Hello and welcome to this edition of Ask the Attorney Anything.
I actually had tried to go live on a different version of this station so, hopefully, those
of you who are waiting over there will find me over here.
But anyway, I'm Rebecca Zung and I'm here to answer all of your questions.
So, if you are joining me now, just go ahead and start giving me your questions over there
in the chat.
I am going to answer a couple of the questions that I saw from where people were waiting,
and one of the questions that I saw was about sanctions and about how to actually maybe
recoup some attorney's fees or do something when that narcissist does something bad in
court.
And I thought that was a really, really great question about how do you actually get that
narcissist to do what they're supposed to do when in a court setting and actually hold
their feet to the fire because narcissists will do whatever they can to try to get away
with stuff, especially in a court setting, and they try to make your life miserable.
Remember that narcissists get narcissistic supply from making your life miserable and
especially in a court setting because you've now become the enemy.
When you are dealing with a narcissist, you're either for them or against them.
And if you are not for them, then in their mind, you have become the enemy.
So, and when you go in a court setting, you are the enemy times a million.
So, they do try to get away with whatever they can feel that they can get away with.
So, I'm going to answer the questions about how to get sanctions, how to enforce motions,
how to maybe potentially get fees from them.
I would love to know where you are all tuning in from.
I see Martina calling in from, or tuning in from Germany, which is really awesome.
And I want to see where else you guys are tuning in from.
Missouri, Amanda, from Missouri.
Keisha, I don't know if I'm saying that right, from Colorado and somebody from the UK.
Hey.
Sally, from the UK.
So excited to see all of you here.
Narcissism knows no bounds.
Oh, look at Rade, I don't know if I'm saying that, maybe Rade from Serbia.
Super cool.
So, and if you are just now tuning into my channel and you've not subscribed to me, now's
a great time to do that.
Subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you can get notified when I do these
lives like this.
Somebody else from the UK, we've got Logan from the UK, Cat from Arkansas.
Hi, Deborah from Thousand Oaks.
So glad you all are here.
So, I want to answer this question about how to hold the narcissist feet to the fire, and
sanctions, and what to do about that.
So, first of all, what is a sanction?
A sanction is a way to punish that narcissist.
It's something that only can be issued by a judge, no one else.
And sanctions can be in the form of all different kinds of things.
It can be in the form of striking their requests, like striking their pleadings.
It can be fees.
It can be fines.
It could even be jail time, depending on what it is.
But, it's basically, the court gets mad.
The court says, "Hey, you're not doing what you're supposed to do.
We don't like that.
So, I, Judge, am going to sanction you.
I'm going to punish you by making you do these things.
And I'm going to tell you that I really don't like what you did so I'm going to sanction
you."
So, that's what sanctions are, and sometimes they're statutory, and sometimes the judge
just imposes them.
Statutory means that if you look up in a particular statue, if there are sanctions for, let's
say, not complying with a parenting plan, some states actually have sanctions listed
there, things that the judge can choose from to punish somebody if they haven't done what
they're supposed to do with regard to that parenting plan.
And sometimes they're not statutory.
Sometimes the judge just says, "You know what?
I really don't like what you did and I don't like your attitude.
I don't like the fact that you have thumbed your nose at my court order, and so, therefore,
I'm going to impose bad things to happen to you."
So, it can be statutory.
It doesn't necessarily have to be.
But one thing you do need to know and remember is that the only person that has any power
over anybody else is the judge.
No one else.
Your lawyer only has so much power.
The other person's lawyer, the narcs lawyer only has so much power.
And you know, a lot of times people will say to me, "How come his or her lawyer doesn't
tell them that their behavior is bad?"
Well, you don't know what conversations are going on between that narcissist and that
narcissist lawyer, number one, and number two, sometimes narcissists pick lawyers that
are just happy to do whatever they tell them to do.
And a lot of times lawyers don't want to get fired so they'll just go along with whatever
the narcissist wants them to do.
I often say that narcissists and their lawyers are kind of like owners with their dogs.
