Megan Hunter
Welcome to It’s All Your Fault on TruStory FM, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you with the most challenging human interactions—those involving high conflict people. I’m Megan Hunter and I’m here with my co-host Bill Eddy.
Bill Eddy
Hi, everybody.
Megan Hunter
We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute and ConflictInfluencer.com, where we focus on training, consulting, coaching, classes, and educational programs and methods, all to do with high conflict. Welcome back, listeners. And if you’re new and joining us for the first time, we’re really happy you’re here. Thank you for joining us over your cup of tea today, and we’ll look forward to seeing you again. Today, we’re continuing with the second part of a two-episode look at a real life situation that combines high conflict behavior, addiction and child custody, and where the usual advice doesn’t really seem to fit. This case involves an ongoing divorce and custody matter between parents of a young child, with court proceedings currently underway after a lot of delays, which is common in a lot of cases, but in high conflict it seems to be pretty common. There has been deception, extensive illicit online activity, concerns related to compulsive and addictive behaviors, really difficult financial problems and decision making about finances, and overall child rearing—decisions about how to take care of this child. So in part one, we talked about what’s really going on in these cases, and today we’re going to talk about what actually works, because that’s the big question, isn’t it? So, Bill, let’s talk about parenting plans. And I know we talked about them somewhat in the first episode, but you know, where does a standard, typical parenting plan fall apart when you’re dealing with high conflict personalities? Even just someone with a high conflict personality without addiction issues and all of these other related things—but we’ll talk about those next. But just for the high conflict personality—who’s undermining the case, who’s delaying the case, who’s maybe maligning you but looking like a saint.
Bill Eddy
Well, a lot of what happens with parenting plans is eighty percent of couples, when they separate and divorce, work out plans that don’t really need to involve the court. They often make agreements out of court—marital settlement agreements or other terms for that. And they often will have something like, let’s say, dad has overnights Wednesday and alternate weekends, or mom has overnights Wednesday and alternate weekends. Or they’re going to alternate weeks exchanging Sunday afternoon. And so it’s real kind of general. And what happens with high conflict people is they tend to interpret it extremely broadly, in ways that give them an advantage. So they go, okay, alternate weekends—well, what time is that? Well, I’ll pick the kids up after school and I’ll bring them back Monday morning. Well, it could mean that, but it doesn’t say that. And the other parent says, no way—alternate weekends, you start Saturday morning and I get them back Sunday afternoon. And so you end up having these arguments about what does alternate weekends mean. And what does Wednesday evening mean? Is that Wednesday overnight? Is that after school you pick up the kids and take them back to school Thursday morning? What does that mean? And a lot of kids don’t do well with an alternate week schedule without seeing the other parent at least once during the week. So a lot of people that get more specific say, you know, we’ll exchange Sunday afternoon and Wednesday dinner the other parent’ll have with the kids. So they get to see the other parent once during that week, even though they’re spending every night and have their school equipment and day packs and all of that at one house for a week. It’s actually a convenient plan when you’ve got kids old enough to manage it and young enough to tolerate it. It tends to work best with kids like about 10 to 12 year olds. But some older kids do that too. So yeah, it’s interpreting things, and so many parenting plans are real general and the majority of people work with that. They call up, say, hey, what time should we do this weekend? Or let’s say there’s a holiday. Well, when does the holiday begin? Does Christmas begin Christmas Eve? Does it begin 8 a.m. on Christmas Day? All that stuff. And the majority of parents will call each other up and say, you know, I propose we do it this way, and the other parent says, that’s cool, or let’s revise that a little. And so they work it out. So most people—I’d say 80%—don’t have a big problem negotiating their shared parenting schedule.
Megan Hunter
A more standardized parenting plan is fine for eighty percent of people, but when we get into this high conflict space, as we know, there’s going to be a lot of cognitive distortions involved and thinking of things in different ways. So the tighter the better—and by tighter I mean a lot more detail. Now let’s go into what happens when the high conflict brain says, this is what the parenting plan says and I’m sticking with it, then being very reluctant to modifying or saying yes to a proposal for, you know, exchanging a weekend or doing something different this year for the child’s birthday.
