Speaker 1: Child custody is a mental game. I today want to talk about the mental game of the law and the court system. The point I want to make about this is that this becomes mental warfare. What are your weapons in the battle? Okay, so we've analyzed the attorney's approach and we know what their weapons are, but for you, your weapons are as follows. In my experience, these are the top three. I'm gonna give you the top three things that I think are a client's biggest weapons based on my 15 years of working alongside Thomas in this day out, day out, day in, day out, excuse me, exclusively in family law. ♪ Oh, we are in together ♪ ♪ Bulls and fire together ♪ ♪ We are in together, together ♪ It's kind of like both of my boys played basketball in high school. And I know that for both of them, especially my older one, I think, was very kind of mentally into the game and mentally into, you know, faking his opponents out or trying to intimidate them in some way, or, you know, trying to, you know, fake or bluff certain moves and that kind of thing. And so that type of mental jockeying comes into the courtroom when you have attorneys. And bear with me if you don't have an attorney or can't afford an attorney, because we're gonna walk down that path of what all this looks like. But if you do have an attorney and they're getting ready, especially for something big like a trial, then they have certain weapons, right? Certain tools in their tool chest that they can use. Now, what's their number one tool? Their number one tool is the law, right? That's what they're trained in. That's what they went to school for. That's what they've studied. And then when they get in and they're practicing in a specific area like family law, as they're doing that practice year in and year out, their knowledge and their wisdom and their experience is increasing over that period of time. So they get to know that particular area of law very, very well. Knowing that law and knowing it off the top of their head in your state is going to be a huge advantage in the case. Okay, what's their second weapon? I think the first one of it being the law, that's kind of a no brainer. You probably expect me to say that, right? The second weapon is more of a mental warfare type of weapon. And part of an attorney's job is putting the other side at risk. So why is that? Because the more risk that they can create for the opposing party, the more leverage they have to get the case settled or to get the other side to give in to their terms and conditions or whatever it is. So it's sort of like, if you can think of it like I said, relating back to basketball or relating to a poker game where you're holding this hand and the more that you can make the other side think you have this fantastic hand, the more likely they are to fold, right? And so these are the types of things that are going through your attorney's mind when they're legally, when they're working on the legal aspect of your case. The third weapon that I think that becomes very important for the attorney is preparation. So when we talk about getting ready for court, Thomas used to say, for a trial, for every hour of trial I have, I need at least an hour of time to sit and prep, okay? Because they have to work up their direct examination, their cross-examination, they gotta know all the different facts of the case. Thomas used to sit down and make a whole new list of notes, of dates, date of marriage, date of separation, birth dates of the kids, full names, have everything kind of in front of him and go through it ahead of time. And a lot of that stuff, even if a paralegal could do it or type it out or do whatever, it doesn't get it embedded into the attorney's mind in preparation for this trial or this motion that they're gonna do, right? They've got to have those facts embedded in their brain on your case. And so that's part of what they get really focused on preparing for. And that's after we've already done all the paperwork, filed everything and done all of that, this is just the attorney sitting down and mentally preparing and thinking through where are my good areas where I have strong legal argument on the law? Where are the areas that I can potentially put the other person at risk and poke holes in their credibility and in their testimony? And then, as I'm preparing, I'm thinking through those things and I'm figuring out what all those different pieces are. The mental preparation side of it requires that attorney to sit down in the quiet and really pour over your case and get your life, essentially, embedded in their brain enough to where they can talk about it as if it were their own life, as if it were second nature. And that doesn't happen instantaneously. They've gotta take the time and the process to do that. Your attorney is going to use all of these weapons once we have everything filed and all that in, then they're gonna sit down and go over everything. And let's not forget, they had to go over everything in the first instance to decide what facts go into your declaration. What exhibits are we going to present? Which things line up well with the legal arguments? Which things put the other side at risk? Which things don't have as much value? And you only have so much time. So they really have to analyze it and figure out what are my top three, maybe four points that I can really drive