A New Way for Society to Cope with High Conflict Separating and Divorced Parents: Mandate Parenting Coordination and Family Systems Therapy Instead of Going to Court

Author's note: I wrote this blog in 2018. While I think mandating parenting coordinators and therapists to work with high-conflict divorced families, this only works if the families have enough money to pay for therapists and parenting coordinators. Most don't, so I think we should have mental health class mandates instead, while allowing high-income parents the option of working with private therapists and parenting coordinators.

People partnered in marriage sometimes separate and divorce because the thrill is gone. Sometimes they separate and divorce because they are in conflict.  Sometimes, both partners behave badly.  When partners are co-parents, their conflict hurts not only each other but also their children.  Fortunately, 75 percent of separating co-parents reduce conflict within two years after divorce and need no intervention.  The other 25 percent continue their conflict for a long time, sometimes indefinitely.  Four to fifteen percent engage in extreme conflict.  Some parents discover their children have been physically, sexually, or psychologically (now called coercive control) abused by their co-parent, but can’t prove it in court to the satisfaction of a judge.  Many domestic violence victims lose their children during divorce proceedings because nobody seems to realize that a parent who harms their co-parent is likely to harm their children, too.  Other times, one parent disrupts the relationship between their children and their loving and previously loved co-parent. These psychologically abusive parents also often make false accusations of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse against their co-parents. These problems are all made worse by the fact that the parent most able to afford an attorney is most likely to prevail in court.  In addition, judges make decisions based on available evidence and legal protocols.  But just because evidence is not available in a form that satisfies a judge, it doesn’t mean an accusation of abuse isn’t real.  Nor does it mean that an accusation of abuse isn’t false.  My divorced family experienced both false accusations of sexual, physical, and psychological abuse (now called coercive control) and real cases of coercive control that were documented but mostly ignored by healthcare professionals because their protocols don’t place coercive control on par with sexual and or physical abuse. 

How was coercive control expressed in my family? We went through almost a decade of it, but two examples stand out in my memory. When my son was 10 years old, his father's girlfriend, who later became his second wife, spent twenty minutes grilling him about me and trying to force him to repeat back to her her criticisms of me.

"Stop criticising my mother," my son said.

Nearly ten years later, my daughter, her father, and her stepmother were walking around Montreal, Canada, together. The stepmother placed my daughter's father in charge of navigating the streets of Montreal. My ex-husband is very intelligent, but navigation skills are not one of his gifts. After a while, they realized they had missed a turn they were supposed to take and turned around to find that turn. In the meantime, my ex-husband's second wife began berating him for being stupid.

Then she turned to my daughter and said, "Isn't your father stupid?"

My daughter hesitated because she did not want to call her very intelligent father "stupid."

"It's ok," her father admonished her, "Do what she says."

So my daughter said, "Yes, my father is stupid."

She later confided to me that she also said this because she feared that Stepmom would start criticizing her if she did not do what she was told.

Fortunately, I did not have to experience Stepmom's abuse at such a close range, but I think she pushed my ex-husband to take my daughter from my care. I had little contact with her for almost two years as the ever-so-slow legal system wound its way through court before reaching a judge's courtroom.

My ex-husband's legal papers accused both my son and me of abusing my daughter despite the fact that child protective services had found the accusations "unable to determine.

My daughter, in fact, had denied the accusations to the CPS social worker, who felt uncomfortable taking a position either supporting or opposing the truth of the accusations. The truth is, I had previously obtained court orders for our family to work with a court-ordered parenting time coordinator who was a forensic psychologist and a therapist for the children.  Moreover, I was usually the parent who took my children to therapy, while my ex-husband only rarely accompanied them. Abusive parents usually don't go to therapy with their children and follow the therapist's orders.

Fortunately, the judge heard testimony from both our Court-Ordered Parenting Time Coordinator and our daughter’s court-appointed attorney and saw Dad’s emails to me.  All indicated his behavior as a parent and co-parent, which I believe was not merely guided by but demanded of him by his second wife.  

My daughter's therapist was scheduled to testify, too, but before then, my attorney said that from the judge's comments, I had already won the case.

