Divorce Battle On Multiple Fronts

For those of us who have gone through the divorce process, we often figure out fairly quickly that there are more adversaries than just the ex.  We are up against the ex as well as their divorce lawyer, who has a vested interest in stirring up as much conflict as possible.  We often have our own divorce lawyer who is aligned with us on one hand but against us on another.  Many people end up misused, exploited, and dropped by their own lawyers.

Then add to the mix the court system itself, possibly biased judges, therapists, ad litem attorneys, and you quickly find yourself fighting battles on multiple fronts.

Transcript

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This is unapologetic parenting podcast dedicated to candidly and unapologetically discussing parenting, divorce and co parenting, we take on the topics most people don't want to talk about and offer support and solutions to help you be a better parent, co parent and human being. Now, without further ado, let's get right to it. With any divorce, you have, essentially a battle on multiple fronts, especially if you have kids, it becomes this multi front warfare, the first one that you of course would expect is your ex, that's going to be the primary adversary or be perceived as the primary adversary, especially if you have the joy of, you know, having an ex who falls into one of those very special cluster B. pathologies are psychopathologies, which, if you do the research and get into some of the literature, you find out that a very, very large percentage of high conflict very litigious axes, they're going to fall somewhere in that borderline, narcissistic, antisocial little spectrum down in here. So your hat, you're going to have that as one of your friends. As you get into it, you're going to realize there are a lot of other things that you have to be aware of and watch out for the lawyer representing your ex is oftentimes going to be as big of a problem if not a bigger problem than your ex, him or herself. The reason being is that's a person who's in it for the money. And as I've mentioned in other videos, the family law, cesspool, whatever you want to call it, is this giant $35 billion per year industry. And that lawyer wants a nice big fat slice of it, and wants to be able to bill and Bill and Bill and Bill and Bill and Bill as much as possible. Now, Family Lawyers, they don't really have a dog in the fight, because they are just in it to Bill, they get to hide behind all sorts of, you know, oh, I'm just working to zealously represent my client, which, as a lawyer, I know that that's code word for, I'm going to just make up anything I want. And as long as it is passive bull ish, and I get away with it, then I'm just going to build a hell out of every single naive client that possibly comes along. And even though I say, I also am helping represent the best interest of the kids, well, what are they doing? They're sucking $35 billion dollars every year, out of families, typically over conflict that never should be brought in the first place. But there's zealously representing their clients. So you have your ex, who may or not be, you know, legit, crazy. Do you have the lawyer for your ex, who is there to just extract as much cash and money as possible, you have your lawyer, who is one of them as well. And you really need to always, always, always be aware of your own attorney. Now, maybe you're lucky, maybe you find somebody who's actually ethical, and is going to work with you in such a way to help you conserve resources, and fend off whatever this side is doing. But from my experience, it is very rare in the family law realm to find just very good, competent counsel, people who are actually going to be representing you and can bring everything down out of this high expense high conflict arena, and bring it down into reality. The attorneys out there in the family law world who who operate on a level where they can actually just get a case done, bring peace move on. Very, very rare. My experience with several lawyers, is I think I've finally got one who is, you know, kind of the caliber that I think is actually respectable and honorable, but knowing a lot of them in the region, most of them not worth it. They create more problems and good and, you know, I've made my own mistakes in the past of being you know, here you go. You're my attorney. Go do what needs to be done. And they've just screwed things up massively and ended up costing so much money and then the other side, catch them in their games, and they're just sucking 10s of 1000s of dollars out of just pointless motions and filings and proceedings and everything else. So you have x, their lawyer, who's in it for the big bucks, you have your lawyer, they're in it for the bucks, too, you have other players that you need to be aware of, a lot of times judge got to watch the judge. My experience with things is I've seen judge side with the good old buddy buddy attorney one side or the other, in case after case after case. Remember, judges get removed for bias. Judges get appealed and overturned for abuse of discretion all the time, thinking that the judge is going to be somehow all knowing or get things right. I see judges get it wrong all the time, where they are presented with evidence, but because of their own blinders are on bias their own, you know, historical connections with counsel, the people they used to be at the same law firm with or their golfing buddies with, they all play into that same same system, they're all kind of on that same caliber. Judges also like to keep a bunch of cases in their court, it makes them look good, keeps the money flowing. So a lot of times, they just allow all this stuff to continue building, escalating, instead of coming down on it, and saying, nope, this isn't going to happen in my court. The most of them just allow things to drag out, drag out, drag out, escalate. And just, again, just part of that machine that just sucks all sorts of money out of families, you also have therapists to watch out for. So typically