Understanding the Normal Range Parent in High-Conflict Custody Cases

Welcome to Vampire Divorce with Attorney Clarke Young. Hey everyone, welcome into an on your episode of Vampire Divorce with Attorney Clarke Young. I am your host, Mike Leon. Clarke here is a seasoned family law attorney, a consultant, and also an expert witness who helps courts and families navigate the realities of these high conflict custody cases. Today's episode we're going to be talking about the normal range parent in all this. By the courts so often fails to recognize who the real victim is in these borderline personality disorder custody cases. Clarke is good to see you as always. So I mentioned and we use the acronym a lot in this series, BPD, in these custody cases that feature somebody that suffers from that. Let's explain who the normal range parent is, like what distinguishes them characteristics wise from the other parent in terms of behavior, functioning, etc. Well first, Mike, thanks for having me, I appreciate it. Well when you're talking about a normal range parent, we're not talking about a perfect parent here. We're talking about someone that if they underwent a psychological evaluation, they would probably score high on some of the scales and they might have tendencies to be like someone who's not unlike someone who could be whatever, right? And it sounds like a county fair, a gypsy, fortune teller, but everyone, all of us have some tendencies towards something or other, towards some pathology. But we don't rise to the level on a combination of scales that allows the evaluator, the psychologist, the psychotherapist to say, oh, you are a borderline or you are a histrionic or you are, you suffer from addictive personality disorder. So that's at the psychological level and the practical level, the normal range parent is going to be the one that is, for example, going to be able to put his or her child's needs before their own, that they're going to be able to regulate their emotions. The ones that aren't going to be, how can I say, imprinting children with bad habits and bad behavioral patterns. People that normally are going to, as we say, I'm going to say be virtuous, the reason virtues are called virtues rather than vices is because they are what make relationships work. So they're not some wonderful fairy book, fairy tale type of thing where, oh, he was a virtuous, she was a virtuous person, they're real, they're values and character qualities and traits that normal range people have and they have them for a good reason. And because of those, they're good parents. When you look at the pathological side of, you know, like borderlines or narcissists, these are people that are diagnostically speaking off the charts and probably diagnosed with one or more comorbidities. And borderlines often have several comorbidities. So they tend to be obsessive compulsive sometime, histrionic, sometimes addictive, love addictive behaviors with borderlines. So you can get a combination of things. So Clarke, let me ask you as we've talked about in this series, and I mentioned in the intro, that the court is forgetting who the real victim is here, which is a normal range parent. Why does the court tend to view the normal range parent as equally responsible for the conflict when you and I have discussed and know that the dynamics aren't symmetrical? That's it. This is one of my favorite questions that you've ever asked me. And it's because the courts mostly go in with the assumption that it's a bilateral conflict. And they, again, they don't know the parties and they think that it takes two to tango. They don't really go in entertaining the possibility that it only takes one to make a war. So with that dynamic, you're already going in with one step behind if you're the normal range parent. The second reason is that some judges, I've learned this over the years, they know they can lean on the normal range parent, the one that's in control of their emotions, the ones that are more mature, the ones that have a higher tolerance for highly inappropriate behavior, the ones that will never, ever abandon the children no matter how hard things get. So some judges actually will favor the predatory parent, if you will, the borderline parent, because they're afraid if they don't accommodate that parent that that parent will act out or leave or abandon the children or cause problems. And that never works, but there are judges who think that way. The third reason is that it takes a while for the courts to really figure out what's going on. And this is fair. I mean, every court has a time line, it takes in order to really get up to speed on a case. And many of them have an LA County, two hundred, three hundred cases on their calendar on their target that they're responsible for and they're rolling through those cases constantly. And I don't think they remember what happened two or three months ago in any given case. When you add all that together, you end up having a situation where the borderline, which again, going back to the basics, they're able to, they're into power, control, manipulation, and deceit. So the system rewards liars and people who engage in deceit. The family court system is not good at tichering out really who's credible and who's not. So when you have someone come in and in a typical case now in California, almost every case begins with the domestic positive strain order against the normal range parent. And the reason for that, I don't want to get into it in a sense, but you pick up all the marbles on the table on day one and it takes two years on ring that bell. So the normal range parent is going to get beat up normally a lot for the first year and a half just because the court doesn't really understand what's going on. So Clarke, let me ask you then, how does stability, restraint, reasonableness, how does that end up working sometimes against a normal range parent in the family court system? Again, this is a multifaceted question. The problem outside the court system, first of all, is that if you are always that reasonable person, the borderline always mistakes you're being tolerant or patient or reasonable or whatever with being weak because the borderline is relating to you on that power and subjugation basis. So if you don't fight back power against power and play the same games basically as the border line, you aren't earning any respect. You have to take the power away from them whether it's in quarter out of court and there's