So how can we enable both therapists and judges to recognize the difference between real and false accusations of abuse? 

I know what to do because I prevailed in court against my ex-husband’s false accusations of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse of me and our son.  What I couldn’t do was protect my children from psychological abuse, now called coercive control, by their father and stepmother.  In this article, I outline first the problems experienced by our family and others.   Next, I outline solutions based on what worked and didn’t work for our family.

Problem One:  While both physical and sexual abuse are illegal, coercive control is legal.  Unfortunately, psychological abuse causes serious harm to both children and adults.  My ex-husband and his second wife subjected me, but even more importantly, both our son and daughter to serious psychological abuse.  My son suffered significant anxiety and ultimately was diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which is caused, in part, by stress.  My daughter developed Borderline Personality Disorder, which is common among adult survivors of child sex abuse.  Both my children developed their illnesses despite going through years of therapy.  These therapists did not have medical and legal protocols allowing them to intervene soon enough--the right way to help my children.

Problem Two:  Medical and legal protocols for therapeutic interventions by therapists and judges that affect child custody do not currently adequately recognize that parents who abuse their co-parent during cohabitation or after separation are also likely to abuse their children.  

Problem Three:  Whichever parent has the most money and can hire the best attorneys often prevails in court.  Domestic violence survivors are often stay-at-home mothers who cannot pay attorneys, although many fathers lack financial resources, too.  These parents must represent themselves in court, which is both challenging and time-consuming.  Legal codes are so complex that few parents can prevail against attorneys in court.  Moreover, legal procedures don’t always provide family court judges with the best information they need to rule.  I prevailed in court because I had just enough money for attorneys, therapists, and a Court-Ordered Parenting Time Coordinator. I also possessed excellent documentation and witnesses (therapists and the Coordinator) with years of experience working with my family. 

Problem Four:  In Oregon, at least, medical and legal protocols for therapists working in acute or subacute care settings do not require these professionals to communicate with therapists who have worked with an individual or a family previously, even if those personnel have many years of experience working with the individual or family in question.  Abusers can be charming over the short term.  Over the long term, they reveal their abusive tendencies.  In order to make good recommendations for an individual or family, particularly concerning child custody and visitation, therapists need medical and legal protocols that require them to have all the information possible from multiple sources so they make well-informed recommendations.  For example, therapy professionals who worked with my daughter during her short-term stays in psychiatric hospitals did not speak to our Court-Ordered Parenting Time Coordinator or the other therapists who had worked with our family for more than five years.  They recommended that our daughter go live with her father.  If they had communicated with our long-term therapists, they would have found out that Dad had a poor record of attending therapy with our children and that the therapists had observed him criticizing, interrupting, laughing at, and putting our son down.  In other words, Dad psychologically abused our son during therapy.  The hospital therapists made recommendations for our daughter without contacting these other therapists, despite the fact that I gave them written permission to do so.  Why did the hospital-based therapists not speak to our long-term therapists?  It was not in their protocol.

Problem Five:  Parents or their attorneys plead their case in court before a judge over a few hours or a few days when their conflict has been proceeding for years.  Somehow, a judge is supposed to know enough to rule. In order to properly evaluate what is happening in a family, a judge needs documentation of interpersonal interactions between different members of that family over as many years as possible.  Why?  Abusers can be charming over the short term.  Over the long term, they reveal their abusive tendencies.

Problem Six:  Every family experiencing intense conflict and either false or real accusations of abuse has many mental health problems.  People who perpetrate psychological, physical, and sexual abuse often have psychiatric diagnoses such as Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  Both these disorders may have a genetic predisposition, but they are also often caused by trauma, including childhood physical, psychological, or sexual abuse.  People who suffer from these personality disorders resist therapy.  If patients with these disorders embrace therapy, they can get better.  If parents are required to work with therapists who reject therapy, this rejection provides evidence for Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder that therapists may miss during limited interactions.  In addition, everyone else in the family has been abused and traumatized by the disordered parent and needs mental health support, too.