your family therapist, this coordinator, that facilitator, this family, whatever the people who work in the divorce and family realm, they're in bed with these lawyers, they all cross refer, they all are looking for that great big piece of the $35 billion pie. Actually a higher figure when you start adding in collateral things like therapy, it's big money, it is really, really big money business. And so you have the therapist you got to watch out for, they can be just incredibly misguided and biased. You have judges that don't understand psychology, and they're going to kick people over to these therapists who are just going through all these cliche workbook style therapies for people who are going through divorce or families that are going going through the divorce process. And a lot of times they end up doing way more harm than good. There are some recent articles that talk about most of the therapy styles, whether it's play therapy, or reunification therapy, and all this other nonsense for alienation situations, how it's actually harmful. But judges and lawyers are still Oh, yes, we have to keep referring, you know, over to our buddy, buddy little pet therapists over here. Nope, you're actually doing harm, you are actually creating more problems in reinforcing dysfunctional dynamics by playing into, you know, sending the kids to go play with kinetic, sand and complain and whatever they do. So you have to watch out for that. These therapists, they'll turn on you in a heartbeat. So the moment you start learning that, oh, they're up to some shenanigans or I disagree with them, they're going to turn around and bite you. And I've seen it over and over and over and over again, in malpractice cases that I as an attorney have researched just here in the area where I live, just seeing dozens and dozens and dozens of cases, excuse me, where the therapist turns out to be heavily biased. And typically the party that they're biased against is the one who actually sits back and says, You know, I think there's something wrong going on here. You're taking sides. And that therapist says Oh, you think I'm taking sides fine, and they really take sides and end up trying to do a lot of damage, escalating everything, tons of fees, tons of all sorts of extra crap that these families have to go through. And then at the end De nothing substantial is done except creating a lot of conflict and anxiety and extracting 1000s of dollars more out of these, you know, vulnerable families. That's what these therapists do. That's what the lawyers do. That's what therapists do. And then if you get into some of these very high conflict custody areas, then you start getting into therapists experts. Well, guess what, as a lawyer, I typically do personal injury work. And I know that for a price, you can hire a doctor to say anything you want, you need a doctor to say that this surgery is related to this accident.$5,000, you got it. Sometimes more, sometimes even less, you need a doctor to say that same exact surgery, an injury is not related to that same exact accident. Well, for a price you can get that too, you can find doctors and these highly experienced surgeons who will say anything you want, you can find mechanical engineers who will say anything you want, you can have accident reconstructionists. For a price, take any position you want, all you have to do is shop a little bit, boom, highest bidder, they'll say pretty much anything you want. And they're MDS. These are professionals, PhDs, doctors with decades of experience. They're, they'll say whatever you want, for the right price. Same thing with these forensic psychologists, or these different experts that you bring into these family law cases, for a price. They'll say anything you want. They'll take sides and pretend that they don't. But they'll often side with the person with the big cash flow coming to them. And in the cases that I've investigated for, again, malpractice and bias and everything else, it is us downloading the lengths that these experts will go to, in order to just filter out all sorts of relevant information. Oh, well, you know, the dad, who has a history of Matthews, well, his parents are footing the$700,000, legal and forensic expert bill for this particular case. And Gee, the expert just happens to line up with this guy, and is encouraging the court to give greater custody to him because Oh, Mom is alienating the children by pointing out you know, hey, there's some unsafe stuff going on over at that other house. Oh, shame on her. Let's put the kids over here with dad, who then you know, month or two later gets busted. with Beth, great justice is served. People just shoveling hundreds of 1000s of dollars to get these experts to just prostitute themselves out. And so that's kind of what we love that kind of that's what we refer inside the business to these experts as their their prostitutes, they will say, do pretty much anything you need for a price, they'll show up, they'll say pretty much anything you want for price. So you got to watch out for that. So you got lawyers who are going to just do or stay and escalate and fight. Pretty much anything their client wants, anything they think they can get away with. To run that bill, you got your own lawyer who could be screwing you over and very often is through not representing you well, through unnecessary motion practice just screwing stuff up. And taking advantage of you. You have therapists who are doing the same thing, you've got a judge who probably couldn't care less, or who could be biased for one side or the other and trying to railroad you. You have your expert class. There are all these things you have to look out for. So as you get into the family, divorce litigation realm, always watch out. Be prepared to see how all these little factors are going to play. The best thing you can do, get out of it. The best thing you can do is stay out of all of that world. Do everything that is possible to stay free from just all of these dynamics, stay away from the therapists try to stay out of court do everything you