You Are In Charge of Your Child Custody Case – Episode 298 of the Divorce University Online Podcast. When you’re in Court it’s easy to feel like everyone else is in control, your attorney, the judge, the experts and that you have no say. You actually have the option to advocate for yourself, even if you have an attorney, if you know how to navigate the process. In this episode, I’ll share tips to help you increase the chances of success in your case. To learn more about how I can support you in achieving success in your custody matter, please schedule a free strategy session at www.divorceuniversityonline.com/vip-coaching. Thanks for listening!
Divorce University Online
You Are In Charge of Your Child Custody Case
>> Hello, you are listening to the Divorce University online podcast with your host, Tammy Ferreira. >> Hey, guys, Tammy here, and today we're going to talk about how you are in charge of your child custody case. Now, I know that you may be thinking, what in the world is she talking about? I don't have any control over anything. And I know that that's how it feels for a lot of people. And I think that we can feel that way a lot of times, even when we have an attorney in our case. And I'm going to kind of talk about that aspect of it a little bit. But whether you have an attorney or not, I think you will find these concepts helpful. Now, the first thing that I want you to understand that we're going to talk about is, are you actually advocating for yourself, or are you abdicating responsibility to somebody else in your case? Okay? So that me abdicating, I assume you know what abdicating means before anybody that does it. I guess this is kind of my word of the day, at least to me, this little bit of a complicated word. Thomas used to always have word of the day because he always came up with really obscure words. I was reading something today of his writing, and it was just like, really that word, we're going to put that word in there. I didn't even know that word before I was with him. So he had a really, really strong vocabulary. Abdicating just means relinquishing responsibility to somebody else. So I think a lot of times we're sort of abdicating our responsibility to judges, attorneys, experts, whatever in the case, and expecting them to advocate for us. And the advocating is really our job, like I said, whether we have an attorney or not. Now, before I dive deeper into this, let me just remind you, if you're watching me on YouTube, don't forget to hit like on this video and subscribe to my channel. So you get notified as new content is released. If you are listening to the podcast, also please subscribe, rate and review me so that you also get notified when new episodes come out. And that also helps other people find me and all that kind of stuff helps my helps my numbers, my rankings as it were, right? Okay. So here's something that I want you to understand about this. The reason that we are our own best advocate in our child custody case is because the other people that are involved in this don't know our life, right? So I think sometimes that, you know, especially with your attorney, I think it's easy to get really, really frustrated and feel like, well, they didn't say this, they didn't say that, they didn't make this argument, they didn't make that argument. And you know, a lot of times it's just because of the simple fact that your attorney doesn't know your life, like every little fact in detail about your life is not going to come into your attorney's brain during the case. And the same is true with the judge. Every single little fact in detail about your case is not going to pop into the judge's mind. Now, if you're the type of case where you come in front of that judge over and over and over and over and you have high conflict, eventually, yeah, they're going to start to remember more details. But again, they still don't know the totality of your life. And so, you know, Thomas would talk about this a lot. Thomas is my late husband. If you don't know he was a family law attorney, he passed away last year. You want to know details about that, rewind about a year on the podcast or the YouTube channel and you can hear all of the details and see me in that shattered state to understand what happened, but so, but one of the things that he used to talk about is that, you know, a lot of times people are nervous about self-representation. And I think that, you know, don't they always say that like fear of public speaking is higher than fear of death in the percentages for people, right? More people are afraid of public speaking that are afraid of dying, which is really crazy if you think about it. But, you know, what happens is that you have to do those kinds of uncomfortable things. And so, you feel like, oh, I can't do this, you know, I'm not an attorney and all these kinds of things. And one of the things he used to say is, you have the advantage of knowing your whole life, right? As things come up or things happen or details in the case are put out there, you automatically know what the answer to that question is, right? Because you were the one there and you were the one that experienced it. And so, we can't always expect that all of these details are going to pop in. And we have to recognize that the people on the case are human, right? Whether you have an attorney, whether you have the judge, whether you have an attorney for the child, some sort of custody expert or evaluator, a therapist, you know, all these people are human and they do make errors, okay? That does happen. It's like, would that have been a good thing for your attorney to say, okay, maybe whatever you're telling them to say they should have, but, you know, you stand up there in front of a room full of people arguing in case you don't know and try to come up with that. You know, some people are better at that than others. And sometimes it's also a matter of strategy. And I think more times than not, this is what happens because in law school, Thomas used to talk about how they would be given these fact patterns and how, you know, they have to go through and kind of deductively reason, you know, what the potential, you know, answers or outcomes