Hello, and welcome to Ask The Attorney Anything. This is my weekly live stream. Every Tuesday,
I do these Ask The Attorney Anything, and on Thursdays, I do another live stream, and
that one is more on narcissism 101 and the terms that are thrown around so that you can
understand them, so that when you go to negotiate with a narcissist, you understand who it is
that you're dealing with. So welcome, welcome, welcome. If you don't
know me, I'm Rebecca Zung. I am a top 1% attorney and the author of the books Negotiate Like
You Matter and Breaking Free: A Step-by-Step Divorce Guide. And if you haven't already
subscribed to my channel, now is a really great time to do that so that you can get
notified. Make sure you hit that little notification bell so that you can get notified when I upload
brand new content, as well as when I go live like this and do these live streams and try
to answer as many of your questions live right here as I possibly can.
So I do want to make sure that I tell you that this does not constitute actual legal
advice. What I do is I give you my thoughts on strategy and procedure, and some ways that
you could potentially go forward. For any specific legal advice, you will definitely
want to contact an attorney in your jurisdiction. So I see I have lots and lots of questions
for me here already. I'm super excited that all of you are here. I know that you're dealing
with drama, trauma, and chaos, and that you're in pure hell if you're dealing with a narcissist.
And if you're figuring out a way to negotiate with that narcissist and actually get the
upper hand and figure out a way to actually turn this around, shift the dynamic, go on
the offensive instead of constantly feeling like you're just being beat up and defending
yourself, then you are in the right place. So I'm going to go ahead and take a look over
here at your questions and see how many I can answer in the next few minutes or so.
All right? So I saw one that I definitely thought would be a good one to answer. This
one is from PR, the initials PR. "Her lawyer is wanting mediation, but I don't want to
give [inaudible 00:02:26] away anymore. What are your thoughts?"
So my thoughts are this. When you go to a mediation with a narcissist... And you can
settle a case in mediation with a narcissist, by the way. A lot of people say don't bother
mediation, or don't bother trying to settle a case with a narcissist, it never works.
And every time I see that, I think no, that's not true. I've had many, many narcissists
settle in mediation. But the key is that when you go to mediation with a narcissist, you
can't just walk and think you're going to talk it through and resolve differences because
there's one key element that's missing when you're dealing with a narcissist in mediation,
and that is, they don't actually really want to settle the case because they get narcissistic
supply from jerking you around. So how do you get them to settle a case in
mediation? Well, you have to have a super strong strategy and you have to have created
enough leverage that when you get to that mediation, they feel motivated and squeezed
and incentivize into settling the case. That's what I teach people how to do with my SLAY
system and my SLAY program, strategy, leverage, anticipate what the narcissist is going to
do, and focus on your case and you, and creating an offensive position. But leverage is really,
really key. So the mistake that people make a lot of times
when they go into a mediation with a narcissist is that they think that they're dealing with
a reasonable person, or you just think, "Oh, it's perfunctory. The court's making me do
it. So let's just get this over with. And hopefully the mediator will be able to help.
And hopefully the lawyers will be able to help." And it just ends up being a really
super expensive conversation that doesn't really get you anywhere.
So yes, you should mediate, and here's why, because when you go to mediation, if you get
them to sign a settlement agreement in mediation, then the case is done. If you go to court
and you go before a judge and the judge hands down a decision, then that decision is appealable.
So you could win a hundred percent of everything that you want in court and still not be done
because they can appeal that. And even worse, they can file a motion to stay the orders,
meaning whatever you won in that final judgment is just going to be held in limbo, and you're
not going to get to enjoy the fruits of that until after the appeal is done.
Appeals take a long time and they're very expensive. Now, oftentimes, appeals aren't
successful. Most of the time, people who appeal don't prevail. I mean, it's like a 15% win
rate or something if you're appealing, but even so, you're still dealing with this person.
So it is definitely better to try to get them to sign an agreement.
But don't go back and forth between your attorneys to try to get them to sign an agreement. You
definitely want them to sign in mediation when all these people are around them, the
mediator, the other lawyers. Because one of the things about narcissists is that they
desperately do not want to look bad in front of people that they respect and especially
the judge. So if you get to mediation and you've got all your leverage ready to go,
and all of these bits of information that they're realizing is going to come out if
they end up in front of a judge, or that they might end up with a bad result or something
like that, that's how you squeeze them into settling a case at mediation.