Bill Eddy
Yeah, it’s tricky because let’s say one parent for their job has to go out of town Thursday through Sunday and it was their weekend and all that, and it’s like, real easy—I’ll just switch weekends with you. The other parent says, oh no, we have to follow the letter of the law here. And so it becomes a major confrontation, even though it’s so obvious that this is an easy thing to solve. And like I was saying, 80% of parents solve that quite easily. It’s like, which weekend do you want instead? Things like that. But I want to say high conflict people can also go the other way. And that is they can bully the person to change the parenting schedule over and over. Well, I added it up and you have three hours more a year than I have. And so you’ve got to give me this Friday afternoon, even though it’s your time.
Megan Hunter
And if any of our listeners think we’re being exaggerative about this, no—this happens all the time in high conflict situations.
Bill Eddy
What’s ironic is people email us and say you totally predicted all the things that would go wrong here. And it’s not most people, but it’s enough people. If we’re talking 10 to 20 percent of people going through divorce have a high conflict divorce, that’s millions of people. Fortunately it’s not the majority, but these are the things. There’s quibbling unnecessarily. And I know some judges make some court orders not modifiable by the parents. They have to come to court and get the judge’s permission to change it, so that you don’t have one bully pressuring the other to change all the time. And I think I’ve had extreme cases where that’s been recommended and reasonable and the judges have done that. High conflict people tend to have personalities that push. And so they’ll push in every direction possible. And that’s why, like you said, Megan, they have to be tighter plans.
Megan Hunter
Right. And as a parent, you must be prepared for that pushing and for resistance to changes, and that’s why you need really some pretty good conflict communication skills, which you can get in our Conflict Influencer class or New Ways for Families online course. I’ll put those links in the show notes because that’s what it’s really all about. But also, you know, recognizing that there’s no magic wand in high conflict. We can communicate better, we can—in the right ways with that high conflict brain—keep things from escalating too much. We can set limits, we can impose consequences, we can do a lot of things, and yet we’re not changing that person. And sometimes because there are so many other variables involved—a court system who might be overwhelmed with cases, attorneys, therapists, mediators, many different people, family members, friends—there are some things you just can’t control. And so you have to get to a place of acknowledging that and accepting it—that, okay, I’m in a different deal here and I’m not going to be able to proceed as if this is an ordinary case or situation. So it’s something I’m going to have to adapt to, in the right ways, and probably manage for a long time. And sometimes, you know, they get better—sometimes the other parent finds a new relationship, moves on, and this becomes less important to have this fight. But others really stick with it.
Bill Eddy
Yeah, you’re totally right, Megan. And I think one of the things is that they push when it’s rewarded. And so one of the things is learning to not reward the pushing. Say, no, that’s the plan. I’m not going to change the plan. We’re sticking with the plan. And I know some high conflict people will complain, I hate the plan, because it sets limits on them.
Megan Hunter
Or they love the plan when it’s working in their favor, they hate the plan when it’s not.
Bill Eddy
Exactly. And different people lock in one way or the other, but most people have some innate flexibility. And that’s the thing that really helps. And especially when kids are involved, kids kind of require some degree of flexibility and some degree of stability. So it’s finding that balance, which 80% of people generally find. But I think the other thing is staying calm and being prepared for the long haul. It’s like, okay, if they push the limits, here’s what the consequence is. And you want to build that in, but also be ready—if this and this and this happens, then I’m going to talk to my lawyer. And if this happens again, we’re probably going to file to go back to court. And so a lot of people don’t realize some of the most high conflict court cases are after the divorce is over. And a high conflict person still is going strong. Because I often say that for high conflict people, the divorce itself is just a speed bump in the road of high conflict.
Megan Hunter
That’s a good way to put it.
Bill Eddy
Yeah, you have to pace yourself and not let it get to you emotionally. Get support from friends, but also be matter-of-fact when you’re dealing with the other person, because high conflict people get energized by your emotions. And if you’re angry or if you’re distraught or whatever, there’s a kind of hidden unconscious pleasure in that. It’s like now we’re both down here in the mud together, and that feels better.
Megan Hunter
And do they get some power from that?
Bill Eddy
Yeah, they get energized, they get a sense of power, and the other person feels powerless. So even though you might be angry, it’s kind of a helpless anger—because you’re angry at them for being who they are and you’re not going to change them by yelling at them. So instead it’s looking at what are the limits, what are the consequences, and being ready to kind of proceed with those and enforce those in a matter-of-fact way. And that really tends to help people. It’s like I knew what I had to do and I just routinely did it.
