The Good News for 2021
2020 was a crazy year on all accounts. Parents/partners with high-conflict personalities used the COVID crisis as a way to manipulate the court system to take custody away from targeted parents and many were successful. Courts shut down, causing long waiting periods to get hearings. When hearings were held virtually, the technology often interfered with the validity of court.
But the future holds the promise of change.
Our struggles as targeted parents have not gone unnoticed.
Targeted parents everywhere have made heroic efforts in trying to get family courts to understand that the other litigant in their divorce or dispute has a high-conflict personality. Finally, there is a growing recognition among legal professionals that high-conflict divorces and disputes involve one person who is driving the conflict. More information about the negative impact that high-conflict people have on their families and the family law system is starting to reach the ears and the eyes of the legal profession.
Bill Eddy is an expert on high-conflict family law. After 30 years as a family law attorney, mediator and therapist working with high conflict disputes, Eddy concluded that in most high-conflict cases, one litigant has a high-conflict personality and/or a personality disorder. He stated back in 2010 that one-half to two thirds of “high-conflict families have only one parent with a high-conflict personality who is driving the dispute, while the other parent is mostly acting reasonably and just trying to protect the children from the high-conflict parent”.1
A recent article published by the American Bar Association (ABA) in their scholarly journal, Family Law Quarterly, also defines high-conflict divorces and disputes as cases in which one litigant has a high-conflict personality. According to the article, Confronting the Challenge of the High-conflict Personality in Family Court, high-conflict litigants incite and escalate conflict in family court. Therefore, these cases cannot be resolved. The authors state that high-conflict cases can’t be resolved because they “feature a party who is drawn towards, rather than away from, conflict …The literature surrounding these cases tends to refer to these litigants as “high-conflict personalities” or “high-conflict people”.2
In addition to a thorough literature review, the research team at Santa Clara Law School, explored the legal and judicial challenges caused by litigants with high-conflict personalities. They address many of the true problems at the heart of high-conflict divorces and disputes; problems caused by the high-conflict litigant. The research team interviewed experts and identified patterns and dynamics in high-conflict cases. They also examined ways in which the high-conflict individual manipulates the family law system.
This landmark article concludes by recommending that all family law professionals have a full working knowledge of the profile and dynamics of litigants with high-conflict personalities. This knowledge is necessary to protect targeted parents and their children, the family court system, and society from the dangerous behaviors of high-conflict people.
The science about high-conflict personalities has the power to dramatically change family law.
Courts can make more effective and efficient decisions by using consistent and predictable information known about high-conflict personalities. The science of high-conflict personalities is evidence-based fact and therefore the truth. It is time to begin applying this information in the courtroom.
1. Eddy, Bill. (2010). Don’t Alienate the Kids! Raising resilient Children While Avoiding High conflict divorce. HCI Press. Scottsdale AZ. Kindle location 197.
2. Rosenfeld, E. Oberman, M., et al., (2019). Confronting the Challenge of the High-Conflict Personality in Family Court. Family Law Review. Vol. 53. No. 2, summer 2019.