So I do recommend that you try to mediate again. And PR, it's kind of a long way of
answering your question, but I thought it was a really good one and a great opportunity
for me to tell you why I think mediation is a good idea, even if you're dealing with a
narcissist, and sometimes especially if you're dealing with a narcissist, because that's
where your leverage is going to be the best. Because all narcissists are driven by supply,
and a big piece of that supply is how they look in front of people. So looking bad in
front of a judge, or maybe having information come out about them that's public that they
don't want to come out about them, is a really, really nice form of kind of manipulating,
ethically manipulating the manipulator into signing an agreement. So I call it an ethical
manipulation because you're just taking information that you have and using it against them. And
all narcissists are liars and do things that you can definitely use against them.
So you're just trying to get back to what's fair. A lot of people say, "I don't want to
fight. I don't want to spend a lot of money." If you feel that way, then you've got to create
leverage. Okay, so let me see if I can answer a few
more questions for you. Let me know where you guys are watching from. I'd love to see
where you guys are from as well. I'm here in Los Angeles, as many of you probably know,
and I see somebody here who is from Arizona. Let's see. So I see somebody from Texas, Florida,
South Carolina, Georgia. That's amazing. Fantastic. Okay, so I have time for maybe one more question.
So let me see. Hello Calgary, Alberta. Hi, Amber, from California. I see somebody from
New Mexico. Awesome. Houston, Texas. Fantastic. I have a cousin in Houston actually.
Okay, so somebody is asking me a question specifically about property and how that's
going to be distributed, and what your rights are around property. That's definitely a legal
question, something that you should ask the lawyer in your area. I'm seeing things about
arrests and domestic violence. Just remember that arrests, domestic violence, things like
that are all very good forms of leverage, especially if you have children. Those are
the kinds of things you can use against a narcissist in mediation as leverage, as well
as creating exhibits out of emails that they send or text that they send, and showing like
how they lie or their bad behavior or things like that. If you create summaries and exhibits
of these things, they end up becoming great leverage and a great way to squeeze that narcissist
in mediation to get them to settle the case the way you want them to settle a case, or
at least not in such a ridiculous form, like what they would want you to do, like giving
up all kinds of rights. So let's see. A question here about freezing
assets. You definitely want to ask your lawyer about that. In a lot of jurisdictions, there's
a standing order that doesn't freeze the assets, but it at least kind of puts a, what I call
an invisible bubble around all the assets so that you can continue to live your day-to-day
life, but you're not allowed to make any big sudden movements, like move money to the Cayman
Islands or something like that. So let's see. Parental alienation is a long
answer. I have a bunch of videos on parental alienation. I would highly encourage you to
check those out, and also check out the work of like Michael Bone and Amy Baker, and they
do a lot on parental alienation as well. All right. Well, I'm so excited to have been
here with you guys for another YouTube live. I see Jennifer from South Africa. I don't
even know what time... What time is it in South Africa right now? My goodness. And obviously
I have so many questions over here and I wish I could have gotten to all of them, but it's
really my pleasure, my honor to come on here once a week and just do open forum and let
you guys ask me as many questions as you can. I also do an Ask The Attorney Anything at
the end of my free webinar, which is called The Three Must-Have Secrets to Communicating
with a Narcissist. And I highly recommend that you come and join me on that free webinar
as well. The sign up is going to be in the first comment. I pin it as my first comment
under my videos. So come on and join me, check that out as well. And if you haven't subscribe
to my channel, now's a good time to do that. Subscribe, hit that notification bell so that
you can get notified when I come on live and when I upload brand new content.
I also have a free Crush My Negotiation prep worksheet. You can grab that at the link below,
or just go on over to winmynegotiation.com and it'll be all yours. And I have a free
private Facebook group as well called Narcissist Negotiators with Rebecca Zung, so you can
come and join me on that as well. So I have tons of free resources for all of
you out there. So I'm really grateful that I had this opportunity to connect with you
guys on a personal level. And as always, I send you light, I send you peace. I send you
strength and courage, and thanks so much for joining me. I'll see you in the next video.
Remember, today's a great day to start negotiating your best life.