are going to be from, you know, I'm going to give you five or six different facts and then you're going to have to figure out based on that what you deduce the answer to be, right? And so those types of things are what is playing through the minds of your attorney, the other side's attorney and or the judge, even if you don't have an attorney. This is what's playing through their mind and how they're analyzing things. And so the first thing that attorney is going to think when they're getting ready to say something is, okay, if I say this, what's that going to trigger? What are the other things that could potentially come up? Is that going to be used against my client in some way? You know, and Thomas used to always say, don't ever ask a question that you don't already know the answer to, okay, because a lot of times we get blindsided with that. A really good example of that, I remember this case that Thomas had about probably 10 years ago now and it was a modification on custody and support, I believe. And so they went in and the custody did get shifted and his client was dad and dad did did get more parenting time. And so the client kept nudging Thomas, hey, ask her to recalculate support, ask her to recalculate support, bring up support, bring up support, bring up support. And the other side was kind of okay with just leaving support where it is. You know, they kind of have this discussion in the courtroom. And the other side was like, you know, we can just leave support where it is. And the client's like, no, no, no, no, no, I'll make them, you know. And so finally, after multiple urges, Thomas said, your honor, my client would like to have the support recalculated and the court said, oh, okay. And she pulls up the calculator and it turns out that dad actually owed more support, not less, even though he got an increase in his parenting time. And the reason for that was because it had been several years since the calculations had been done and the incomes of the parties had changed, you know. And so then they're kind of standing there in that moment and he wants to push the issue. The client wanted to push the issue instead of waiting, gathering information, talking to the other side, seeing if we can resolve it, whatever, he wanted to push the issue with the court right there in that moment and ended up getting an outcome that was unfavorable to him, you know. And so that's the kind of thing in situation that your attorney is trying to evaluate different strategies, different scenarios. If I ask this question, what could that potentially trigger the judge to think? Or, you know, what other route could they go? Could they come back and use this against us in some way? And they're doing all this in like instantly, right? Like in a matter of just a couple of seconds, because that's all the time that they have. And so one of the things I always caution clients against is don't be that client in the courtroom that's over there poking your attorney in the shoulder wanting to tell them another thing. Because I always say, you're taking them out of the game. You know, it'd be like watching a basketball game and there's 10 players on the floor. And we're going to go over and say to Kobe, Brian, Hey, you know, come over here. Let me let me tell you something real quick. All the game, the game can just keep going while you're over here talking to me, right? So you don't take your star player, which is what your attorney essentially is for you out of the game because the courtroom is and I don't, and I don't describe it as a game to be flippant or anything like that. But it's a game in that their strategy. They've got to pay attention to what's going on. They've got to read the room. They've got to listen to what are, what's coming out of the mouths of the other attorney and the judge and maybe a witness that's on the stand or whatever's going on. And they're trying to absorb all of that. Okay. And so your job in this situation in advocating for yourself is going to be to, you know, try to help prepare in advance because once you get into the courtroom, that's really like the basketball court, right? And you've got to let your attorney do their job. Okay. And, you know, the outcome is the outcome and we don't always like the outcome we get. You know, I remember a judge one time when Thomas and I were sitting and waiting for one of his cases to be called said, you know, I encourage all of you to go out into the hallway and negotiate with the other party because half of you in this room are going to lose. You know, so if you think about that, you go into the courtroom, you got 50/50 odds right of winning most of the time. So, you know, I mean, you know, odds can be slightly skewed in your favor if you have a really strong case, different things like that, but pretty much either you're going to win or you're going to lose, right? Either way, it's going to be, it's going to be one outcome or the other. So and I'm going to, at the very end, I'm going to give you some strategies of how you can kind of help with advocating for yourself through this process. But I kind of just want to frame for you sort of what, what are the potential pitfalls of abdicating that responsibility to other people, right? So if you haven't given your attorney information, you haven't been timely, you haven't informed them, you haven't given them the information that they need and then they go into court and then you don't get the outcome you want, you know, is that really their fault for not presenting the information correctly or is that your fault for not, you know, providing the information that they needed or maybe you didn't conduct yourself well out of court. You know, and Thomas used to say like, you don't conduct yourself well out of court. The best lawyer in the world can't save you. And if you if you conduct yourself very well out of court and do what the court wants you to do, well, guess what? You can have the worst lawyer in the world and probably still succeed. That was his take. I'm not sure all lawyers would agree with that, but that was his take. And so really your own conduct, your own way of dealing with your ex, of dealing with your children, of