What Is Working For Targeted Parents in Family Court? - Part 1

The National Alliance for Targeted Parents continues to study as many cases as possible to find out what is working in family court and what is not. Periodically, we post our findings so that targeted parents can learn from each other.  This is the first in a series of posts offering targeted parents some hard earned and helpful advice. If you have some good advice for other targeted parents, please comment below and we will get the word out.

1. Lean on your faith.

They say that faith isn’t faith until it is all you are hanging on to. Nothing is truer for targeted parents.  We have found that targeted parents who believe in a power greater than themselves get through this intolerable situation better than those who do not.  I think this is because if you don’t have faith in something bigger than this world and the people in it, you will be crushed by the shear weight of the agony we must endure. The only way to survive this severe trauma is through a relationship that you can completely trust and draw strength from.

We all reach the point when we feel utterly alone and abandoned. At the very least, no one understands the gravity of the trauma that has engulfed our children and us. At the very worst, it seems like everyone is against us, as we desperately fight a war for our children.  We wage war not with weapons of this world like money and control, but with the more powerful weapons of love and righteousness. All the energy we pour into our personal cases, no matter what the outcomes, contribute to the ultimate endeavor – to turn our pain into gain by helping to right an outrageous wrong and protect children.

Advice:

Invest in your spiritual self. Spend time in quite meditation. Give God the burden of your broken heart. Remember that as you love your child(ren) unconditionally (even as he or she rejects you), God also loves you unconditionally.

2. Hold your lawyer accountable.

Generally speaking, we find that most family lawyers make things worse in high-conflict cases.  While their legal duty is to zealously fight for what we want, their goal seems to be to get the case done, rather than to get the case right.  And to be fair, most lawyers don’t know what “right” is in high-conflict cases. 

For reasons that I don’t understand, family lawyers try to avoid going to trial. They even tell us that we don’t want to go to trial. I understand that it’s a lot of work, but what do they care-- they are getting paid.  High-conflict cases must go to trial to get all the pertinent, untainted evidence to the judge.

It appears that at some point, lawyers get anxious about getting the case over.  So they veer from your goals to theirs, which is to get you to sign agreements with the opposing parent.  Often targeted parents feel that they are obligated to sign agreements supported by their lawyers even if we know that we are giving up our rights and convictions.

Advice

1. Don’t be bullied or coerced into signing anything that compromises the health and well-being of your children or you. If it doesn’t feel right, it isn’t.

2. If, during the time that you have retained your lawyer, you have lost ground to the high-conflict parent, then your lawyer may have an agenda that is different from yours. Have a “Come to Jesus” meeting with your lawyer to decide if you should continue paying for his or her counsel.  

3. If you know that your lawyer hasn’t been working for what you want and you decide to let him or her go, do not immediately pay off the bill.  Paying a bill for services NOT rendered sends the wrong message. The message it sends is that lawyers should be paid regardless of the quality of their work, even if he or she has caused you and/or your children irreparable harm.  Many targeted parents are now negotiating their outstanding bills with their lawyers. And it is our experience that lawyers are readily agreeable to a reduced fee.

3. Shut down the drama to stop the trauma.

One of the key factors that we find influences a judge’s or commissioner’s bias for or against a litigant is the number of distractions or allegations one parent heaps on the other. You would think that the court would get annoyed when the high-conflict parent constantly distracts the court by blaming anything and everything on the targeted parent. You would also think that because there is never any evidence for these accusations, the court would eventually stop their badgering, lying, and slander. But this is not the case. The high-conflict parent seems to know that if they can keep distracting the attention of the court from their obvious lack of empathy and lawlessness onto something negative about us eventually some of the crap will stick and the court will cast us with suspicion.

Advice:

Whenever the other parent starts blaming you for something that you know is not true, rather than try to defend yourself, simply interrupt the court and object.  You are not obligated to sit in court and listen to your (ex) partner verbally abuse and slander your good name, reputation or integrity with unfounded lies and stories. Tell the court that if your ex-partner can’t produce some concrete evidence to support his or her stories, then this is just here-say and you would like the court to move on.