can to get out of it, do everything you can to bring the conflict down to nothing. And typically, the best thing that you can do is to focus on your own behavior. You can focus on your own lifestyle, your own behavioral choices, your own mindset, the ways that you do things. What do I mean by that? One of the greatest defenses, one of the greatest things to help you navigate all of this exploitative system is to be impeccable. You yourself have to be impeccable, in an arena where no one else is, when everyone else is being shady. And I promise you, everyone else is being shady. And it's rare, very, very rare that you find somebody who's not in that realm. While everyone else is being shady. You need to be impeccable with your word, when everybody else is trying to exploit you grex your kids future, the entire dynamic when everyone else is doing that, you need to be impeccable, and do everything in your power. To not be exploitative to not exaggerate, you need to keep your behavior just right in line. So you become bulletproof. You don't want to have anything, anything that any of these people can possibly sink into, and get you because they will they'll find anything that they can possibly latch on to distort, twist, and get you. It is also it's so important for you to be impeccable. Because when the lies come, and I promise you the lies will come. I have busted, you know, all sorts of lies coming from the specialists over here. All sorts of lies from the attorneys involved. I've seen the attorneys lie to their own clients in cases, I've had therapists just come flat out and just make shit up. I've seen it over and over and over again. So when the lies come, you have to be impeccable. So you can show Nope, this is it. This is the truth. This is clear evidence of exactly who I am what I say what I've done, what I haven't done, when I said this, this is what has happened, this is my impeccable reality. And let those lies come in as long as you are living in such a way that there's no little cracks that they can try to latch on to, you're going to do, you're going to do well, it's going to suck, I promise you going through it, they're going to try and it's going to suck going through it. But it's far better to be impeccable. And pass through it. As opposed to being kind of shady and misbehave in yourself, and give them all sorts of things to latch on to. So we know you have this battle on many fronts, and all these things are going to be pressed against you. And they're going to be looking for every single possible way to get you in to extract as much money from you and your family as possible. That's what they do. It's like I said staggering 10s of billions of dollars per year. It's big money, big industry. And it wants more and more and more more and more. It's just driven by greed is driven by distortion is it's exploitative per se, the way that you get out of it. The way that you navigate through it as cleanly as possible, is to keep yourself impeccable. Watch what you say, watch what you do. If there's anything that you have any habits or any meal specialness that you need to get rid of in yourself, you better do it now. And the sooner you can get rid of anything as far as you know, habits or behaviors or tendencies or whatever else. The sooner you can get rid of those behaviors in yourself the better. It is time to just clean everything up. Because that that is the pretty much one and only thing that is going to get you through the entire process as unscathed as possible. So, hopefully, you know you're you're hearing me before You enter into the family law realm, if you're thinking about, you know, I need to tee things up, move out, get a divorce, all that clean up your act become impeccable. If you're already in the process, a no time, like the present, you know, have your come to Jesus moment and make those changes and start living as cleanly as possible. That means all your communications need to be just spot on. And just direct to the point, no profanity, just keep it right on target. Again, any of the things that you, you know, do behaviorally that, you know, the other side can possibly latch on to, it's time to get rid of them. If you have any kind of habits or addictions or anything else, cut them off and be done, it is time to be over all of that. Otherwise, this machine's gonna eat Jeff. And I've seen it time and time and time and time and time again. Otherwise, no decent ish people who get into that system, if there's anything that that system can latch on to it will. And the only way like I said that you can really navigate through it, and have power through the entire process and come out as cleanly or as unscathed as possible, is you gotta be walking that line. And this isn't like a you know, teetotaling, whatever you know, have your wine didn't have fun, just whatever. You know what I mean, though, you have to be peccable. With it, you need to keep your word, you need to not do anything that creates the appearance of doing something wrong, anything that creates the appearance of being deceptive, the appearance of being out of control, or addicted, or dangerous or anything, you have to get rid of all that. So going back one last time, all these forces, sounds ominous, all these forces stacked against you. And legitimately they are. That's just reality, let's just call it what it is. The way through it, is realize that's just the truth of it. You be impeccable. And you always be impeccable. And you just focus on you and be as peccable as possible. No lying about your ex. No lying about things that happened. Don't make any shit up. Other people are gonna make up as much shit as they want and it's going to be all over the place. But you're going to be the ship free one. Be impeccable. Don't hide anything. Don't get yourself in trouble. Don't be going and creating risk or any kind of unsavory appearance. Keep it really, really spot on. And that is going to save you so much headache, so much stress, so much money, so much just peace of mind to live in a way that you're beyond any kind of reproach.