Megan Hunter
Yeah, almost like a checklist. Maybe a check-in every week would help—remind yourself, just stick with the plan, keep on top of things, expect that this is going to happen, and then it becomes less personal and you don’t have to get so upset, right?
Bill Eddy
Exactly.
Megan Hunter
And there will be a speed bump after speed bump. And sometimes there’s a long period of time that goes by and you don’t have one, and then you might get a big one and you can feel that big emotion. But like you said, have some support and just truly do expect that those will happen.
Bill Eddy
Yeah, let me just add that when you get used to this routine—matter-of-fact, not energizing them emotionally—you often do get longer and longer periods in between disruptions. And so it really does in the long run pay off. And also, like you said, they may get involved with a new partner and that often takes their emotional energy elsewhere.
Megan Hunter
Right. So if we can assume that some people—the other person—will ignore the rules, exploit the loopholes, the vague parenting plans, marital settlement agreements, and whatever—how should that change the structure of any agreement?
Bill Eddy
Well, the agreements need to build in consequences, and that’s the thing that we’ve really learned a lot over the last twenty years, I would say. Court orders, marital settlement agreements, even agreements on small issues—generally you need to have some consequences built in. So let’s say it’s a divorce and one parent owes the other fifteen thousand dollars because they’re getting the house and it’s being equalized. I know that’s a small sum for a house, but anyway, there’s some reason they’re paying the other fifteen thousand dollars. Say, okay, that’ll be due on April thirtieth. And it’s like, great, oh good, so we have a plan. Well, April 30th comes and goes. Oh, you know, well, I don’t actually have the money right now, blah blah blah blah. And so build into the agreement, when it’s made, that the amount that’s unpaid will add a five or six percent interest, or will add a five hundred dollar penalty, or something—or I get the house. And I remember working on a case like that. If they didn’t come up with the money in time, then the agreement switched and the other parent would get the house. But building in things like that—parenting time. So let’s say a parent often picks up the kids late. Like Sunday afternoon, they’re supposed to come at four and they come at six. And the parent had an event at five they were going to go to, and this holds them up, ties them up. And so building in that if either parent is more than thirty minutes late, the other parent can take the kids and go to their next activity, so you don’t have to wait around, things like that. And I’m just making up amounts of time—it might be two hours or four hours or whatever. But the idea that there’s a consequence or the schedule will need to be changed. What if someone has an alcohol or drug relapse? You build that in, like, to a marital settlement agreement. Since I worked with alcohol and drug treatment before doing marital settlement agreements as a family lawyer, it was a natural for me. We have a whole relapse plan built in—you know, you go to ninety meetings in ninety days, your parenting time gets temporarily stopped for a week while you meet with a counselor and decide what it should be and how serious the relapse is. Because relapse is common, especially in the first year of recovery for alcohol and drugs, and it can be a therapeutic relapse, but you have to plan for what do we do. Have plan B. You go into plan B when someone’s relapsing. So all of these you can build in, and unfortunately you have to in high conflict cases.
Megan Hunter
So every issue—if you’re in this situation and you write down a list of every issue that you’ve had with this other parent, you can pretty much predict what’s going to continue to happen, as they might feel like they’re losing control of the situation when a court says you can’t do this or you can’t do that. So make that whole list and then have a plan B for every one of those. A plan B being: here’s going to be the consequence for this and this and this. So it’s not like you pick and choose which one should have a consequence. There really should be that threat of imposing a consequence—as we like to talk about with your SLIC Solutions, Bill—Setting Limits and Imposing Consequences. It should be on everything because it’s always those loopholes that people go around, and you might have someone in the court who says you don’t need to get this detailed about it. But you really do need to have that detail, and then have the evidence to go back to court if there are violations. So let’s roll this into younger children and some safety concerns. I mean, we want to be able to just rely on trusting someone, and we don’t want to think that anything bad is going to happen to our child, or maybe there are those who really do fear that something bad is going to happen when they’re with the other parent. Sometimes that fear is rational, sometimes it’s not, but let’s say there’s a pattern, there’s a history here of poor decision making when it comes to any age children, but especially those who really can’t speak for themselves as a young child. What are some examples of objective, enforceable safeguards that could really hold up?