home that are gonna give me the best leverage. A lot of times I have clients come back and say, ah, you know, I'm really frustrated. I feel like my attorney didn't say what I wanted them to say or there was this particular thing or I wanted them to point out that I didn't do A, B, C or D. What you guys have to keep in mind is that's emotional for you, right? That's an emotional need you have to be validated, to be heard and all of those things. And just because you have an emotional need around an issue doesn't mean it's the best argument in your court case. That's what you're relying on your attorney for because we're relying on their knowledge of the law. We're relying on their experience at putting the other side at risk. We're relying on their ability to prepare and analyze your case, okay? Now, let's talk about, and again, I'm gonna bring this back home if you don't have an attorney so stick with me, okay? But let's talk about now what are your weapons in the battle, okay? So we've analyzed the attorney's approach and we know what their weapons are, okay? They're really in the mental warfare, the law, the preparedness, all those kinds of things. But for you, your weapons are as follows. In my experience, these are the top three. I'm gonna give you the top three things that I think are a client's biggest weapons based on my 15 years of working alongside Thomas in this day out, day out, day in, day out, excuse me, exclusively in family law, okay? Your communication with the other side is almost always your number one weapon. And the reason is because if you can do it right, if you can do it well, you can boost your credibility with the court. You can show the court that you're trying to be cooperative. You can show the court that you're trying to be reasonable. You can show the court that your ex is difficult. You can often, through your own behavior, create situations where your ex shows their true colors and becomes difficult or becomes combative or any of those things. And that communication can be gold for your case, whether you're representing yourself or if you have an attorney. If you have an attorney and you can handle your communication well, your attorney's going to love you because honestly, most of the time, your attorney's ability to succeed or fail in court comes down to how well you use your three weapons, okay? The attorney's only as good as what you give them, okay? They can only analyze and prepare and do all those things based on the information you're giving them to work with. So if you're going into your communication and you're handling that poorly and you guys are going back and forth or there's a lot of argument with your ex or there's a lot of conflict or you're documenting your case and your communication, you're doing it wrong. And then you hand that to your attorney and they're like, well, I can't use this. This isn't helpful. And so instead of being able to give them some leverage, you know, a bullet in their gun, so to speak, for lack of a better metaphor, you've left them flat because the communication doesn't make you look great either. And I find this is highly underrated because it so impacts your credibility. And so the credibility doesn't just affect what you're saying in that moment. It affects the validity that the court gives to every argument that you're making. The second weapon that you have is your own behavior. And again, this is a place that when emotions get high and let's face it, especially at the initial breakup, for all of us, emotions are usually high. And so when your emotions are high or you have an ex that's able to push you into anxiety, into fear, into stress, guess what that does? Makes you reactive. Guess what happens when you're reactive? You don't behave well, or you don't behave the way the court would want you to. And so a lot of times people will make decisions in that moment that are intuitive to us as what we think is reasonable as a human being, but I find a lot of times in those decisions, the court goes, hmm, not really the best decision. Now, what does that do? Hurts your credibility. We're back to the same problem. So if you're behaving poorly as new situations come up like this, guess what? You're handing your attorney situations where you've already kind of dug the hole and they can't magically just pull you out of it after you behave poorly. If you want your attorney to win your case, the best way for you to help them is to communicate well and to behave well. And even if you don't have an attorney, you need to do those things so that when you go into court and you're representing yourself, you can show the court that you're trying to do the best that you can and that you're taking responsibility for your part in the situation. And that builds your credibility in front of the judge. We wanna give details. We wanna justify why we did what we did. And we want to be heard. We wanna be heard. This process is emotional and we wanna be heard. But here's the thing, the courtroom is not the place for that. When you start trying to be heard in the courtroom, you blow up your credibility. They're not looking for a whole background from you on what's been happening. And honestly, this issue right here that I'm talking about of giving too much detail in court and elaborating too much, which ladies we're guilty of, I'm sorry to say, I'm right there