If a parent with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder gets better with therapy, this is good news. Having two loving and functional parents is the best possible outcome for all children, but how do we get there, and what can we do about abusive parents who behave badly and resist therapy? Would parents with one of these disorders be more likely to embrace therapy and recovery if threatened with the loss of their child and consequently paying more child support?  

Therapy also helps co-parents and children process the trauma of coping with a parent with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder and figure out how to cope.  

Problem Seven:  Both the government and families usually operate with limited financial resources.  Therapists are less expensive to work with than attorneys.  Specially trained therapists, such as Court-Ordered Parenting Time Coordinators and Family Systems Therapists, are better equipped than judges and attorneys to evaluate what is happening in a high-conflict family, supervise parents, and help everyone heal.  Moreover, the legal system works slowly.  I had to spend more than $65,000 on two legal cases in order to obtain a Court-Ordered Parenting Time Coordinator, Family Systems Therapy for my daughter and me, and visitation with my daughter.  That money could have been spent on all the coordination and therapy we needed several times over.  In addition, the two separate legal cases took  three and a half years to get the needed therapists in place, which greatly slowed healing. 

Problem Eight:  Currently, nobody pays attention to whether or not one of the co-parents harasses the other.  Communications and other interactions between co-parents provide evidence of who is more responsible for conflict and, potentially, child abuse in the family.  Moreover, problematic communications and parenting schedule issues place children in the middle of conflict between parents.  For example, my ex-husband made frequent schedule change requests and would not take no for an answer.  Conversely, when I made one of my rare schedule change requests, he turned it down, no matter how serious the reason for the request.   For example, when I broke my right elbow and had surgery on it, he waited until just after I got home from the hospital to request a schedule change for the upcoming weekend, and then he spent the next five weeks refusing my request to change my vacation date so I had enough time to recover to be able to drive before going on vacation.  In both cases, our Parenting Coordinator had to intervene on my behalf.

My ex-husband also frequently waited until the last moment, or even after the last moment, to respond to my emails regarding parenting time.  Sometimes he never answered my emails, or he communicated vital information at the last minute.    For example, when my ex-husband was stalled in a snowstorm 150 miles from our town, he did not bother to phone me until ten minutes before I was to pick up the children.  This was a problem because he insisted I pick up and drop off at a Starbucks located a thirty-minute drive from my home.  I was already there waiting for him and faced a choice of sitting there for two hours or making multiple trips back and forth between Starbucks and my home.  If this were a one-time event, this would be no big deal.  But this kind of problem happened routinely.  Perhaps the most egregious example of my ex-husband’s failure to communicate with me appropriately was the two times he failed to inform me he had taken our daughter to the emergency room after she attempted suicide.  Fortunately, our judge was appalled when she found out about this during the Parenting Time Coordinator’s testimony.  His testimony helped the judge rule in my favor.

In addition, Dad’s emails to me were emotionally abusive.  His answer to my question about parenting issues would be one sentence in a dense, three-page email filled with criticism and blame.  To find that answer, I had to comb through his emails carefully, taking notes to make sure I understood what he was saying to find that one critical sentence.

To truly resolve the problems posed by extreme conflict and both false and real accusations of abuse in separating and divorced families, we need to change how we handle divorce and child custody proceedings.  High-conflict families don’t need courtrooms; they need to learn therapeutic communication and stress reduction skills and work with therapists to learn how to better interact with each other.  Their cooperation or lack of cooperation with therapy provides documentation that either supports abuse accusations or evidence that perhaps the accusations are overstated or even false.  Ultimately, the goal is to nurture happy and healthy families.  Unhappy and unhealthy children and families are much more likely to experience drug and alcohol addiction, crime, and homelessness.  Below are my proposed solutions to the problems listed above.