lots of things that I do as an attorney to help my clients win the battles both inside and outside the courtroom, in the courtroom setting. You really do want to be reasonable. You really want to be the one that is living in your authentic self, if you will, in the courtroom. You really get you anywhere at first? No. But over time, it accrues to your benefit because after a while the court understands that the other party was living in a fantasy delusional world where they're making up you to be this monster that you never, it's not you, it's a fictional character that they're litigating against. But the courts have a hard time believing that someone would come in and just make stuff up about this monster that came right out of a Hollywood script. And so it takes a while for the court to get to that point. But the short answer is you always want to appear, and be, not just appear, but be, the rational, reasonable, fair-minded, open-minded, forgiving, virtuous parent. You have to be a saint, honestly, I mean, you want to go in, you want to just be a saint. The court may not recognize that for a while, but that's who you have to be. What are some signs that you've seen throughout your years of doing this? Of course, of control, manipulation, the psychological abuse aspect, that sometimes is overlooked in these cases. This is a PhD level answer that I'm going to give you, it has a couple of parts. If you look at the DSM-5 criteria for diagnosing borderline personality disorder, and then you go to the other sections of the DSM-5 that describe child neglect and child psychological abuse, you will see a one-to-one correlation between the behaviors and the diagnosis in the borderline, and what we look for for child neglect and child abuse, child psychological abuse. That's number one. Most attorneys, most judges, most psychologists never make that connection, so that's like a $5,000 tip to anyone listening to this. On a more practical level, this course of control concept is really a subset of child psychological abuse, but it's gotten written into the California Statutes as course of control, and they don't write in parent alienation or any of the other things that constitute child psychological abuse or child neglect. We use the terms in a different sense in the family court system. We say child neglect in some generic legal sense, but it doesn't really ring true, or it's not identified with or referenced to the DSM-5, and that's a real problem. You have to litigate that issue with some sophistication. At the end of the day, to answer your question more directly, the course of control is when I am using another person or a situation or finances or something or your social media accounts or something to force you to do things that you wouldn't otherwise do. You wouldn't want to do them, and so that is what the statute is supposed to get to, and there are some cases coming out in California pretty frequently right now where they're defining what that really looks like. Whether it's coercive control or child abuse or child psychological abuse, those three things are, they're being misused by attorneys in the family law setting, because the attorneys don't really know what they really, really mean. Every false domestic financial restraining order that gets filed always screams, you know, the party I want restrained forced me to do this, or I've been traumatized by it, or the children have been traumatized by it. And so there's now floodgates of cases that are overwhelming the courts in California where they now have to deal with many, many, many more cases. And they have to learn how to sort through the cases that are authentic domestic violence cases, for example, or authentic cases that Shawn neglect in the custody setting. So this is the biggest current wave, if you will, it's the most fashionable thing to happen right now in the Domestic Violence Prevention Act setting in California, and I imagine most other states as well that have followed California's core example on this issue. Clarke, let me ask you for that parent who maybe is listening to this episode, and they recognize themselves in this role that you're speaking about, right? What would you want them to understand about how important it is to endure the positioning and how eventually these cases will turn out? Well, you know, I think we've talked around this quite a bit, but I think what I mean that what every normal range parent needs to understand is that they're going to get beat up, they're going to be traumatized. If you think that ages birth through 14 or 15 are your most formative years, and that from that point forward you're going to be an adult and things are going to get better and better, your formative years are also going to be the child custody proceeding. If you get a judge who is just not really savvy about these sorts of issues, you are going to feel trapped, you're going to be desperate, you're going to feel very, very helpless because you want to save your children and you're watching the, from your point of view, you're watching the court and the dysfunctional borderline parent basically join forces, if you will, to do terrible, permanent, irreversible, psychological and emotional damage to your children. So, you know, when new clients come in, potential clients come in, they have to be aware that this is a life or death struggle, and they shouldn't even bother to start this fight if they don't have the emotional resilience and stamina to get through this marathon, or if they don't have the financial way with all to get through it. I've had cases where you get 90% of the way down the road and then people run out of money and they're just basically bankrupt, because it caused a King's ransom to save your children because the courts are just not responsive at first. Well, Clarke, I wish we had more time to spend on this, but I appreciate the time, the insights and you breaking this all down for the audience as always, truly appreciate it. Thanks for having me. See you soon. That's it for today's episode of Vampire Divorce. If you want to learn more about Clarke's work as not only a family law attorney consulting, but also an expert witness in these high-conflict custody cases, do me a favor right now visit ClarkeYoung.com. Before you go, do me one more favor. Hit like, subscribe, leave a review, comment, share the episode with somebody who's potentially going through this. As always, I'm Mike Leon. We'll see you everybody next time.