is that truth matters, facts matter, and there has to remain some meaningful distinction between what is right and what is merely allowed to stand because the person challenging it finally ran out of money or energy. I also know that whatever else this process takes from me, I will be damned if I voluntarily hand over my voice with everything else. I can lose property. I can lose money. I can lose sleep, opportunities and years I will never get back. I cannot knowingly watch something I believe is wrong happen to my family, discover that other families are describing similar problems, have access to a newsroom capable of examining those claims, and then choose silence because speaking is uncomfortable.
I am the father of daughters, and someday they may read all of this. They may read what the court wrote about our family, what I wrote, what Cleveland 13 uncovered, what turned out to be true and what did not. I have to be able to look them in the eye and tell them that they were worth the truth and that they were worth the fight. I could not live with myself if the lesson I gave them was that when something powerful hurts you badly enough, eventually you stop speaking because challenging it becomes inconvenient or frightening. Whatever the consequences of telling my story and continuing this investigation are, they are consequences I can live with more easily than knowing I had the ability to ask these questions and chose not to.
Judge Reali remains an elected public official with enormous authority over families, and official Board of Elections records confirm that she filed on January 12 for another six-year term beginning in 2027. That makes accurate information about what happens inside this court a legitimate matter of public interest, but I am not asking anybody to take my word for what happened, nor am I telling anyone what political conclusion to reach from it. Listen to the recordings. Read the transcripts as Cleveland 13 obtains and publishes them. Look at the election records. Read the court orders. Listen to the people who worked inside the building, and listen to the court’s explanation as well. Then decide for yourself what the evidence means.
As for me, I have objections to file, transcripts I somehow have to obtain and a case I desperately want to end. I have spent a long time doing what this system told me to do, and far too much of what followed has left my family damaged rather than healed. I am frightened of remaining trapped in it, but I am not willing to escape by quietly accepting things I believe are wrong. I will continue using the lawful process available to challenge the findings I dispute, and Cleveland 13 will continue examining this court with the same standard it must apply to everyone else, including me. Where the evidence clears someone, we will say so. Where it contradicts us, we will correct ourselves. Where the evidence supports serious questions, we will not bury those questions because somebody powerful would prefer not to answer them.
I did not ask for this fight, and I certainly did not imagine that telling the truth at the beginning of my divorce could lead here. I do know why I am still fighting it. My children are worth more than whatever is left for this process to take from me, and when almost everything else feels beyond my control, I still control whether I remain silent. They can make me file another motion. They can make me buy another transcript. They can make me spend another day proving something I believe should already be obvious from the record. They cannot make me stop asking questions, and they cannot make me give away my voice.
If YOU or someone you know has felt unheard, ignored, neglected, or otherwise damaged due to the actions or ineffectiveness of this court, please reach out to us at tips@cleveland13news.com and PLEASE sign up to stay notified on this investigation through the Cuyahoga County Family Court Accountability Project. The full investigation is being made public now, through individual cases and real records. If you have something to add, let us help give you some of that voice back.
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