They kind of usually find one that kind of looks like them, or is at least willing to
toe the line and say what they want them to say.
So, a lot of times, once you get a court order into place, let's say it's for something pretty
benign like that they're supposed to provide documents by a certain date or time, that
they were supposed to provide financial documents, bank statements, credit card statements, something
like that.
And there's a court order in place that says you're supposed to provide them by a certain
date, let's say it's September 30th or something like that.
And September 30th comes and goes, and then they still haven't provided the documents.
And the first words out of your mouth are going to be, "How are they getting away with
this?
How is this happening?"
Well, no one's standing in people's living rooms.
There's no police out there that stand there and go, "Oh, it's September 30th has gone
by.
You didn't do it."
So, how does it get enforced?
The only way it gets enforced is you, if you're representing yourself, or your lawyer has
to go back to the court, has to go back to that only person that has power, which is
the judge so they have to file something.
And so, I don't necessarily know what it's called in your particular state, or country,
or jurisdiction, but it's going to be some kind of pleading, or motion, or something
that they can file to go back to the court and say, "Your honor, this person did not
do what they was ordered to do according to your court order.
So, now please do something about it."
And now the court can say, "Okay, I can hold you in contempt," or something like that.
And once they find that that person is in contempt of court, meaning I just did whatever
the hell I wanted and I thumbed my nose at your court order, I had the ability to comply
with your court order, I just willingly decided I don't really care and I'm not going to do
it, that's what the judge has to find, that that person felt.
So, a lot of times there's a conversation around whether the person had the ability
to comply with the court order.
People will say, "I didn't have the ability to pay."
And so, the court has to find does this person have the ability to purge their contempt?
Did they have the ability to...
Was it willful?
So, there's always conversation around that.
But once you get all the way down to that point, then you can get into some sanctions
and say, "Hey, you should have complied with this court order.
You didn't.
You had the ability.
Nothing was stopping you from complying with this court order.
And so therefore I'm going to go ahead now and sanction you."
And sanctions, a lot of times in civil court, which is what family court is, it's in the
form of money, fines, things like that.
Attorney's fees is a really easy way to sanction or fine somebody.
And, sometimes if it's like that they were supposed to pay something and they didn't,
they can sanction them by adding on interest, something like that.
When it comes to support obligations, like child support, courts usually don't mess around
with that.
Child support sanctions can be pretty darn harsh.
That's where they will actually attach pay stubs, take driver's licenses, maybe put a
flag on your passport so you can't leave, sometimes even incarceration.
So, especially with child support, that's where courts really get pretty aggressive
with their sanctions because courts, they don't want children to become wards of the
state.
They want people to do what they're supposed to do with regard to children.
So, just make sure that your lawyer...
Most lawyers don't understand narcissism.
So, a lot of times when, early on, if the narcissist didn't provide the documents they
were supposed to, sometimes they're required to send a letter, try to work it out with
the other lawyer before they can do anything, so you have to respect that that sometimes
is required but once your lawyer has satisfied anything with regard to that, you got to stay
on your lawyer about staying on them.
Because if you just give a little bit to a narcissist, they think they're winning.
They think they're getting away with that.
And, one of the things I want to say to all of you is that when you are a victim of narcissistic
abuse, which a lot of us who've been narcissist victims are empathic people, kind people,
good people, generous people, openhearted people, it's not natural for, or doesn't feel
necessarily comfortable going on the offensive and just being as aggressive as you can possibly
be in the court system.
But that's what you have to do when it comes to dealing with a narcissist and I talk a
lot about that in my S.L.A.Y program and in my free webinars so if you haven't checked
out my free webinar, you should definitely do that because I talk more about all of this
in that because you can't let the narcissist get away with anything.
And that's why I created the S.L.A.Y program because I wanted you to all to understand
that 99.9% of lawyers don't understand narcissism.
So, you can have a fantastic lawyer, but they still may not, I mean, you could spend a hundred
thousand dollars and not get anywhere.
I hear those stories all the time and people think, "Why aren't I getting anywhere?