1. Require romantic partners who wish to marry to take relationship and communication workshops on subjects such as Non-violent Communication, Compassionate Listening, mindfulness, distress tolerance, and emotion regulation skills from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.  This will help people be better partners and parents.
2. Require separated and divorced couples to take refresher workshops on the same skills
3. Require the parents to communicate via a parenting website, such as Our Family Wizard, or via emails involving neutral third parties.  In emergencies, parents can communicate by text message followed by a phone call.  Inform parents that their communications with each other will be examined by third parties if one parent or the other reports problems.  Emails provide documentation of psychological abuse.  Is a parent reasonable, respectful, and cooperative with their co-parent, or do they criticize and blame their co-parent for problems and obstruct their parenting time?
4. If parents are struggling with conflict, give them precise guidelines for the content of their communications.  No non-child care issues can be discussed.  Emails need to be about parenting issues only.  Parents are to use Non-violent Communication format (I observe…, I feel…., I need…., and I request….) when bringing up issues with their co-parent.  Emails should contain no more than one issue and four sentences.  No more than two emails should be sent per day.  Answers to these emails should also be brief.  No criticism or blame is allowed in emails.
5. Number limits should be set on schedule changes in both emergency and non-emergency situations.  
6. If a parent says no twice with a reasonable reason to the same schedule change, then the co-parent must consult with the Parenting Coordinator before bringing it up again. 
7. Parents need to answer e-mails  about sensitive issues within 24 to 72 hours.  
8. Parents who come to pick up and drop off more than an hour late without an emergency should risk losing parenting time.  If they repeatedly come thirty minutes late to pick up and drop off their children for visitation, they should also risk losing parenting time.
9. Parents must also communicate about emergencies and schedule change requests promptly.  
10. If parents cannot follow the guidelines I have listed above or mediate their issues outside of court, instead of requiring them to file lawsuits, automatically appoint a Court Ordered Parenting Time Coordinator with a background in therapy to mediate parenting issues, and a Family Systems Therapist to help parents and children work on their relationships and an attorney to work with the therapists to convey the best interests of the children to a judge.  Family Systems Therapy recognizes that different family members affect the relationships between other family members and that dysfunction exists not just in the individual but in the interactions and relationships of the family as a whole.  The Family Systems therapist will relay what they observe and make recommendations to the Parenting Time Coordinator and the children’s attorney.  If a child resists family therapy, they can be assigned an individual therapist, but this therapist is always subservient to the other two therapists because they advocate for one individual and don’t know the stories of other family members.  In cases of abuse or extreme conflict behavior by one parent, a Parenting Coordinator can also make recommendations about child custody and child support to the children’s attorney, who will then convey their concerns and recommendations to the judge for court orders.  If one parent is substantially responsible for abusing their children and/or co-parent, they may have their parenting time reduced, supervised by the Family Systems Therapist, or eliminated.  They will also have their child support share increased to reflect the fact that they spend less time parenting their children.  
11. If the parent who has lost parenting time does not like the judge’s decisions, they can appeal to a judge, but they will be going against the recommendations of at least two therapists who have been working with the family over the long term.
12. Medical and legal protocols need to be developed for psychological abuse that are as binding as those for child sex and physical abuse for psychotherapy professionals and others who work with children and their parents.  
13. No medical or mental health professional should ever make a recommendation about child custody in a high-conflict divorced family without consulting with other therapists who have worked with the child and the family over the long term.  
14. If families cannot afford mental health classes and services, then the family should be charged sliding scale fees, and society should pay the rest. If we pay for police and prisons, why can’t we pay for prevention?   The costs of providing therapy and therapeutic skills workshops would be recouped in the long run.

These protocols are not meant to be a final solution to the problems posed by high-conflict families and psychological, physical, and sexual abuse within those families.  They are based on what worked for my family and what did not work, and what needs to be changed. I plan to travel he country speaking to domestic violence and child sex abuse advocates for their ideas and experiences working with wounded families.  I also want to invite mothers and fathers struggling with extreme post-separation and divorce conflict to share their stories and ideas with me. Please understand that I am one person working alone. I need help, and until that help comes, I cannot give anyone ongoing support, just limited, one-time support.  Please also know I am going to tell you the best way to cope without the laws being changed is what you can do on your own. Work with therapists and take their advice. And if you can’t afford therapy, then you can find books on Non-Violent Communication and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy at your local library or bookstore. Join a support group for these skills if you can.  If you can’t, use journaling to learn these skills on your own.