Bill Eddy
Well, I think, you know, we’re talking about kids under five pretty much. A lot of what the consequence is is the parenting schedule. In other words, if a parent shows lack of responsibility or poor decision making—like you said—it may be they need less time. And in some cases it means they don’t have overnights, because maybe they left the house while the kids were sleeping, because they figured, well, I’ll be back before they wake up. Well, that’s terrible judgment. Anything could happen. Kids could get out of bed, fall, cut their forehead, fire starts—who knows? You gotta be in the house with your child. So extremes like that would mean a change in schedule and maybe even supervised contact. But a lot of it’s how responsible each parent is and how much time they have. There’s an argument going on for the last ten, twelve years for more and more equal time even at younger ages. And there’s a lot of kids and parents that can handle that. But if you have someone with poor decision making—and high conflict people are often more emotional in their decision making—it may be better for them to have less than half the time so that the child has more stability. It really depends. There’s things like medications—are medications left out that kids could stumble on? Toddlers eat half a bottle of, you know, one of the parents’ depression meds, things like that.
Megan Hunter
Yeah.
Bill Eddy
There are so many details.
Megan Hunter
Swimming pools, guns—there’s so much.
Bill Eddy
Yeah, guns—you know, I can’t tell you how many toddlers have killed somebody with a gun they found. It’s like two year olds. You’ve gotta—people have to be responsible with guns, locking up the ammunition separate from the gun and not having it reachable for little kids. All that stuff just seems so obvious. And most people handle it quite well. But also bucket of water outside the yard—there’s kids drowned in just a simple bucket of water. So you’ve got to be on your toes at that age, and high conflict people are often wrapped up with their own emotions. You know, people have to keep track, and if you have concerns, get some help, get some advice, and make agreements about how you’re going to the doctor, who’s making appointments, that you’re both up to date. There’s so much responsibility, and courts aren’t designed for raising children. Courts are designed for twenty-minute hearings, pretty much, in family court, with occasional long cause two-hour hearings or two-day trials. But the daily stuff has to be the parents, and leaning on parents to be responsible when there are high conflict personalities means a lot of detail.
Megan Hunter
Yeah. So in family cases, especially high conflict family cases, there are often many professionals involved. In high conflict, perhaps that’s the right time to involve them, where 80% of cases probably don’t need intervention or involvement of that many professionals. What would you do with a younger child when you have this court case coming up and there’s so much at stake? What professionals should be involved?
Bill Eddy
Ideally, a combination of mental health professionals and legal professionals who are aware and informed of early childhood development and such like that. But this is a real specialization for some people. So clinical social workers—that’s what I am, a licensed clinical social worker, LCSW—they really in many ways are experts on early childhood and child development, stages of development. So having someone like that involved—psychologists are often involved in family court cases, child development as well. And then lawyers who understand, and that’s really—lawyers are the ones that can really help with the setting limits and imposing consequences, because they know what the legal standards are and the likelihood of getting a judge to change a parenting plan or to impose supervised contact if there’s a real need for that. So I’d say a combination of mental health and legal professionals. Now there are other resources people have. So there’s divorce coaches, which is a growing field. Many divorce coaches got divorced themselves and decided they want to help other parents. And they’re not lawyers and not mental health professionals, so they have a narrower scope to what they do, but they can really be supportive of parents.
Megan Hunter
Or on the other hand, some have an axe to grind, right?
Bill Eddy
Yeah, you want to watch out for that. Don’t let them say, oh, I know what you’re going through, it’s exactly what I went through.
Megan Hunter
So be cautious.
Bill Eddy
That’s a dangerous philosophy. It may or may not be very similar. But I also want to say there are parenting coordinators. Most jurisdictions have parenting coordinators. Now they tend to be mental health professionals, although they’re occasionally lawyers, who help resolve conflicts over like pickup time on the weekend and maybe a child’s refusing to go, and they escort the child to the other parent’s house, things like that. There are guardian ad litems who help represent the children’s concerns in court, kind of investigate the case and educate the court about what they think is going on.
Megan Hunter
And they’re attorneys.