Why am I spending all this money and we're still spinning our wheels?
Why am I spending all this money and we're still like, they haven't done what they're
supposed to do?
They're still getting away with it.
They're still ignoring court orders."
You just have to be on their butt all the time.
As soon as they did or didn't do something that they were supposed to do, you have to
be right on them because, as I said, at the beginning of this video, narcissists get supply
from jerking you around in the court system.
So, you have to make it so that they don't really enjoy it anymore.
They're not getting supply from it anymore.
The minute that they've ignored a court order and your lawyer has just let it pass by or
you, if you're representing yourself, hasn't filed something in the court system that to
say, "Hey, motion for contempt, motion to enforce, motion to compel, set it for hearing
right away."
Just let the judge know right away that this person is thumbing their nose at the court
system and judges don't like that.
They want people to be in...
Respecting their court orders.
And so you have to kind of stay right on them about that.
So, Keisha says, "Thank you for your S.L.A.Y program."
Thank you, Keisha, for being part of my S.L.A.Y community.
I love you guys in my S.L.A.Y community because you are so ready to turn those tables and
so ready to turn it around.
And if you are so ready to turn it around, I want to see that right now in the chat,
I'm ready, because all of us need to just take back our power and just say, "This is
not okay."
And, they thrive on fear.
They thrive on intimidation.
They thrive on seeing you afraid and making you think that you're going to lose your children,
making you think that you're going to be living on the street or whatever.
And, that's not okay.
It's enough already.
It's just seriously enough already.
So, Barb says, "I'm pissed and I am so ready."
Awesome.
I love it.
Amanda says, "I'm ready."
And so all of you...
So, somebody is asking, "Does your program deal with Canadian laws?"
So, my program is not legal specific, it's negotiation specific, which is, I sold my
programs to people literally all over the world in every country and every continent.
So, I know that it works for...
If you're dealing with a narcissist, it works for you because I just teach you the basics
on how to get what you want from a narcissist.
So, in the first comment on this video, I'll put a link to the free webinars.
You can come.
It's like 90 minutes of content, like an hour of content, and then like 30 minutes of answering
questions.
So, come join me on that if you haven't already because that's super helpful to you as well.
I try to provide as much free content as I can because I know what you guys are dealing
with.
I've been dealing with it as a lawyer for over 20 years, this narcissist personality
type, and I've also had to deal with a couple of nasty, heinous narcissists in my own life.
And I think part of the reason why all of you connect with my channel and my channel
has grown so fast is because you can tell that I really know what...
I understand this personality type and I am so committed to getting you out of this relationship
in a way that's fair, in a way that honors you, respects you, and it helps to keep your
pocketbook intact, right, your wallet intact.
So, I go live here at least once a week.
And I also go straight from here to my Facebook Live.
So, if you haven't liked my page on Facebook, you should definitely do that as well, which
is Rebecca Zung, Top 1% Attorney, Narcissist Negotiation Expert.
That's the name of the page.
If you haven't joined my free private Facebook group, definitely come and do that.
People are in there every day, supporting each other, helping each other.
It's an incredible place.
It's an incredible community, and it's private so anything you post in there can't be seen
by anybody else, and that's Narcissist Negotiators with Rebecca Zung.
So, definitely check that out.
We'll make sure we put a link in this after this video as well.
And if you like this video, give me a like, and give it a share.
It'll be up as a video after I'm done with this live call.
So, give it a share, drop me a comment.
I love to see your comments and I love to see that all of you are here because that
means that we are taking back our power, and we are shifting that dynamic against these
narcissists, and we're starting our own movement against narcissistic abuse.
So, it's the best.
And, if you haven't subscribed to my channel, what are you waiting for?
Subscribe and hit that notification bell.
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This isn't just about healing.
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So, subscribe, I'd love to have you here.
I am going to hang up from here and go over to my Facebook Live and I'll be over there
next.
So, if you had more questions and I didn't get to your question today, then come on over
and join me in the Facebook Live.
I'll see you in the next video.
Thanks so much.