Next Up:

What’s Working for Targeted Parents – Part 2

Standing Up for Your Constitutional Rights

Call To Action

January 2018: Call to Action

Please watch this video.

Here are three easy things that YOU can do right NOW

to help end family court trauma!

1. Sign Dr. Childress’ petition to the American Psychological Association (APA). 

The Petition to the APA is on Change.org.

2. Support Ginger Gentile’s Documentary Erasing Family.

Tomorrow, January 10th,  add the frame #erased to your profile picture on facebook--it's easy.

1. Go to Erased Family Facebook and “like” their page.
2. Go to your facebook and click on “update profile picture,” and frames will come up.
3. Select the frame #erased.

3. Support House Resolution 443. 

Here is a summary of the bill:

HR 443 recognizes the importance, effectiveness, and need for trauma-informed care among existing federal programs and agencies. (Trauma-informed care takes into account a patient's history of trauma in the design of the patient's treatment.) Encourages the use of trauma-informed care within the federal government.

Expresses support for the designation of National Trauma Awareness Month and National Trauma-Informed Awareness Day.

Here is what to do:

Call, write, email or visit your state representative in Congress (your opinion will probably be taken by an aid who will relay whatever you tell him or her).  They are paid to listen and relay you message.  Tell them how law enforcement, child protective services and/or family court has ripped apart the bonds between you and your children because they are not trauma informed. 

Believe me, they will listen!   The aid that I talked to has a degree in psychology and worked at a psychiatric hospital!  She was very empathetic and understanding.  

If family court and/or child protective services become trauma-informed, it would end the nightmare!

OR

Contact Congressman Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin and Congressman Danny Davis from Illinois at 202-224-3121.  Thank them for co-sponsoring the bill.  Be sure to tell them where you are from.

Currently 14 Representatives from 9 states have signed on as co-sponsors for this bill.  If you are from on of these states please call the representative and thank them for co-sponsoring this bill.  If you are from another state, please call your representative and urge them to sponsor this bill.

• Rep. Davis, Danny K. [D-IL-7]*,
• Rep. Duffy, Sean P. [R-WI-7]
• Rep. Napolitano, Grace F. [D-CA-32]
• Rep. Kind, Ron [D-WI-3]
• Rep. Grothman, Glenn [R-WI-6]
• Rep. Sensenbrenner, F. James, Jr. [R-WI-5]
• Rep. Pocan, Mark [D-WI-2]
• Rep. Moore, Gwen [D-WI-4]
• Rep. Bacon, Don [R-NE-2]
• Rep. Kelly, Trent [R-MS-1]
• Rep. Comstock, Barbara [R-VA-10]
• Rep. Hanabusa, Colleen [D-HI-1]
• Rep. Love, Mia B. [R-UT-4]
• Rep. Delaney, John K. [D-MD-6]

Boom! Your Done!

I thank you, we thank you, our children thank you!

Courts That Care?

As we begin to talk about trauma, I thought it would be good to re-post this blog from last February.  The newest addition in the library section of this website now contains the protocol manual being used for family courts to become trauma informed.   Every targeted parent in family court must be aware of the official, professional movement to make family courts trauma informed and use their personal cases as avenues to protect their children while pushing the movement forward.    We are traumatized and our children are traumatized.  We need courts that are trauma informed! 

According to the protocol manual for developing trauma informed courts, "Juvenile and family judges and courts are in a unique position to promote healing and prevent future trauma.  In 2013, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) undertook development of a court trauma consultation protocol in response to an increase in requests for assistance from courts seeking to become trauma-informed. the NCJFCJ and organizations such as the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) have an extensive history of providing training and technical assistance to courts on traumatic stress."

Published February 10, 2016

Recently, The Honorable Marshall Murray, a respected and experienced Circuit Court Judge in Milwaukee County, co-authored a blog with the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) in which he sounded more like a caring parent than a Judge.  It was the first time I heard a Judge express sadness at seeing so many abused children in his court.  It was also the first time I had heard anyone defend judges for being concerned that courts make the right decisions in cases involving abuse.