dealing with your case and your situation and the experts that are involved in all those things, those are the key pieces. And that's why I titled this episode, you are in charge of your child custody case. And what we tend to do a lot of times when we're in these situations and we're trying to express ourselves and we're trying to bring up our concerns, but we don't always understand how those need to be presented in the correct way. And then we don't get the outcome we want and then we're upset with everybody around us. You know, I can't tell you how many times I get the call after the damage is done. And that was true in the law firm, it's true of my coaching, you know, the cases that Thomas would get calls on a lot, the people I get calls from a lot. It's like, oh, you know, yeah, I met with my child custody evaluator, you know, two months ago, the process started. It's like, what, like, why didn't you call me three months ago then? So we had time to prepare before that process started even four months ago or five months ago because you want to longer what runway you want to be doing the correct things and have the correct strategy in place before you get to the point of crisis. And many times people get to the point of crisis and then they want to go in hire an attorney, kind of dump their information onto the attorney's desk and go, okay, fix this problem and really they can't because if you've built up this negative history through your interactions, your behaviors and the ways that you're handling things that the court doesn't like, well, that's going to be really an uphill battle for your attorney. And it's probably, you know, you know, not not going to result in the outcome that you're looking for. So the other piece of this is not only does do your attorney and the court and the experts not know your life, they also don't know your child, right? So a lot of times, you know, we'll ask a client something like, okay, well, what parenting schedule do you think is good for the child and why? And you know, the answer will be something like, well, I don't know, whatever you think is fair or, you know, you do this every day. What do you think I should do? No, you know, what I think you should do and what you think you should do might be two different things. Even if you had all the knowledge that I have in my head, you still might not agree that that's the best parenting plan for your child because you have different values. You have different perspectives. You've had different life experiences. You know, you have different children than I have. And you know, your children are different ages or different sexes or different, like whatever, whatever the thing is, you know, that we're all individual. And so what works for your child isn't necessarily going to work for the next child, that even may be in a very similar situation because it's not the exact same people and it's not the exact same dynamics and life experiences. And you know, what this is why I think that the education component of this is really so very important because you don't want to just go in and throw it up to some expert or your attorney or whoever to decide what the outcome should be for you and your family. You're the one that's going to have to live with that outcome moving forward. So you need to really know what you're asking for and why, okay? Because that's what the court's going to want to know. Why is this good for the child? Why do you think this is good for the child? Oh, the other parent can't do this. The other parent doesn't do that, blah, blah, blah. Why is this good for the child? Okay. Well, because when the child is in the other parent's home on every Friday, they go to school and their homework's not done. You know, like concrete things that you can really latch onto of why you think that this is good for the child, you know, education-related things, emotional and mental well-being, stability, involvement with their friends, their community, you know, staying in the school. They're in all those kinds of things are components of stability for the child. So the more that you can kind of latch onto those kinds of things, the better it will be. But again, you're the only one that knows those things. You know, attorneys, judges, all those people, they don't know how long your child's been at this school. They don't know that they're in the class with their cousin or that they're teachers, the same teacher that their brother had three years ago or that, you know, they take karate from the same place every week or they're in dance or, you know, their grandma lives three houses down or, you know, all these little details of our lives that we sort of don't realize kind of paint a picture, right? When you're reading a book and you're going through those words, those words are painting a picture in your head. And that's kind of what you want to do for your attorney and that's or for the court or for your do it for your attorney's, your attorney can do that for the court, right? It's all about being a good storyteller and painting that picture. But in order to paint the picture of what you think the outcome should be, you got to have you got to have something mapped out and you got to know where you want to go, right? So the attorney, you know, and the court and the experts also don't know what you want your future to be. You know, this is your future life and your child's future life that you're creating. And so most of the time we have a vision for that, right? Bible says without a vision, the people perish. And I think vision gives us hope, a lot of hope for the future. And, you know, since I lost Thomas a year ago, that's something that I've really had to rework in my own life because the vision I had for the rest of my life, which I thought would be with Thomas is no longer an option, right? He's not here. So I mean, I can carry that same vision out, but it's going to be modified because it's not going to include him. So it's all going to be on me, right, whether that vision continues or not. And I'm the only one that knows what I want that to look like. And so, you know, you kind of know where you're steering your life. And so that is one of the