Hello, and welcome to another edition of Ask The Attorney Anything. I am Rebecca Zung and
I am here for you to answer your questions about negotiating. In particular, I help you
with negotiating with high conflict individuals, difficult individuals, oftentimes narcissists,
people who you feel like you can never win, the ones who you feel like it's just a waste
of time to even try to negotiate with them or even try to get anything out of them. And
that's what I help you do here on this channel, and in my videos, on my podcast, in all of
my resources. And so I'm here live with you to answer whatever questions that you may
have in dealing with the narcissist that you are dealing with. What I would love to know
is where you are all tuning in from. I love connecting with all of you. We have an incredible
community on my channel and in my Facebook group.
If you don't know about my private Facebook group, you are certainly welcome to join.
It's called Narcissist Negotiators With Rebecca Zung. You just go look for it on Facebook,
and you'll have to answer a couple of questions, but we'd love to have you join us there as
well. So let's see, I'm starting to see some of you coming on in here and I'm seeing people.
Oh my goodness. There's Anna. Anna, I think it is, from Kuwait. Hello, Anna. Hello, Karen
from San Diego, and Tina from Cincinnati, and Craig from North Carolina. And Alexandra
says, "Good evening. Good evening, Alexandra. And I see Dina from Saudi Arabia. Amazing.
So go ahead and shoot me your questions and I'm going to go ahead and start checking them
out and trying to answer them for you. Let's see, Rich is saying, "How do I go about helping
them? My narc has recently made her way back to me saying she's sorry and wants to help."
Yeah, so that sounds to me like somebody who's coming on back to maybe behoove or try to
love bomb you again and try to get you back into her web of control. That's just my guess,
from what you're saying. A lot of times they come back to try to apologize, because they're
starting to realize that the jig might be up, that you might be onto them, and they're
starting to realize that maybe you're not going to be doing everything they say in the
way that they want you to. Because up until now, maybe you've been the one who's just
go along to get along and they're starting to realize, "Okay, maybe they're starting
to see who I really am." So that's when they might come back with their apologies to try
to get you off of whatever it is, whatever path it is that you're going down, you're
starting to expose them in some way. I actually have a whole video on what it means when a
narcissist actually says sorry. I would definitely check that out.
But my guess is that if she's coming back like that, she's probably coming back to try
to get you to do something that you aren't doing anymore, or stop doing something that
you didn't used to do, or to just get you to back off from something. So that's my guess
on that. Usually, if you're dealing with a narcissist, unfortunately when they come back
to apologize then it's not really because they feel heartily sorry for the sins that
they have committed. It is because they want something or they want to get you back into
their web of control. So let's see what else I can answer for people. Let's see. Julia
says, "When I see signs of a narc in dating, I run the other direction." Good idea. Definitely
a good idea. So let's see. Black Flag says, "Thank you for what you do." Let's see. So
there's a question from Super Tan. "Is there hope is getting standard custody back of my
eight year old daughter after narc ex-husband manipulated me into joint custody? I'm from
Texas." So I definitely should say that I am not licensed
as an attorney in Texas, so these are just my thoughts. Definitely not legal advice.
But usually, just from my experience, I have seen, once a final custody order has been
put into place, whether it's part of a final judgment or just a final custody order, then
you are going to have to prove some kind of substantial change in circumstances in order
to modify that custody order. And one thing I do want to remind everybody is that when
you're dealing with custody or a parenting plan or anything like that, the last order
that's in place is the only one that the judge cares about. So even if you guys have been
doing something else over here on the side, or you've got some other conditions going
on or whatever, the last order in place is the one that the judge is going to be planning
to enforce. So if you want a change, you'll have to take a look at the custody standards
within your state. And I'm sure that there's probably a statute
on point that says, "If I want to modify custody, what do I have to prove?" And you'll have
to take a look at that statute or whatever that law is, and honestly you could probably
find it very easily by just going, "Modification of custody in Texas. What do I have to prove?"
And I'm sure that, that statute will pop up. And so what I would do is take a look at that
and see what it is. And remember, when you're looking at a substantial change in circumstances,
you're going to want to look from the time of the last order to now. That's the snapshot
of time. So anything that happened prior to that last custody order will not be relevant,
the judge will not care about. So let's say your custody order came into place in 2016,
but in 2014, the other parent left the kid by themselves for three days or whatever.
From the judge's perspective, from the law's perspective, you signed a custody order or
there was a trial or whatever happened that caused a custody order to come into place
in 2016, so whatever happened in 2014 won't matter. It'll only be from the time of that
last order until now. That's when they're going to look for that change in circumstances.
