Hi everyone.
I am here and I'm hoping that I'm going to be able to see your questions, because I am
actually trying to do this livestream now from my phone because I was not able to get
on with my computer for some reason.
So I'm going to see if I can see your comments while I'm looking at my phone
here.
Let's see.
Okay, it looks like I can.
Okay.
So this is me trying to do the 'Ask the Attorney Anything', and for some reason something changed
on YouTube which didn't allow me to get on live
from my computer all of the sudden.
So I just wanted to say hello to everybody, and I'm going to try
to answer questions.
I do see some comments coming up.
I see somebody from Lakeland and someone from,
let's see, I'm seeing breakthrough moments, says
good morning.
Okay.
So if my ex is a narc sociopath with bipolar, should I not try to get supervised timesharing
for my children?
So let's talk a little bit about the best interest analysis when it comes to children.
And again, I'm only licensed as an attorney in Florida,
so I can talk in general about what courts are going to be
looking for as far as best interest analysis when it comes to children.
And basically, people have a right to be parents to their children.
So they're going to start with this presumption that people have a right
to be parents to their children.
So they may or may not entertain things which you think are really awful.
In other words, they were a really horrible husband or a horrible wife, or maybe they're
a horrible person.
But you know, being a narcissist is not illegal, even though yes, I think it should be in a
lot of ways, but being a narcissist is not illegal, and it
doesn't necessarily translate from the court's perspective to
making that person a bad enough parent that they're going to interfere with their rights
to be a parent to that child or children.
So what that means is, is that you have to prove why that person shouldn't
have rights to their children.
And anyway, it's very difficult to prove sometimes.
So what you want to show, you don't want to go in
and say, "this person is bipolar", or go in and say, "this person is a narcissist".
I mean, narcissist is more like traits.
I mean, yes, it's a personality disorder.
Bipolar disorder, I'm not a psychologist, but bipolar
disorder could be more of a chemical imbalance.
And I've known plenty of people who have bipolar disorder who are on the proper medication,
and that doesn't necessarily mean that they're bad parents,
it just means that they have to be regulated.
And you want to be really careful about not making it look like you're saying that there's
something wrong with someone just because they happen
to have a mental illness.
Now, all of that being said, if they have something that is... their mental
illnesses causing harm to the children in some way.
Let's say that the person is violent with them, or maybe
they're just impulsive and they're not thinking straight.
They've left the children alone in the car, they've left them alone to go out drinking.
They have so all different types of partners coming in and
out of the house at all different hours of the day, and there's
no stability for the children.
You want to focus on things like that.
Not necessarily coming right out and saying, Hey, this person is a
narcissist or this person is bipolar.
So while it sounds really dramatic to say, this person is bipolar and
they're a narcissist, the courts, meaning the judges, are going to look a little bit
more to okay, but how does that affect their parenting?
And how does that affect what happens when the kids are at that
person's home?
Can they provide a stable home for the children?
So the short answer is it might cause them to need to have supervised timesharing, but
it may not.
And even if somebody has supervised time sharing,
a lot of times the courts are going to require some kind
of a plan, or a step up plan, where maybe they're no longer going to have to be required
to have supervisors sharing.
It's pretty rare that they are going to be on supervised timesharing for the rest of
the children's timesharing until they're, let's say they're five years old, for the
next 13 years or whatever.
So I would just say that sometimes it can make a difference, but sometimes it definitely
isn't necessarily the case.
So I'm trying to finish answering your questions and also sort of look at other questions.
I am seeing, it's kind of hard because I'm looking at this on
my phone, but I'm seeing something about withholding medication, and whenever a court is looking
at what's going to be best for the children, they're
definitely going to take a look at things like, okay maybe the children are diabetic,
or they have ADHD, or something that requires them to need medication
on a regular basis.
And they will take a look at whether or not that parent is giving them
the medication.
I've actually had judges put directly into court orders that when they're with this parent,
that this parent agrees to give the children the medication
that they are supposed to have, as prescribed by the doctor.
I had a client one time who was ADHD himself.
He did not like the idea that he was on medication when
he was a kid, and so he ended up not liking giving the medication to his own son.
So he just didn't give it to him.
And in his mind, he felt like he was doing his son a favor.
Because he said when he was a kid, it made him feel bad, sluggish, or whatever it
was.
I can't remember why he said it didn't work for him.
So he just refused to give it to his child when
he had the child with him.
Okay, so somebody says, what are my chances if the other party is an alcoholic and neglectful.
It's so hard to say what are your chances when it
comes to supervise time sharing.
And it's like, what is it that you're asking for?
And one of the things that I want to caution people against is when you're asking for
supervised time-sharing, be really careful about what it is that you've done in the past,
because you can't ask for supervised time sharing and
then the kids have been in this person's care on a regular basis
for several years and now all of a sudden that the divorce is filed, you're asking for
supervised time sharing, or you're asking for limited time
sharing.
And the limited time sharing thing, I also think, can be a little bit of a slippery slope
because if you're asking for limited because you think that
they're in danger when they're with that parent, I almost feel
like you should be asking for supervised because if they're in danger for 50% of the time,
wouldn't they still be in danger if they're only there 20%
of the time, or 5% of the time, or any percent of the time?
So you just have to be really, really careful
about that.
And okay, somebody's saying something about peanut butter.
It's really hard for me to see, because I'm on my phone, because of the technical difficulties
for today.
But obviously if your child is allergic to peanut butter and your child almost died because
the parent gave that child peanut butter, that's a
really good fact for you.
That's a really good thing for somebody to present, as far as trying to get
supervised time sharing or something like that.
Anything like sole custody, supervised time sharing,
again, you're starting against the wave there, because the wave is supposed to be 50/50.
So these were really good questions.
I'm trying to see... somebody says, thank you so much for your
time from the channel islands, and that sort of thing.
That's so cool.
I mean, I see somebody from the Philippines.
Literally narcissism knows no bounds, and there are people who are watching my channel
from literally all over the world.
I mean, there are a couple of you from countries that I actually had to
look up on the map, because I had never even heard of the countries before.
So I think it's wonderful that we can all come together as a community, but it also
just shows us all what a pandemic of narcissism we have in the world
today.
So thanks for sitting with me on this crazy livestream, which I had to do from my phone.
And I have no idea if this is even going to end up being a
recording that I can end up putting out there.
I hope I can, because I answered some great questions
about supervised timesharing and the narcissist.
If you haven't subscribed to my channel, I'm asking you to please do that now, subscribe,
hit the notification bell so that you can definitely
get notified when I go live, and I will see you in the next video.
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is narcissist negotiators with Rebecca Zung,
and also grab my free worksheet, which is at
winmynegotiation.com.
It's a free crush my negotiation worksheet.
I'm so glad that you were here.
Thanks for sticking with me with this crazy livestream that I just did, and
I will see you in the next video.
Thank you guys so much.