Can you use the word narcissist in court? By the end of this video, you're going to
find out if or when you should ever use the word narcissist in court. Hi, I'm Rebecca
Zung, top one percent attorney and the bestselling author of the books Negotiate Like You M.A.T.T.E.R.
and Breaking Free: A Step-By-Step Divorce Guide, and I've helped thousands of people
go from lives of drama, trauma, chaos, and dealing with narcissists all the way to breaking
free and living lives of freedom, possibility, and purpose. And I do the same thing for you
right here in these videos, so if you haven't subscribed yet, what are you waiting for?
Subscribe, hit that notification bell, and then you'll get notified every time I upload
brand new content. Let's talk about whether or not you should use the word narcissist
in court. The short answer is probably not. There could be times that you could use the
word narcissist in court, but for the most part, what you want to do is use the information
that you have to prove that the person is not necessarily a good person.
And here's why. When you're dealing with judges, you are dealing with a judge who probably
has hundreds of cases on their docket, literally hundreds. I know in most counties and most
jurisdictions, there are hundreds of cases of divorce cases, new cases, filed a day,
every single day. And just think about how many family law judges are on the bench in
your particular jurisdiction. It might be one, it might be 20, but even if it's 30,
and there are hundreds or thousands of cases filed a day, those cases are being assigned
to those judges on a daily basis. And so those judges are having to deal with thousands of
people getting a divorce, thousands. And those cases don't even count the cases where people
come back to enforce issues, where there might've been a problem before. Somebody's not paying
something they're supposed to pay, somebody's not obeying the terms of the agreement or
going along with the terms of the agreement. Or ... and it doesn't also include any of
those modification action, so people who are going back to try to change the parenting
plan, or try to change the child support, or try to change the amount of alimony or
anything like that. Enforcement and modifications are not even included in that number that
I'm telling you of hundreds or thousands of new divorce cases. The judges literally are
overwhelmed, backed up. They have way too much on their plate, way too many cases on
their docket. And judges, by the way, are evaluated. They're evaluated by the judicial
system, and they're also evaluated by the voters who voted them in, if they were voted
in in the first place and not appointed by a governor or something like that. But they're
still going to be evaluated. They're going to be evaluated on how quickly they get cases
off of their docket, and also how many times they are appealed.
I give you all of that background because I want you to understand that for those of
you who have children, you understand that when your kids, if you have more than one
kid and they are fighting with each other and they come at you and they go, "He did
it. He did this to me. She did that to me. She started it. He started it," what's your
first reaction going to be? Your first reaction is going to be both of you, just stop it.
Both of you just get along, just get along. And so most judges, they just don't want to
have to deal with it. They see finger pointing, they hear complaints about spouses on a daily
basis all the time, and they're over it. They just want the case off their docket. And remember,
when you do get to go to court, you're going to have a very short window of time to present
your case, to look like the good one, to be the one that the judge potentially likes better.
Remember, judges do apply the law, but they are human beings underneath those black robes.
They have biases. They decide they like someone. They decide they believe someone, whatever
it is. You get a very short window of time to present your case. And a lot of times people
will say to me, "I have 50 witnesses that will show that this person is a bad person."
Okay, well, but when you think about that in terms of a realistic presentation to the
court, you have to remember that in order to present a witness to the court, you have
to have time on that judge's docket. And hours and hours and hours of time on the judge's
docket translates to hours and hours and hours of money and fees that you're spending for
your attorney. And if you put 50 witnesses on your witness list, then the other side
is going to want to depose every single one of those witnesses.
So, when it comes to going in front of a judge and saying, "That person's a narcissist,"
the better way to do it ... the judge is just going to go, "Okay, they're all narcissists.
Everybody's a narcissist." That's basically what they're going to think. So, what you
need to do is put it in light of something that the judge is actually going to care about,
such as custody. The judge has the obligation to come up with what's in the best interest
of the children, what's going to be the best parenting plan? What's going to be the best
custody arrangement? Who should have decision-making authority about the children's issues, or
something like that? And so when they're looking at those things, they're going to go, "Okay,
has this person put the children's needs before their own?"
Has the person encouraged a relationship between the children and the other parent? Has this
person been respectful to the other parent? I'm sure wherever you live, wherever you are
in the world, there is some law around how the judge is going to figure out what's going
to be best for the children, so it's going to be better for you to take a look at those
laws, whatever they are, and present evidence in light of those laws that shows that this
person is not necessarily a good parent. And you can do that without just saying that person's
a narcissist. Now, if you want to say that person's a narcissist and you really want
that word to be presented to the judge, then it's going to be better served to do it in
the context of either a psychological evaluation or a custody evaluation that's done by a psychological
professional or mental health professional who then says, "I did psychological testing
on these parents, and here are the results that I found."
And it's going to be in the context of a full-on report that's probably going to be 30 or 40
pages, and it's going to have tons and tons of information and supporting documentation
as to how that mental health professional came up with that diagnosis of that person.
But even so, remember that narcissism is not illegal and it is not grounds for taking children
away from parents. I know it feels like it should because they're heinous beasts, but
the better way for you to attack using the word narcissist or showing narcissistic traits
in court is showing why the judge should care about this person's bad traits, whether it's
in the context of property division, or maybe it's in the context of showing that they have
bad moral character because they lie all the time. Lying is always going to be something
that's relevant, or something within the context of the custody case. That's where you're going
to want to use that information that have about how that person is a narcissist.
And if you are so ready to win in court, give me an I want to win in the comments. And if
you are getting ready to go to court against a narcissist, make sure you check out my video
on how to beat a narcissist in court. And I'll drop a link to that below. That's my
take on whether or not to use the word narcissist in court. If you are getting ready to negotiate
with a narcissist, make sure to grab my free Crush My Negotiation prep worksheet. It's
15 pages, and I've had people actually win their mediations just using my free worksheet.
So make sure you grab it at winmynegotiation.com or just grab it at the link below. I also
have a free private Facebook group, which has lots and lots of people who are struggling
with narcissists just like you. Come on over and join us in that. It's called Narcissist
Negotiators with Rebecca Zung. If you liked this video, give me a like, give me a share,
drop me a comment, let me know that you were here. I'm so-