“One of the most important duties for any court system

is to ensure that youth in the community

are protected.” 

                                         -Judge Marshall Murray (2016)

One point that Judge Murray discusses is that in order for judges to make the right decisions when ruling on cases involving children and youth, they must be able to recognize how trauma affects behavior. He specifically mentioned trauma from emotional and verbal abuse, recognizing that psychological maltreatment (emotional abuse and neglect) is the most prevalent and damaging type of child abuse, causing a lifetime of problems for these victims.  The blog that Judge Murray wrote focuses on teen dating violence, but I found that his sentiments reflected a fundamental problem for Judges presiding over high conflict custody cases in family courts.

For decades, Family Court Judges have misinterpreted the expression of trauma in most of the high conflict custody cases.  This misinterpretation continues to lead Family Court Judges to make inaccurate assumptions about the parents and children.  Their mistaken assumptions are the basis for placing children with the abusive parent.  Thus, Family Courts directly contribute to severe adverse childhood experiences and the escalation of intimate partner violence.  The travesty of Family Courts abandoning children to their abusive parent is so common that it appears as if the Judges are intentionally colluding with the abusers.  As it stands today, a Family Court Judge could throw a dart at both parents in high conflict custody disputes, and at least then, they would make the right decision at least 50% of the time.   

It is hard to imagine that Family Court Judges care about families, abuse or even the job they do because I see no indication that family courts are trying to improve their longstanding abysmal record of making family situations worse for the “high conflict” families they serve.  As a self-regulating profession, this lack of care, due process or competence is inexcusable and begs external oversight if not remedied.

While the majority of families can manage custody issues without assertive court intervention, a significant and growing population of parents cannot.  These “high conflict” custody cases take up a disproportional amount of family court dockets because one parent has a personality disorder in which he or she is manipulating the court and escalating conflict.  All the while, he or she continues to psychologically abuse the family causing extreme ongoing chaos and stress.  In the pure sense, these cases aren’t “custody” cases; they are cases of child abuse and domestic violence and need immediate court ordered protection.

High conflict custody cases have been particularly troublesome for family court because the origin and nature of the problem lies in the abusive relational pathology of a narcissistic and /or borderline personality disordered parent who is a master at manipulation and exploitation.   By the time the family gets to court, the abuser has seriously wounded the children and the non-abusive parent and they present with extreme and misleading symptoms of trauma.  Comparatively, the abuser appears calm and confident as if he or she were innocent.

To add more confusion to the decision, narcissistic and/or borderline personality disordered parents have a well-developed social persona where they can mirror appropriate responses appearing sincere, charming and caring.  The abusive parent stays hidden behind this persona while covertly escalating conflict, exploiting the expressed trauma of the non-abusive parent and the children, making false allegations of abuse or fitness, manipulating the Judiciary, sabotaging treatment plans and lying through their teeth.  

Narcissistic and/or borderline parents will not admit that they have a personality disorder, even if they have been diagnosed, however once Family Court Judges are cued into looking for a handful of specific personality disorder traits, they will see that narcissistic/borderline abusers present as predictable as a March snowstorm in Wisconsin, and are just as easy to spot. 

Family court judges are not psychologist, nor should they be.  However, the fact remains that family courts have become the roosting site for narcissistic and/or borderline personality disordered parents and they are manipulating the court into making decisions that are extremely harmful to children and the non-abusive parent.  Assertive court intervention is necessary because these abusers cannot and will not change or follow any orders by the court unless the court will enforce sanctions for violations.   

The good news is that under a caring family court judge, trained to recognize the psychological manipulation of a narcissistic/borderline abuser and to spot trauma, family courts can stop being part of the problem of child abuse and domestic violence and become a big part of THE solution.  If these high conflict abuse cases can be stopped when they get to family court, the children and parents can recover and learn how to protect themselves from being psychologically abused so that the children can still have a relationship with both parents.  Just as important, Family Courts can lead the way in breaking the cycle of narcissistic/borderline abuse by preventing it from being expressed in the next generation of families who are lucky enough to have found their way into a court that is concerned about making the right decisions.