I'm glad you're here. I'm sorry that you're going through what you're going
through. Child custody issues, probably the hardest thing you could ever face.
How do you get custody in a custody dispute?
Child custody one of the most vexing, troubling, emotionally taxing issues that
you could ever face. As I have worked with families who are dealing with this
troubling issue over the years, I've learned a few things that I want to pass
along to you because there are ways to totally ruin your custody case and there
are ways that you can support it and they might not be the things that you're
naturally inclined to do. Coming from my experience of approximately 13 years as
a child custody evaluator for the courts, now think about this, I'm the guy who got
asked by the judge to go in and sort all of this out and see if I can figure out
how to split up these kids, we don't want to split them up, you can't use Solomon's
sword and start chopping kids in half, this is a troubling issue for the
children because their world is completely different from the parents.
Let me share with you what I mean by that perspective. If we look at the
child's perspective and incidentally as a child custody evaluator, my interest
was to look after the best interest of the child, that was my whole motivation,
I want it to be good for you as parents too
because when your life is good, your children's lives are good too
but when parents disagree about what needs to happen about the kids and they
get into this angry war between each other, that puts the children in a very
difficult position. Here's what I mean. When mom and dad are together, we can
represent the child's world with this circle, it's all nicely circumspect and
it's just tight, it's that's the whole world that they know right there. When
mom and dad separate, we draw another circle over here. Now we've got two
worlds, it's kind of like a cell that's starting to split right but if we label
these two sites for example, mom's world and dad's world, they're two very
different worlds and if you've gone through a divorce, you know exactly what
I'm talking about because that other world is just different. I use the word
different, that's probably a really kind way to put it because they get described
in very evil nasty terms too. So we've got mom's world and dad's world, where are
the kids? Right here, right here in the middle of
those two worlds and think about that for just a moment, what if you were
between two warring nations and you're right here in the middle and they're
both, you know, shooting shots at each other and we got all kinds of violence
going on. I know I'm overstating that for your case but maybe I'm not too and here's
the child right here in the middle, that's not safe and children don't feel
safe when they're in the middle of this war that's going on. I put together a
quick summary paper.. The five factors that determine the outcome of divorce
for children, this is a compilation of factors that were identified originally
by Dr. Elizabeth Ellis, she wrote a book called divorce wars. I don't necessarily
think you need to go out and read that book, it's very, it's a heavy book, it's
thick and academic but I have condensed from that five factors that she
identified that determine the outcome of divorce for children, there's a link in
the description below if you'd like to get a PDF of those five factors. Take a
look at it, here's the one that I want to call to your attention.
Number one, without even a close second is conflict and that's exactly why right
there. Conflict, specifically conflict about the
children between the parents, this is a huge concern when we have a custody
dispute because what's the conflict over the kids who's in between the parents.
That is the number one factor that affects the
outcome of the divorce for the children. There's other factors too like economic
factors and the emotional stability of the primary caretaker, all of those kinds
of things come into play but conflict between the parents is number one. What
does that mean for you? First of all, we've got to reduce the conflict as much
as we can or maybe a better way to say that instead of reducing the conflict is
to appropriately handle the conflict and find ways to solve problems that don't
involve putting the children in the middle of a war zone. Now coming from the
perspective of a custody evaluator. When I got into these conflicted nasty
divorce situations where there's a lot of conflict,
my concern went up significantly for that child and I started to look for
evidence that one parent or the other, hopefully both, but that one parent or
the other could somehow appropriately manage that conflict on behalf of their
children. Now this is a little counterintuitive because you go into a
custody evaluators office and what do you want to do? You want to point out all
of the things that are nasty and wrong and evil about that other parent. As an
evaluator, I just want you to know how that sounds to me, it sounds like, "Oh I
better watch out for not the parent you're describing, the one that's doing
the describing because that raises the level of conflict." Hear where I'm coming from?
