Hello and welcome to another episode of Ask the Attorney Anything. I'm Rebecca Zung and
I'm here to answer your questions live. I am streaming simultaneously on Facebook, on
my YouTube and in my Facebook group, which is Narcissist Negotiators with Rebecca Zung.
So if you haven't subscribed to my channel, then you need to do that. And if you haven't
liked me on Facebook, do that. And if you haven't joined my group, you are certainly
welcome to do that as well. So welcome, welcome, welcome. I see I have
lots and lots of questions already. I would love to know where you're all tuning in from.
I'd love to see where you are all at this point. So I am going to go ahead and start
answering some questions. If you are just joining I'm Rebecca Zung and I'm so glad that
you're here. I know that you are probably feeling powerless and paralyzed, and trying
to figure out how to deal with narcissists. All of us have had to deal with it. None of
us are immune. There are so many of them in the world and it is my mission and my crusade
to give you guys step-by-step guidance on actually how to get out of the relationships
with these people, real things that work, real things that allow you to feel powerful.
You know, one thing that came up this morning, I was interviewing Dr. Joe Vitale. And by
the way, that's going to be an incredible interview when it comes out in a few weeks.
So make sure that you check that out. But he's actually talking about how he just
went through a divorce from a narcissist and how even with all of his tools and all of
his years of study, it knocked him and threw him for a loop. And he said something that
I thought was really powerful. He said, "I thought I could just walk away and be the
nice guy." And it was a great opportunity for me to remind him and others and you guys
that if you think that you just want it to be peaceful, if you think you just want to
walk away, it seems counterintuitive. It's almost seems like a paradox. When I say to
you you have to create leverage. You have to have a strategy" because people think,
"Well, strategy and leverage sounds like I want to fight."
And I have to say to you that if you don't want to fight and you're dealing with a narcissist
on the other side, then you have to create strategy and leverage, otherwise, there will
be a fight. There's no nicely walking away from narcissists. Believe me, I've had to
deal with them in my own life and I tried to do the same thing. I tried to walk away
nicely and not burn bridges and everybody can get along, and at least we'll remain cordial
to each other. Uh-uh (negative) No, no. It doesn't happen with narcissists unfortunately.
You have to be strategic. You have to ethically manipulate the manipulator as I say all the
time. So hello Sherry from Alabama and hello Karen from San Diego. I'm loving seeing all
of you here. Hello Becky. Hello Mallory. All right, so this is fantastic. I'm going to
grab a question over here. Okay, here's a question from Tara Wagner. "Hello, I live
in Colorado and the person that has the custody of my daughter is willing to give me custody
back of her. Can I do a modification of allocation of parental rights?"
So Tara, great question. I'm only going to say that I am not licensed in Colorado as
an attorney so I'll give you my general thoughts, my general information on this. And that is
once you have a custody order or a final judgment in place, then in order to modify it, you
would either have to apply for a modification, improve all of the law that is required to
get that modification. Or you can just get somebody to agree to it, which is what you're
talking about. Which is of course, way easier and way less expensive. So if you agree to
it, then you would draft an agreement and you would both sign it and then you would
file it with the courts, so that now there has been an amendment to the final judgment
or a modification, or something. I don't know exactly what the terms would
be in your particular state, but that's how you would do it. Because remember the judge,
the court, they're always going to look to whatever that last order was, whatever that
last final judgment was, whatever the last thing was. So you need it to either be a modification
to the final judgment or an amendment to the final judgment, or a modification of the custody
order, or something along those lines. The terminology may be slightly different in your
state, but that's what you can do. If you want to relocate and if a person doesn't
agree, it can get very, very dicey and expensive just because anytime when you're dealing with
a custody issue, you're going to have to deal with facts and proof and witnesses, things
like that. It's always harder to prove custody things than it is financial things, because
the numbers usually are the numbers. Whereas whenever you're dealing with a custody issue,
you have to provide lots and lots of proof. That's where it can get pretty expensive.
But certainly if you have somebody who's agreed, all the better.
Okay. So Edna Hernandez has a question. "I've been doing mediation, but he's lying about
everything. Should I just not agree and let the judge decide on custody?" I would say
no to that question. You can mediate with the narcissist. In fact, mediation is oftentimes
the best place to get what you want from a narcissist, but you have to do a lot of preparation
ahead of time to make sure that when you get to that mediation, you are ready to go with
springing your leverage on that person. That's where you can put the fear of God into them.
Because remember with a narcissist while they want supply and they're like narcissistic
supply whores is what I call them, there are different levels of supply that they don't
even realize. So certain things are going to mean more to them to protect, and keep
then the supply that they get from making you miserable. And that for sure one of those
is looking bad in front of the judge. So I would say you can definitely mediate. A lot
of times, the mistake people make is going into a mediation conversation without being
ready, without having your strategy without having your leverage, and all the things that
I talk about in my S.L.A.Y. methodology. But once you have all that stuff and you've
got your magic bullet leverage and you're ready to go, by all means you definitely want
to mediate. And that's really one of the best places that you can go to get what you want.
Okay? Okay. Next one, Chef Maximus. "How to find a lawyer who understands narcissistic
abuse and will not a victim blame and shame prospective clients?" It's really, really
hard. I would say 99% of lawyers do not understand narcissism. That's why in the new updated
version of my S.L.A.Y. program, I do have a packet for lawyers. It's a five-page packet
that I drafted myself that you can just print off and hang on to your lawyer so, that your
lawyer can actually start to help you a little bit more with that.
In the S.L.A.Y. program, I also have websites and all the places where I would go to find
lawyers. And also I have a questionnaire in there to help you interview the lawyer to
make sure that it's somebody who's either if they don't understand narcissism, they're
going to support you and believe you. Because otherwise you end up being a victim again.