considerations in trying to figure out what am I even asking for? What am I trying to advocate for and why? Why do I think this is a good long-term thing for the child or for myself or whatever? You know, and so again, I mean, the court is going to be more focused on the child thing. They don't really care so much about the parents or what they want. But I think you knowing what you want is very, very important because if you know what you want and where you're headed, then you know how your child fits into your life and that process. And then you can advocate for a situation that provides that for both of you. You know, the thing that your attorney can do for you in these situations is they can give you really valuable input on strategy. Okay. One of the things that I get asked a lot by clients is, well, Tammy, should I do this? That's a common phrase. Well, should I ask for this for that? Should I take this settlement? Should I, you know, whatever, fill in the blank? And you know, what I always say to people is this, like, okay, I'm not the person that has to live with the outcome of that choice. So again, my should might be totally different from yours. And so to say, should I implies that there's a right and a wrong answer? And I don't think that there's most of the time in these situations, in custody cases, there's not necessarily a right and wrong, black and white answer. It's usually more like which one of these two scenarios can you live with? You know, I can tell you that in Thomas's case, one of the things that, you know, he went in knowing about himself is like, look, I'm willing to give on the money. I don't care about that part of it. I'll pay support. I'll pay significant support. I'll pay support a little longer. I'll do whatever I need to do, but I want that, you know, parenting time with my children. You know, he wanted a week on week off plan and he knew that going in. I want a week on week off plan. I don't care about the money. I'm willing to give on that because the most important thing for me is securing that parenting time because he didn't become a dad who was in his 40s. So he waited a little longer in life and by the time he did, it's like, you know, he's like, I didn't sign up to be a dad to have him half the time. Like this already sucks, right? So I don't want to give up more than the half that I already have to. And so again, his sort of conciliation on that, I think to get her to agree because she was not working, she was a stay at home mom. And so she was very worried about her financial future and her security, right? And so he sort of traded what was important to her for what was important to him. Does that mean that everybody should do that? No, I don't know what your job is. I don't know what your values are. I don't know where on the list parenting is a priority for you versus your career and all that kind of thing. We go through different phases in life and sometimes that's more important and sometimes it's not. And it just kind of depends on the person. And so you have to really evaluate that internally and decide, you know, should I or should not, but you're the one that has to answer that question. So when we're going through these different things, you know, the question always becomes, how do we increase your chances for success? Right? Okay. All these people, they don't know your life. They don't know your kids. They don't know what you want for your future. You know, your attorney can give you really good input on strategy and a range of outcomes that you might see from the court. They can kind of narrow it in for you and say, well, you know, I would anticipate we're going to end up somewhere between, you know, every other weekend and a week day overnight up to, you know, a week on week off schedule, you know, or we're going to end up somewhere between a thousand bucks a month and $2,000 a month in support to the best of my estimate. So they've usually had enough experience in cases where they can kind of give you a range of what typical outcomes are that they see for your particular situation. And I think that's really helpful because then you kind of have that guide post, right? And then they can tell you what your strategy, you know, what your, what your strategy should be, what your strongest arguments are, right? That's what we're relying on them for. They know the law. They know the judge presumably that you're in front of. And so they really are going to be able to give you invaluable input on, you know what, this issue is that is a strong argument, this particular issue. I know it seems kind of like a big thing to you, but really the court's not going to view that as as big a thing, right? Because you don't want to throw everything at the court. You know, I talked to somebody today and I said, you know, like, don't throw everything you've got, Adam. And they were like, Oh my goodness, I'm in the process of putting together like, you know, hundreds of pages was going to give all the details and it's like, you know, you don't want to throw everything at them. You want to figure out what your key two or three pieces, you know, our Thomas used to say three points maybe for at the very most and then give a couple of examples that support each of those, but you don't want to inundate those inundate the judge. And again, this goes back. So this goes back to what can, you know, how can you best leverage your attorney, right? That strategy, like understanding what those points should be, what the law is, you know, where the strengths are in your case. And so this is why I tell people like, look, even if you can't afford an attorney, go into a consultation. I mean, at least do that or buy an hour of their time. If they do a free consult and you're like, you know what, I don't want to do a free consult because I already know I'm not going to sign up for full services and I don't want to try to, you know, deceive you in any way. But I do want help with strategy and, and like just buy an hour of your time so that I can walk you through the details, ask questions and get help with figuring out my path forward. You know, many, many attorneys are happy to do that for you. So that's, you know, what