The High Conflict Custody Battle

Is your ex-spouse trying to gain custody of your kids? Has he or she launched a campaign to make you look like a bad parent, both in the eyes of your children and the law? You aren’t alone. Unfortunately, high-conflict custody battles are all-too-common in today’s world. So how can you arm yourself with the mental and legal resources needed to survive this difficult time and keep your kids safe? In The High-Conflict Custody Battle, a team of legal and psychology experts present a practical guidebook for people like you who are engaged in a high-conflict custody battle. If you are dealing with an overtly hostile, inflammatory, deceitful, or manipulative ex-spouse, you will learn how to find and work with an attorney and prepare for a custody evaluation. The book also provides helpful tips you can use to defend yourself against false accusations, and gives a realistic portrayal of what to expect during a legal fight. Going through a divorce is hard, but going through a custody battle can feel like war. Don’t go in unprepared. With this book as your guide, you will be able to navigate this difficult process and learn powerful skills that will help you maintain a healthy relationship with your kids, fight unfair accusations, and uphold your rights as a parent.

Explaining complex family law concepts and procedures in a jargon-free style, this resource includes detailed information on how family court works, offers easily understandable case examples, and describes alternatives to litigation that are designed to help prevent families with children from entering the legal system to resolve disputes. Exploring subjects that apply to all parties involved in resolving separation, divorce, and custody conflictsjudges, lawyers, mediators, parenting coaches, psychologists, family counselors, and social workersthis reference demystifies the role of lawyers and judges, debunks the myth that parents can represent themselves in court, and examines each parents responsibility to ensure that post-separation conflicts are resolved with minimal emotional stress to children.

This little book gives more than 20 examples of BIFF responses--brief, informative, friendly, and firm--for all areas of life, plus additional tips to help readers deal with high-conflict people anywhere. 158 pp.

Tina Swithin was swept off her feet by a modern day Prince Charming and married him one year later. Tina soon discovered that there was something seriously wrong with her fairytale. The marriage was filled with lies, deception, fraud and many tears. Tina was left in an utter state of confusion. This wasn't the man that she married...or was it? Tina first heard the term, Narcissistic Personality Disorder from her therapist in 2008 but quickly dismissed the notion that something could be wrong with her husband. It took several years for Tina to begin researching the disorder and suddenly, the past ten years of her life made complete sense. Tina soon discovered that there is only one thing more difficult than being married to a narcissist and that is divorcing a narcissist. In her book, Tina will explain how a smart, independent woman can fall prey to a narcissistic man. Tina discusses the red flag reflections that she chose to ignore while dating and during the marriage. Tina acted as her own attorney in an extremely high-conflict divorce and she will share the strategies that helped her to navigate through this battle while maintaining her sanity and sense of humor. Tina will help you to feel less alone in your journey and will assure you that there is light at the end of the tunnel no matter how dark things are right now. While Tina endured a tumultuous 6-year custody battle, she prevailed and today, her daughters have peace.

Updated and revised with seven new chapters, a new introduction, and a new resources section, this landmark book is invaluable for women facing a custody battle. It was the first to break the myth that mothers receive preferential treatment over fathers in custody disputes. Although mothers generally retain custody when fathers choose not to fight for it, fathers who seek custody often win—not because the mother is unfit or the father has been the primary caregiver but because, as Phyllis Chesler argues, women are held to a much higher standard of parenting. Incorporating findings from years of research, hundreds of interviews, and international surveys about child-custody arrangements, Chesler argues for new guidelines to resolve custody disputes and to prevent the continued oppression of mothers in custody situations. This book provides a philosophical and psychological perspective as well as practical advice from one of the country’s leading matrimonial lawyers. Both an indictment of a discriminatory system and a call to action over motherhood under siege, Mothers on Trial is essential reading for anyone concerned either personally or professionally with custody rights and the well-being of the children involved.

All psychotherapists who work with children and families will come across cases with the parents divorcing or previously divorced experiencing high levels of conflict. These cases can be extremely complex and there can be potential hazards mental health professionals need to be aware of and prepared for. This book is a practical guide providing actionable measures mental health professionals can take to properly screen potential cases, establish and observe essential policies and protocols and observe important boundaries in order to preserve the integrity of the child's therapy and maintain healthy therapeutic relationships with the parents who are at war with one another without being pulled into the middle of the parental conflict. This guidebook also provides specific recommendations with regard to ensuring the self-care is in place for the psychotherapists when working with these kinds of cases that can cause mental and emotional depletion.

I'm a survivor. For sixteen long years, I didn't believe I'd ever get to call myself that. Self-doubt, low self-esteem imposed on me by my abusive, narcissistic ex-husband, and fear held me hostage. I didn't recognize myself. Hope no longer existed. The stress and strain of just trying to live to see another day took a devastating toll on me physically, emotionally, and financially. My life was not my own, and I was tired of it. At my core, I knew I had to fight back, but after living in such a toxic environment, I wasn't sure it would make a difference. Thankfully, I summoned the courage. Call it dumb luck, an epiphany, or a sheer desire to shield my children from any more trauma, I left. Unfortunately, the abuse didn't end when I closed that chapter of my life. The next chapter invited a different form of abuse into my life in the form of dubious legal tactics, mean-spirited counter-parenting, battling false parental alienation claims, and harassment replaced the abuse I endured when we lived under the same roof. But, I had changed. Leaving left me feeling more empowered. Slowly, I saw my worth and understood that my freedom from my ex was what I needed to not only survive but thrive. Was It My Fault? is my story. In it, I share intimate details of my toxic marriage, but more than that, I share my journey out of the depths of despair and how I continue to fight for myself and my children post-separation. It's my hope that my story will inspire someone who may be in a toxic relationship and feeling like they have no fight left in them to not give up and find a path forward.

Millions of fathers are currently embroiled in the fight of their lives to win custody of their children. Wounded by the acrimony and greed that often accompany divorce proceedings, many wonder if they will ever again be an important part of their sons' and daughters' lives. With this landmark book, renowned men's rights attorney Jeffery M. Leving offers disenfranchised fathers true hope and meaningful advice certain to save years of anguish and possibly thousands of dollars.Drawing on more than fifteen years of frontline experience, Leving leads fathers through every twist and turn of the legal system and shows them how to protect their rights (and their children's)—both before and during divorce litigation.This authoritative and accessible book covers every aspect of the custody process, including protecting the parent/child relationship as a breakup occurs; finding a competent and sympathetic lawyer; drafting a “Shared Parenting Agreement”; demonstrating parental competence when falsely accused of abuse; avoiding parental alienation; determining when to settle and when to litigate; techniques for dealing effectively with psychologists, social workers, and other domestic relations experts; and much more.Illustrated with vivid real-life examples, Jeffery Leving and Kenneth Dachman's practical guide is essential reading for the scores of American fathers routinely excluded from their children's lives by a biased legal system in which avarice and recrimination too often overwhelm compassion and justice.