Bill Eddy
And then there’s minor’s counsel—attorneys for the child—who represent the child’s interests. So there’s a lot of different professionals, and the more high conflict the case, the more likely there’s going to be a lot involved. And this can be really good if they’re good at communicating with each other and they’re knowledgeable. And I hate to say it, but it can be really bad if important people in the mix really aren’t knowledgeable—they view all their cases one way, like they say every case that’s domestic violence is true, and someone else says all the claims of domestic violence are false and a manipulation. Some say parental alienation doesn’t exist. Well, by now most family lawyers and therapists know it exists, but it’s not a syndrome. You have to find out, dig underneath what’s really going on. And some kids resist contact because they’ve seen their parent abusing the other parent. So it isn’t all alienation, but alienation does exist. And so you have to get people that are knowledgeable and open-minded and don’t just have one theory of every case.
Megan Hunter
Top one or two mistakes people make in a family law, high conflict family court case.
Bill Eddy
Well, the first thing is confirmation bias, which is what I was just talking about. They have one belief and they put it on all cases. The way to avoid confirmation bias is to always have at least three theories of the case. What mom’s saying about dad is true, or what mom’s saying about dad isn’t true at all and mom’s acting badly, or they’re both acting badly. Vice versa if dad’s saying stuff about mom. So if one parent says the other is acting badly, you have to immediately consider—it could be true, might be the opposite is true, or partly true both people are contributing to. All high conflict cases include allegations of bad behavior. And you have to have at least these three theories, or you may make it much, much worse. So that’s one mistake.
Megan Hunter
But can I—before we go to that one—so that’s from the professional’s perspective. So if you’re the parent, then how do you expand the professional’s mind to consider three theories of the case?
Bill Eddy
I think—and maybe I’ll mention here chapter 14 of my book Splitting—I talk about this and presenting your case in court without saying your co-parent has a personality disorder, but that I understand, Your Honor, that the court has to consider in a high conflict case these three possibilities. And explain, you know—one parent says the other’s acting badly, it’s true. Or the parent saying that is actually the one acting badly. Or they’re both acting badly. And in this case, it’s the first, or it’s the second, or it’s the third. But you’ve unfortunately have to educate courts about confirmation bias. Don’t call it confirmation bias—just call it three theories of the high conflict case. But the other mistake for parents is giving up rather than being assertive. And I also talk about that in the Splitting book—take an assertive approach. If you’re too aggressive, and this is the mistake some parents make, they counteract a high conflict parent by trying to outdo them. And that just makes it worse. Don’t do that. Or they just allow and tolerate the high conflict parent to prevail on everything and feel helpless. The assertive approach stands up for yourself without trying to tear down the other person. And that’s the mistake people make—to not use the assertive approach. Be assertive, present your information, stick with it. And over time, I find courts and professionals start to get a clearer picture of what’s really going on. So if they don’t understand the case, keep presenting your information and eventually you may really be understood.
Megan Hunter
That’s beautiful advice, Bill. That’s excellent.
Bill Eddy
Learned the hard way. I always tell people everything I teach, I learned by doing it wrong. So I’m saving you the trouble.
Megan Hunter
Oh, same here. Because this isn’t what we experience the majority of the time with people. So it is something we have to learn the hard way. And many people have, but you can do it. That’s the good news, right? High conflict isn’t impossible. So if you’re going through a difficult case like this, you know, you have our empathy. Just remember to be conflict assertive. If you need to know what that looks like, I’ll put lots of links in the show notes. You know, we have our New Ways for Families course, we have coaching for parents with that course, training for counselors and coaches. We’ll put that link to the Splitting book Bill mentioned a couple of times, Calming Upset People with EAR, books, SLIC Solutions, BIFF for co-parents—plenty of information there. And Bill and I will talk about maybe putting together a guide for what to put in a parenting plan in a high conflict case. So just another thing for our list, Bill—I know our to-do list is so short. Just kidding. So if you are looking for training or consultation about a high conflict situation for your organization, visit us at HighConflictInstitute.com, including if you are interested in our new assessment for organizations to determine if you are conflict confident in your organization. If you have a high conflict situation in your personal life, like a family law case or others, visit ConflictInfluencer.com. Keep learning and practicing the skills. Be kind to yourself and others while we all try to keep the conflict small and find the missing peace.
