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Hello, everyone, and welcome to another Family Law Matters. I’m Dr. Michael Mantell with Bonnie Rabinovitch-Mantel, owner and managing partner of the Primus Family Law Group. Hi, Bonnie.
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Hi, Michael. As always, it’s a pleasure to do these sessions with you. Yes, that’s what they are, sessions.
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Who’s getting more help here, you or me? Me. Hopefully, folks who are listening and who are thinking, contemplating this very difficult decision about divorce. This month, January, is a time when many couples, I just read a study that they looked at over 2,000 marriages, which is a pretty good sample size, and they found that 20% of couples who are thinking about divorce are doing so in January.
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This is a time when lots and lots of people are saying, enough. But as you and I have discussed about so many cases, the greatest casualty in high-conflict divorces is the polarized child, the child that has been manipulated, victimized into somehow choosing a side. You see that, don’t you? And I do see it.
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It’s unfortunate. It is sad. It’s unfair.
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As, Michael, you often say, it’s terrible, horrible, and awful. I don’t say that. But the problem is that I would say nine times out of 10, the parent who’s doing this doesn’t even know they’re really doing it.
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They actually believe that somehow it’s a good thing that they’re being straight with the child. And it happens to children as young as five to as old as 16, right before they become adults. For those out there who don’t know what that is, it’s literally, we have court orders, and a lot of our court orders are a result of what has happened.
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You know when you find that stop sign in the middle of the street for no reason? It’s because some kid got killed, and that’s why they put a stop sign there. So the same thing with our court orders. We actually have court orders that tell parents, you are not allowed to discuss this case with your child.
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Now, why did they come up with that? They came up with that because parents were discussing the case, the pleadings, the declarations, the things that are said between adults in anger. And they are allowing their children to read it, to see it, to talk about it, to discuss it. And that, Michael, leads to the child feeling like they either have to protect one parent, because that parent is the victim, and side with that parent or take care of that parent.
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You know, even the parentification, as you often say, where the child now has to take on a parental role because mom or your daddy just can’t handle what’s going on. Or the child becomes so aligned with one parent that that child’s entire identity becomes that parent’s identity. There is no more independent thought.
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They are one. And it is horrible because when you’re sharing children in separate homes, I say there’s no buffer. When you guys are living together, you know, you both have different parenting styles.
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Nobody’s perfect. And when you’re living together and you have different parenting styles, the styles are not perfect. You’re going to make mistakes.
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But the two of you in the same home, sometimes you can buffer and the child gets the best or, you know, both worsts. When you’re sharing your children and you’ve got absolutely nothing to do with the other household, you can’t control the other household. Stop trying to.
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Get over it. You can’t. Now you’ve got this child who goes over to the other household and hears yada, yada, yada from the parent, the grandparents, the aunts, the uncles.
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It all sits in their brain, like a little bit of a cult thing. And they don’t know how to handle it. So they get angry and emotional and resentful.
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Who are they going to do that against? The parent. So they go back to the other parent. And if the child’s young enough, Michael, you can have that transition where the child will go over and be defiant for X, Y, and Z hours, but will eventually realize that it’s not quite as what we’re saying.
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But as your child gets older, if this has been happening for a long time, obviously there’s damage. Sometimes when the child starts older, like they’re a teenager, Michael. Teenagers are hard enough when you’re together.
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They’re hard enough on their own, but they often feel they have to pick a side and it can destroy the relationship that the out parent, I have to call them the out parent, now has with this child. And what then results is the court ordering conjoint therapy, where they have to go to a therapist to work on their relationship and find out why child no longer wants to see or be with parent. And even when it’s determined to be the other parent’s fault, the damage is done.
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And parent B goes into years of having to work back to get their kid back in some way, shape or form. Wow. You have a tremendous depth of understanding of the psychological, the emotional backdrop of all this.
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I think some people think an attorney is someone who just does filings and is very black and white and that’s it. But your heart, I was just listening, thinking to myself, you should be a therapist. No.
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You understand the dilemma. You know, as you were talking, I was thinking about so many cases that I’ve sat with couples and families with. And we say, put the child first.
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The child’s wellbeing comes first. Make this about the child. But you know what? It’s also about the parent.
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It’s also about the rejected parent. It’s also about the inflicting parent. These are two injured parties.
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A parent doesn’t inflict harm without him or herself having been injured somewhere in the past. So disengaging the enmeshed parent child and reengaging the rejected child parent pair sounds great. It sounds wonderful.
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But unless you do take care of the adults as well, you’re missing the boat. So in your work, I just wonder, we’re coming through a holiday season. We’re now looking forward.
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We’re in the new year. Many parents are still, as we might say, complaining or fetching or whatever the word is about what this parent did when you had the kid and why didn’t you tell me? And so how much does one parent, how much information does one parent owe the other parent about what was going on with the kid and so forth and so on if it was just a normal holiday time? Well, if it’s a normal holiday time and when we’re talking normal, we mean not COVID because that changes the dynamic. So if you’re talking during a regular holiday season, if you have court orders, and let’s pretend your court orders are that you share the two weeks the kids have off a week each.
