When Court Ordered Coparenting Is Not In Anyone's Best Interests

Court-ordered coparenting is pretty much doomed to fail when one of the parents is highly narcissistic.  When the courts take a one-size-fits-all approach to coparenting expectations and standards, they end up creating a sure-to-fail situation where everyone involved loses.  That is, everyone except those who directly profit from the increased conflict, legal expenses, and court-ordered therapy work that is generated by trying to force those who are incapable of collaborative parenting into an idealistic coparenting model.  

Transcript

Welcome to unapologetic parenting. The podcast dedicated to candidly and unapologetically discussing high conflict, co parenting blended families in the family court system. We take on the topics most people don't want to talk about, and offer solutions and support to help you be a better parent, better spouse and your blended family and happier human being. Now, without apologetic parenting, in this episode, we were talking about how when the family courts force parents to co parent on the courts terms, and when the court does not factor in the fact that there is a disordered, narcissistic cluster be that type of high conflict parent in the mix, how that's pretty much setting everyone up for failure. And it's not just setting everyone up for failure. But it is also clearly not in the best interests of the kids. So one of the biggest elephants that's always in the courtroom in these high conflict custody cases, is that more often than not very, very often, far more often than not, that when you have a high conflict custody issue that's in front of the court, what you're really dealing with is a mental health issue that is being paraded around as a legal issue. When you're dealing with a disordered x with a mental a true mental health issue, treating it like it's a legal issue and allowing it to play out unchecked in the legal system often just works out to the detriment of everyone involved. And that detriment then trickles down to the kids themselves. Because now they are having to be caught up in a co parenting dynamic that just cannot will not work because of the disorder. And so it's just it's a downward spiral that just dooms everyone to rush to the bottom, the kids end up being caught in the middle, litigation ends up increasing co parenting ends up failing. And this is why one of the most trauma sensitive or trauma informed things that the Court I think could possibly do is to always go with a parallel parenting model at the get go, rather than starting with something that is going to be no impossible for a large number of high conflict people, which would be kind of the standard co parenting and the expectations of a high level of communication, high level of cooperation that is just literally impossible for these people. They're just simply not capable of doing so very often high conflict, co parenting issues are handled by the courts and ways that end up enabling and exacerbating the underlying mental health disorders that are driving the conflict in the first place. So when it just focuses on addressing the high conflict litigation as a legal issue, instead of a mental health issue, even if you get the case resolved, the mental health issue is still there. And it doesn't matter how much you sanction, it doesn't matter how much you hold in contempt, or it doesn't matter how or especially even worse, it doesn't matter. Know how much that person wins or gets what they want or can manipulate the court into getting what they want. It's only going to keep resurfacing. That's why when we're dealing with exes like this, we end up in litigation over and over and over and over again. A lot of times that should be the big red flag to the court that, hey, these people are back in front of the court for the third time, the fourth time, there's clearly something going on here that needs to be addressed at a different level. So the courts Miss handling fuels, further conflict constantly fuels further conflict it emboldens this disordered parent, and it fuels even more conflict because now they're emboldened, they're unable. Why? Why do these people get emboldened by it because the trauma blind legal system is trying to impose some uniform legal requirements on top of mental health issues, while just pretty much ignoring and glossing over these, these mental health issues to begin with is very trauma insensitive or trauma blind system. So to add to that problem, of course, is that a lot of the therapists, the parenting coordinators, parenting facilitators, therapists who are linked to the court system, and who are appointed to handle these high conflict families are part of that same court system and they end up reinforcing the same failings when you follow the money and see how much these people rake in by basically not treating just kind of pandering, catering to the disordered parent, the fees and expenses will just spiral out of control. And when you follow the money, it's like, you start to realize that these therapists, these court appointed, you know, helpers who are supposed to be helpers. They're not incentivized to actually get down and work deeply with the underlying psychological issues. They're not incentivized to actually get in err, be confrontational, make change force change to happen with these high conflict folks. On the other hand, what we end up seeing is, so often they just kind of, you know, pat them on the head, they cater to them, they almost seem, you know, afraid of them in some cases, and they just end up enabling them, you know, more and more, over and over again, and just keep the cycle going. There's so many cases that we've seen, where it's the non disordered parent, it's the parent who is not having all these outbursts, and the one who's not being triggered and litigious and everything else, they are the ones that the court therapists end up admonishing and saying, There must be something you are doing to trigger that other person, it's your fault, you're the one who keeps setting that person off by something you're doing just by being normal by having good healthy boundaries. Just by refusing to play the game that the disordered parent is trying to play, the therapists will then flip it back on to the non disordered parent and say, you're at fault for triggering them, you're bothering them. And if they are triggered, therefore, it must be because you're doing something wrong. And if you weren't doing what you were doing, they wouldn't be triggered. The problem with that is it's just completely false. And just shows a very huge lack of understanding on how that psychopathology works in the first place. Because even if you don't do something triggering, they'll still find some reason to act out, they will still act out of their disordered self and trying to cast blame or responsibility for that on to the other parent just does not make sense. All it does is basically perpetuate victim blaming and again, enables the disordered parent to continue their their shenanigans. And so their version of co parenting, which almost universally leads everyone back again to the same lawyers, the same courts, the same therapists, as the dysfunction continues, their version of co parenting just does not work when you are dealing with these high conflict people. Because again, the reality is that the mental disorders at play, the mental disorders that are underlying the conflict and the litigation are misunderstood, ignored, and just pacified and enabled as much as possible. For those of us who have been through it. We know that this trendy trendy co parenting model is in the best interest of no one other than the lawyers and the therapist and judges who make a living off of co parenting failures. And this is why I think one of the greatest reforms that needs to happen within the family court system is that we need to start with parallel parenting. And when people can parallel parent when they can own their own homes, they can own their own behaviors, they can operate in a very fully functional good manner all unto themselves. After that, if a model of co parenting or collaborative parenting is possible from that foundation, then great, but starting with something that is not going to be tenable, or realistic for those of us who are dealing with disordered exes, starting with something that requires collaboration and high high communication and all these other things that those people are not capable of doing. All that that is doing is setting it all up for failure. And it is playing into a rigged system where all of a sudden now that non disordered parent is the one who's catching blame is getting dragged back in front of the court and it just leads to waste in waste and conflict and more conflict over and over and over again. Until hopefully Finally, someone in the mix finally says you know what, we've made enough money off of this poor family. Let's go ahead and teach them about parallel parenting.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai