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