you want to do in order to start increasing your chances of success. So that's really what it comes down to, right? We have all these points, but what I really want to give you is how can you increase your chances for success? And I think that understanding that strategy. So if you have an attorney, ask them, what is your strategy in the case? What's your theory of the case? Thomas always, when he would take a new case in, he would sit and he would like mold that over and try to figure out what his overarching theory of the case is. Ask your attorney that question. What's your theory of the case? What do you think my top three arguments are in this situation? What are my strongest things? They will have that discussion with you of what in their opinion is your strongest things. And that's how you start to leverage them and increase your chance of success. You also want to know what you want. And I talked about this earlier. So knowing what you want gives you strength going into the negotiations. Okay. Thomas used to, I mean, I'm quoting him a lot in this episode. I feel like because we're talking about lawyers, I don't usually quote him quite as much at this point, but we are talking about lawyers. And so it's helpful to kind of have his insight and perspective. And so he used to say, you know, the person that knows what they want is the person that is going to get the outcome that they're looking for because, you know, they know what they want. They're determined and that's the path they're moving forward on. You know, I've told this story about how I went into a management class at one of my jobs and they gave us this scenario where they put us in groups of like four and there had been this plane crash and we had to decide what the best, the best, they gave us three different scenarios of what you could do, you know, stay with the plane or walk or half of you walk or all of you walk or whatever. There was like three different scenarios. And they said, you know, you're trying to figure out what the best scenario is. And we're going to see how many groups actually come up with the answer of what the best scenario is. So we go through the exercise and then they tell us actually that wasn't the exercise the exercise was to deterrent was to see who in your group had the most influence, right? And it actually in my group, it ended up being me, even though I will tell you, I had the wrong answer. My answer was the second choice. It was the middle choice. It wasn't the worst, but it wasn't the best. So I guess some of us were to survive the plane crash and some of us wouldn't have. But I had the more ability to convince the other people around me because I knew I was like, Nope, it's this one. I had to courage my convictions, right? I knew the path I wanted to take. And so I advocated for that. And so there's a lot to be said in just knowing what you want, okay? And then knowing what's possible or what's likely. And I think that's where we rely on the attorney or the legal advice more, right, is like, okay, what, what's the likelihood of these different types of scenarios or what's the range? Like what's possible? Because if you have somebody like, let's just take an extreme thing where you say, Oh, I'm a parent that hasn't seen my child at all in four years and now they're four years old and I want 50 50 custody. Okay. Well, you, you're not going to make that jump. Probably. I mean, I'm not an attorney and attorneys can't give you outcomes of cases anyway, but you're not going to go from zero to 50 50 courts is not going to do that to the child. And what we do is we get in a mindset of, well, that's what's fair to me is the parent and I'm the other parent and the other parents been blocking me and I should get 50 50. Well, can you imagine taking a four year old who doesn't know the other person at all and you're going to put them with them half the time? That's traumatic to the child. So the court's looking at more than just what's fair or what you think is fair to you. And so understanding what the possibilities even are given your situation. Okay. And then the third thing kind of goes back to the question I mentioned earlier of people asking, should I okay, you have to do a cost benefit analysis on that. You know, Thomas had to sit down with the support issue and say, okay, what can I actually afford to do? How much am I willing to give? What if I have to pull from savings? What if I have to pull from my retirement? How am I willing to do those things and make those sacrifices in order to make this happen to have my children the amount of time that I want to have them? Okay. So cost benefit analysis and a lot of times it's helpful to have somebody outside of you help with that because we get emotional, right? And our emotions come into play and we start talking about what's fair and what's not and what the other person's done to us. And you know, I deserve this and I'm not getting anything back and all that kind of stuff. And so you really have to sit down and do a cost benefit analysis and know where your heads at going into this. Know what your range is, what's the maximum that you'd like to have? What's the minimum that you'll accept in this situation? Know what your preferred outcome is? Know what's possible? Are you even in the ballpark of what we would expect to see from the court in this situation? Okay. So remember you are in charge. You just have to step up and advocate for yourself. And the best way to do that is to educate yourself on this process and, you know, the strategies and that way you have the best ability to advocate for yourself. If you'd like to learn more about my coaching services, you can go to divorceuniversityonline.com/vip-coaching. There is a link on that page you can sign up for a free session with one of my staff to learn more about my coaching services. You feel that that's something that would be helpful to you in this process. I would love to talk to you and learn more about your case. Okay. I'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Thank you for listening to the Divorce University online podcast with your host, Tammy Ferreira. For more information, visit www.divorceuniversityonline.com.