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Well, what you do with your children during that week is not really any of the other parents’ business. I mean, unless you’re going skydiving or something that could put the child in supreme harm. If you’re going away with your children during that time, you have an obligation to tell the other side, we’re going to Mammoth and we’re going to be staying at the X, Y, and Z and you have my cell number and everybody’s got cells today, kids too.
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So you have a way to reach us. We will be gone from X date until Y date. Why do we do that? Because God forbid something happens, parent has every right to know where your children are.
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Now, COVID. Let’s throw COVID into it, Michael, because what we’re seeing is a lot of parents say, well, my ex took little Johnny to this house and they had a gathering of 37 people and posted on Facebook and nobody’s wearing masks. Well, so you should, well, should, bad word.
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Your hope is that you discuss these things before the holiday and not everybody can have a reasoned discussion. That’s why we have email. We have Our Family Wizard, that they are often ordered to use.
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We have Talking Parents, a court program so that they are often ordered to use. Why? Because if you know that your emails can be an exhibit, you tend to act a little bit more politely. So the hope is that you have discussed these holidays in advance.
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Let’s assume you haven’t and you find it out backwards. Hindsight, right? Well, I think the most that you can do at that point is request. You can take your kid to get a COVID test.
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That’s for certain. And you can request that your ex, and if it’s remarried or whatever, the immediate, the people living in the house, take one too. You can make that request.
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They do not have to comply because it’s not, I mean, the court assumes that you are not putting your children in danger until they are shown that you are putting your children in danger. So everybody uses COVID as, well, look, they’re putting their children in danger. You can have your kids tested.
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You can have a plan for your children. Hey, let’s measure what six feet is. You’re going to go over to your mommy or daddy’s house.
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Let’s know what six feet looks like. I know you’re not going to be able to do it all the time, but when they have the party, try to do it. You can give your kids, you can choose masks with your kids that your kids like to wear.
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You can have the hand sanitizer. You can give them the tools and understand that you can’t enforce it when it’s over there. And do not withhold the children, Michael.
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Just because they are not adhering to what you believe is what should be done, you cannot withhold the children unless you get a court order to do so. So if a parent over the holiday, one parent comes to find out the kid is upset, angry, or whatever it might be, and calls the other parent and says, I don’t like what mommy’s doing. Daddy decides to call an Uber or Lyft or something and send it over to the house.
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And the kid gets in the car, or the kids get in the car and are whisked back to the other parent. What happens then? Well, first, how old is this child that’s being sent? Well, it doesn’t matter. I don’t have a personal issue.
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I don’t think anybody should be in an Uber without a parent. But that being said, so usually, okay. Well, if this was my client who sent the Uber, I’d be upset because the children don’t get to make the rules.
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And I would assume in such a case, you’ve got to be a teenager that’s doing this. But let’s assume it’s a teenager, okay? Let’s assume the teenager calls and says, I don’t want to stay at mom or dad’s. I want you to come pick me up.
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And mom or dad does so. Mom or dad should be calling the other parent saying, hey, our daughter is calling us and wants me to pick her up. I’ve told her she needs to address it with you.
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And that should be the end of it. And if it’s not, that’s where therapy, coaching, counseling, whatever it might be becomes so important. Right.
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The parent who’s sending the Uber could say, you know what, little Johnny, I’m going to send the Uber today to get you. But this is the last time that’s going to happen. You and parent B need to figure this out.
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Right, right. There needs to be the encouragement of it because otherwise what’s going to happen is next time the child is supposed to go to visit parent A and we’re talking, they are normal parents. There’s no abuse going on.
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There’s just differences of opinion. Child’s going to think that that child’s in charge. And wow, that’s an interesting message to give a very young person.
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The emotional wellbeing of that youngster becomes of concern. And the emotional health of the adults who would do that and who are still arguing about it. It’s like, that was like weeks and weeks ago.
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Let’s move forward. Well, this goes back to the idea, Michael, of not discussing the case and the matters with your children. Obviously you can’t shut them out from basic conversations about custody and schedules, but how bad mommy is or how bad daddy is or look at what they’re doing.
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When you discuss that, now you’ve empowered this child to think that they have to make decisions here, empowering it. It sounds good, but it’s not. And it’s incursing it really.
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You’re incursing the child to have to make a choice. And then when you give it all this, this is exactly what happens. Child does far too much information, is given too much power.
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And now I’d like to see what happens when child wants to defy the parent that sent the Uber. That’s going to be an interesting lesson for the parent that sent the Uber. Bonnie, you have a unique depth of resources and experience in marital dissolution and post-divorce matters.
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If people want to tap into that, how do they get some more information about Primus Family Law Group and to be in touch with you? Well, you can reach us at www.primusfamilylaw.com or you can reach us directly at 619-574-8000. Either way gets you in touch with us so that we can set up your free 30 minute free phone consultation to see how myself or the other attorneys at Primus, how we can help you with your matter.