with you. And I'm a talker, as you all know. And so honestly, you know, I get it. You know, it's kind of preaching to the choir kind of thing because I already know, I get it. I'm a talker. I wanna be heard, all of those things. But this is one of the number one things that causes judges to get frustrated with somebody. And a lot of times what will happen is you'll get cut off. They'll stop you. You won't be able to get in your whole life story of what happened. And people come back and they say, that judge was against me. That judge wouldn't listen to me. That judge wouldn't, well, a lot of times, here's the problem. That judge has 15 cases on their calendar that they have to get through. And they're trying to ask you for specific information so that they can make decisions on this case, be done and move on. They don't have time to spend 30, 60 minutes on every single case, letting everybody feel heard. Our third weapon is educating ourselves about the law. Okay, you don't have to have gone to law school to be able to represent yourself in court. If you're in a situation where you can't afford an attorney and you have to represent yourself in court, then that's the situation you're in. And that's just the reality of it. But what you can do is there's a law library. There are resources. A lot of the courts have online self-help resources. If you're in a small rural area, the procedures might be a little different, but the laws are the same statewide. So a lot of times you can find online law libraries in different counties that will give you some of the same basic information. In California, one of my favorite online law libraries is the Sacramento Law Library. I just think it's set up really well online. It has a lot of good resources. I use it frequently. I'm in San Diego. Procedures vary slightly county to county, but the law in the state is the same. So that's a great resource that I can tap that's available. And so you have to get online and explore and try to educate yourself about what the law is in your area, especially if you are gonna represent yourself. If you have an attorney, that's obviously not as critical, but I think it's still helpful to understand what your attorney is up against and what they're trying to do. Even if you have an attorney, you need to educate yourself so that you can leverage your attorney appropriately, save yourself a ton of attorney's fees, and be able to give them the pieces they need to actually do what they're there to do, which is practice law. They're not really there to tell you how to communicate, how to behave, and how to handle all these situations. They hope that you have enough understanding and self-awareness to know what the court wouldn't, wouldn't want you to do in those situations. And it gets very expensive when you're relying on your attorney for that education around those things. But most attorneys I find don't, they didn't go to law school to handle that emotional aspect of it, right? What you need is something that fills that gap, that educates you from both, what does the court want side and how am I behaving side, so that those two things can work together for you. Because if those two pieces are working counterproductively, you don't get any leverage in your case, and that's so, so important. This again, you know, is an example of why coaching services are so valuable, because it helps you pull all that together. It helps you know what you need to do. It helps you know if you have an attorney, what they need from you. It helps you leverage the situation and increase your odds of success in court. Because again, most of the time when people fail, I find it's because of their own communication and their own behavior. It's not usually some procedural gotcha, you know, which is what we think from watching all these law shows and all this legal stuff on TV, right? We think there's a hat that their attorney's gonna pull a rabbit out and we've got some gotcha, you know. But it doesn't really work that way in family court because the judge isn't there to decide if someone's guilty or innocent. They're there to try and decide what's best for the family and the children specifically. And that's what guides most of their decision. And a lot of times I think we come at it trying to prove who's more guilty or more innocent, me or my ex-spouse. And that's not the lens through which your judge is analyzing this situation. The biggest thing that you can do in this situation is make sure your communication, your behavior is on point and that you're educating yourself around what the court wants from you so that you can understand where your leverage points are. Okay? That is the most important piece, whether you have an attorney or whether you don't. It all works together. So this is an episode that Thomas and I had talked through a lot and we had planned on recording. This was kind of in the hopper. And so I hope I've done a good job of presenting sort of the attorney side and the personal side for you. And I hope it's been helpful. If you are watching us on YouTube, don't forget to subscribe so you get notified as new episodes come out. And if you're listening to the podcast, don't forget to subscribe also so you get notified as new episodes come out. And thanks for joining me. ♪ We'll grow in number ♪ ♪ Fueled by love to see the horizon ♪ ♪ Turn us to thousands ♪