And substantial has to be substantial. It's got to be something pretty big, so not that
you're not getting along, because it's got to be something that's not foreseeable and
something like that is probably pretty foreseeable. And usually, by the way, it's foreseeable
that kids get older so a lot of times the judges don't really see a child being older
now as a substantial change in circumstance, because that's usually foreseeable. That's
just my thought. Again, I'm not an attorney in Texas, but that's just the basic ideas
of custody. So let's see. "How do you file for custody? What does the
paperwork look like?" and this is a question from CJ. So depending on your state, country,
or jurisdiction, you're going to file something with the court asking for custody, and you
will need to use whatever language is required for your particular state, country, or jurisdiction.
But you start off any case asking for anything from any court by filing a petition or a complaint,
or whatever it's called in your particular area. And in that petition or that complaint
you ask for whatever it is that you want. So I call it the kitchen soup pleading, because
you're basically asking for anything that you could possibly want. In general, courts
can not give you relief that you haven't specifically requested in a formal pleading. In general,
sometimes judges do give other things. But for the most part, for the big things, like
if you want custody or you want alimony or you want something else to be done, you have
to specifically ask for that in your pleadings. So that's how custody is requested usually.
Okay, all right. So let's see. "Do I need a lawyer to file for custody?" So this is
from CJ, the same person who just asked me the other question. So I would suggest that
you do, if you can afford it. If you can't afford a lawyer, you can certainly file on
your own. A lot of times there are blank pleading sheets, a blank petition, or whatever that
are available on your clerk of courts websites, or maybe it's the judge's website or something
like that, or maybe it's just some state website. But usually you can find the documents that
you need that you can fill in and file it yourself if you want to. So it just really
depends on your financial situation. You do usually have to pay a clerk of court fee.
And if you are really in dire straits and financially unable to pay the clerk of court
fee, you can even petition and ask the clerk for a hardship waiver or something like that,
so that you don't even have to pay the fee. Because the fee to file can be a couple of
a $100, $400, sometimes like that. It varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but it
can be a little bit hefty depending on your financial situation. So you're welcome, CJ.
Very good. Good questions. So I do, do some one-on-one consultation. Somebody is asking
me about that. You can sign up for one-on-ones with me through my website, which is just
at rebeccazung.com. I do also highly recommend that you join me on my free webinar, which
I do. I'm actually doing it live on Thursday at 1:00 Pacific time. So we'll make sure to
put a link to that below. Make sure you join me on that. I will be presenting it live.
I will have my live AAA session just like this on there as well, and answer as many
questions as I can on that as well. And that's on The Three Must Have Secrets To Communicating
With A Narcissist. So I give you about an hour of content and then answer questions
as well. So make sure you sign up and join me for that,
because obviously I'm probably not going to get to everybody's questions here today. And
so that'll be another opportunity for you to see me live and answer as many questions
as I can. So let's see. You're welcome, Deanna. All right. "How can I prove mental, emotional
abuse of a child to modify visitation?" So what you will want to do is probably get a
custody evaluator involved in that particular case, because the problem with using the child's
therapist is that the therapist is going to have a privilege issue. So the therapist is
not going to be able to testify as anything that's going on with the child. But a custody
evaluator is usually a psychologist who is certified in being able to create a parenting
plan, evaluate the entire situation, maybe even do psych evals of all of the parties
involved, including the children and the parents, and can look at medical records, can talk
to pediatricians, can talk to teachers and things like that.
If you don't have the money to hire a custody evaluator, then the best way that you can
prove any kind of issue is through your facts and through your witnesses. And again, what
I would suggest you would do in that particular situation is pull the custody statute in your
state, country, or jurisdiction. So just find out what the best interest factors are for
your particular area and start trying to prove up each one of those factors, because that's
what the judge is going to be looking for when he or she goes to determine a custody
plan or a parenting plan. Okay, all right. So let's see. I was going to try to answer
one more question. So somebody is asking about the worksheet. So my Crush My Negotiation
Prep Worksheet is really, really easy to get. You can just go to winmynegotiation.com. That's
the URL. I made it super easy so that people could find it.
And you can also just go to my website. It's the first thing right there on my website.
Just go hit, I want the worksheet. You'll hit it and you'll get it. Okay. So just go
to rebeccazung.com and you will find it. We'll also put it in the comments below, by the
way, or in the description. We'll make sure that it's there as well. So join me for the
webinar on Thursday. If you like this Ask The Attorney Anything, you want me to keep
doing this, make sure you like this. I want to see everybody liking this video right now.
And I want to see all of you guys on Thursday with me as well. And join me in my free private
Facebook group. Use these resources. I have so many free resources for you, and I want
you to have this information. I want you to get out of these relationships with these
narcissists. I want you to have that step by step guidance, and so that's why I do what
I do. So thank you so much for joining me on this
edition of Ask The Attorney Anything. I'm Rebecca Zung. If you haven't subscribed to
my channel, stop what you're doing and just subscribe right now. Subscribe, hit that notification
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you in my videos and on all of the other things that I do. Thank you so much for joining me
on this edition of Ask The Attorney Anything, and I'll see you next time. I send you all
light, love, peace, strength, and courage.