So the best thing you can do to help your own case, in my opinion, as a custody
evaluator is to reduce the conflict and to show that you are in position to
appropriately handle conflict and problems without putting the children in
the middle of that. Okay now there's a lot of practical things that you can do
along those lines but connect with that for just a minute.
So what can you do, with that in mind, with that knowledge in mind that the
conflict is the biggest issue for the children, what can you do?
Here's the crux of the whole thing, you guys. You create, in your own world, if your dad and
you're right here, you create the most sane stable loving environment possibly
can right here within the boundaries of your own world. The evaluator's going to
see that, okay. Now that also includes creating an environment here, and I'm
talking to dad's just because they're on this side of the board, mom, if it's you,
same thing, okay. You create the most sane stable loving environment that you
possibly can, that includes permission for that child to fully love the other
parent and to be a part of their world. Remember, the kids world includes mom's
world and dad's world, I've tucked them right here in the middle but really, they
belong in both worlds and they have to transition in between both of them
regularly. If you, as a loving benevolent parent, can clear your own heart and mind
of animosity and bitterness and anger and hate so that you can choose love.
In another video that you can link to right up here, we talked about the love choice.
The quick version is that, every interaction you have is going to follow
either on the love side or the hate side. When people get into a conflicted
custody dispute or a nasty divorce, they tend to choose hate which makes it worse
and increases the conflict. It feels counterintuitive to choose love.
That's what I'm asking you to do, to find it in your own heart and mind to choose a
loving response even with, and especially when,
that other spouse is being nasty. It's especially important then because if
everybody's choosing hate, we got all kinds of problems. Just a quick example,
I had an opportunity to hear Immaculée Ilibagiza give a talk, she is so amazing,
she wrote a book called Left To Tell and basically, she's a survivor of the
Holocaust that happened in Rwanda, the genocide that was happening between the
Hutus and the Tutsis, she was taken in by a Hutu pastor who took compassion on her,
he hid her in his bathroom basically for 90 days, his little three
foot by four foot bathroom and she was in there with seven other women for
almost three months, okay. That in itself is quite a story. She could hear the
killing going on just outside the window of this little bathroom that she was in.
Her whole family was exterminated in the process. If anyone has a reason to choose
hate, I think she would. Her message is one of love and forgiveness as she
realized in those circumstances that she had to make that same choice.
I can choose love or I can choose hate and everything around her was pulling
her to the hate side. Because she chose love, she was able to put herself in
position to free herself from the bitterness and
anger and animosity that would have poisoned her life forever and instead
now she is an ambassador of love and forgiveness. What an inspiring story.
As you go through this conflicted custody situation or this nasty divorce, you've
got the same choice. You're going to choose love or you're going to choose
hate. I guarantee the hate choice will make it worse for you, for your kids, for
everyone who loves you and cares about you. The only way I know to
prove your situation, including your chances in a custody case is to choose
love and to do that in such a genuine way that the evaluator will see that and
realize that everything is pulling you in that hate direction, don't go there,
it hurts kids, not to mention what it does to your life. Hopefully that's
helpful to you, I want to throw in a really quick little bonus because one of
our subscribers in the other video that I did on this particular topic asked,
"How do I prepare best for a home study?" This is part of a custody
evaluation where the evaluator comes into the home and does an assessment,
make sure everything's adequate and appropriate. The standard is not real
high, you guys, you don't have to clean up the whole house. I go into places and
they have potpourri simmering on the stove and freshly baked bread and I'm
like, "This is not real." We can tell, okay? Be genuine, be real, be authentic, don't
try to create something artificially for that evaluator, they want to see and feel
what the sense and the spirit and the core of this home is, so the best thing
you can do, like I said earlier, is to choose love, put yourself in a position
where you have the most sane level, stable, loving environment that you
possibly can in your own home and that's the quick version of how you're going to
pass that home study, it comes back to the same principles. I've shared with you
something today that very few people who are going through a custody evaluation
understand. I'm glad that you do, you can be part of an amazing change.
Thanks for being here.