You were victimized by the narcissist and now you go into your lawyer and your lawyer's
not believing you or doing things that end up putting you in a difficult position.
And I feel like, okay, now you're being victimized again by your own attorney and you're paying
for it. And you also get victimized by the judges and the court system if the lawyer
doesn't know how to present things and do it in a way that basically walks the judge
right through the process so that you can end up exactly where you want to go. And that's
what I teach you how to do. That's sort of it in a nutshell, you definitely want to have
a lawyer who's going to be part of the overall strategy that you are creating. Instead of
them being like a puppet in the narcissist show, because a lot of times that's what happens
with lawyers. They end up being part of the puppet of the narcissist unwillingly and unwittingly.
They don't even realize it, but if they start saying things like, "Oh, let's just settle
this nicely" or "let's just try to send over settlement proposals through letters." Something
like that. You're never going to get anywhere with that because the narcissist will constantly
change the goalpost because the lawyer doesn't understand that the narcissist is getting
narcissistic supply from everybody scrambling around and jerking around not only you now,
but now your own lawyer, and sometimes even the judge. So it can be very, very frustrating.
And that's why I created the packet as part of the update to the S.L.A.Y. program, which
was just released about two weeks ago. Because I realized that there's just so many lawyers
that don't really understand. A lot of times people say to me, "Oh, I just need a good
lawyer. I just need a good lawyer." A good lawyer is definitely not going to be the be-all,
end-all. You're just throwing money at this person and hope to God they know what the
hell they're doing or they know what they're in for, and most of the time they don't. And
so, that's why there are people who are out there. Who've spent $100,000 and three years
later and they're nowhere, because the narcissist has basically jerked everybody around.
And so, that's why it's really, really important that you take control of the situation. And
yeah, you need a lawyer to help you with presenting it under the law and things like that. But
you got to take control of the situation or you're on a runaway train, especially when
you're dealing with a malignant narcissist. Okay. "How can I file a complaint against
a judge who's biased? My ex's attorney had a firm with her prior. My son requested standard.
Okay, judge granted." Okay. So a complaint against a judge who's biased. There are going
to be laws and statutes in your particular area that govern when you can get a judge
recused. And so, you'll have to look those up. There's
going to be some kind of procedure around how to ask a judge be recused. And then of
course you can always complain about it and things like that, but that's not going to
get you anywhere. I would say try to get the judge recused is probably your best bet, but
make sure that you follow the local rules on how you would go about doing that. Okay?
A conflict of interest is always a good way to get a judge recused. So it sounds like
you've got the grounds. But again, without knowing the exact laws in your area, I can't
really speak to it, but definitely that's going to be your best bet. Okay?
This is from Pink Girl. "If I was ordered as domiciliary parent with hearing officer,
why would judgment be denied?" I'm not sure. I quite understand that. So you're saying
that you were granted temporary custody and then at the final hearing were not? That's
what I'm guessing. If I'm understanding correctly exactly what it is that you're saying, temporary
orders don't always have a bearing on what happens in a final order. My guess is that
there was some kind of findings and a lot of times these States are very much leaning
toward the 50/50 thing these days. And so, that's my guess on that, Pink Girl.
I also do want to mention, I am doing a live webinar on Thursday morning at 9:00 AM. And
so, come join me for that. I'll do an extended version of the Ask the Attorney Anything.
That's 9:00 AM Pacific Time and we'll make sure that you ... Laura is so good. She's
got the website there scrolling down below. So make sure you join me that. And I'm also
doing a live with Keri Ford on Thursday. And she's going to be talking about how to elevate
your power and all kinds of really, really cool stuff. So I'll be busy on Thursday and
hopefully you'll be with me checking it all out.
So let's see. Question from Becky Davis. "My lawyer withdrew from my case a year into it.
Will that hurt me? I didn't like her proposal. It benefited in my husband more than me so
she dropped me. I'm $26,000." It won't hurt you, Becky, if you end up having to get another
lawyer. But you definitely want to get one who is going to be part of the strategy and
understand exactly where it is that you want to go. Okay? And also make sure if your lawyer's
telling you like, "This is the best deal you're going to be able to get" or "best case scenario
is this." You're not always going to get 100% of everything that you want, because remember,
your best case scenario is the other person's worst case scenario. So nobody's going to
settle for their worst case because chances are, if you go to court, you're not going
to see your worst case scenario. I would definitely say that. So this'll be
my last question. So this is from Brick. "What is the best type of documentation to submit
for a child custody case? I have a ton of evidence, but I'm not sure what format to
submit it all." So Brick, in my S.L.A.Y. program, I actually teach you exactly how to take the
statutes. So what you're going to want to do is pull that custody statute and organize
all of your documentation according to each of the elements of the statute.
So if there's an element that says something like which parent is more likely to foster
a close and continuing relationship with the other parent? And you've got a text message
that says, you're a deadbeat dad or you're a neglectful mother or whatever, then that's
going to be good evidence to backup that particular factor. But I would encourage you to check
out my S.L.A.Y. program and also coming to my webinar on Thursday, and you can learn
more about that. So thank you so much. This has been really,
really great. I love connecting with all of you in this way. Oh, somebody is asking about
for Thursday. Yes. If you sign up for the webinar and then you can't make it, you'll
end up getting a replay. You'll get the the link to the replay, so you can end up watching
it whenever you want to at that point. Okay? So I will see you all hopefully on Thursday.
And thank you all for joining me. Remember, today is just the first day. It's
just the jumping off point. Wherever you are is just the jumping off point for the next
part. You're never too deep in the hole, so never give up, never give in. We can do this.
It is possible. I have gotten results for millions of people and I can help you do the
same. So just don't ever give up, stick with me, and you'll be able to get where you want
to go. All right? I'll see you all on the next one.