Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Ask the Attorney Anything. This is my weekly live stream. Every Tuesday I do these Ask the Attorney Anything, and on Thursdays I do another live stream and that one is more on Narcissism 101 and the terms that are thrown around so that you can understand them so that when you go to negotiate with a narcissist, you understand who it is that you're dealing with. So welcome, welcome, welcome. If you don't know me, I'm Rebecca Zung. I am a top 1% attorney and the author of the books Negotiate Like You Matter and Breaking Free, A Step-by-Step Divorce Guide. And if you haven't already subscribed to my channel, now is a really great time to do that so that you can get notified. Make sure you hit that little notification bell so that you can get notified when I upload brand new content as well as when I go live like this and do these live streams and try to answer as many of your questions live right here as I possibly can. So I do want to make sure that I tell you that this does not constitute actual legal advice. What I do is I give you my thoughts on strategy and procedure and some ways that you could potentially go forward. For any specific legal advice, you will definitely want to contact an attorney in your jurisdiction. So I see I have lots and lots of questions for me here already. I'm super excited that all of you are here. I know that you're dealing with drama, trauma, and chaos, and that you're in pure hell if you're dealing with a narcissist. And if you're figuring out a way to negotiate with that narcissist and actually get the upper hand and figure out a way to actually turn this around, shift the dynamic, go on the offensive instead of constantly feeling like you're just being beat up and defending yourself, then you are in the right place. So I'm going to go ahead and take a look over here at your questions and see how many I can answer in the next few minutes or so. All right. So I saw one that I definitely thought would be a good one to answer. This one is from PR, the initials PR. Her lawyer is wanting mediation, but I don't want to give away any more. What are your thoughts? So my thoughts are this. When you go to a mediation with a narcissist, and you can settle a case in mediation with a narcissist, by the way. A lot of people say, don't bother mediation or don't bother trying to settle a case with a narcissist. It never works. And every time I see that, I think, no, that's not true. I've had many, many narcissists settle in mediation. But the key is that when you go to mediation with a narcissist, you can't just walk in and think you're going to talk it through and resolve differences because there's one key element that's missing when you're dealing with a narcissist in mediation. And that is, they don't actually really want to settle the case because they get narcissistic supply from jerking you around. So how do you get them to settle a case in mediation? Well, you have to have a super strong strategy and you have to have created enough leverage that when you get to that mediation, they feel motivated and squeezed and incentivized into settling the case. That's what I teach people how to do with my S.L.A.Y. system and my S.L.A.Y. program. Strategy, leverage, anticipate what the narcissist is going to do and focus on your case and you and creating an offensive position. But leverage is really, really key. So the mistake that people make a lot of times when they go into a mediation with a narcissist is that they think that they're dealing with a reasonable person or you just think, oh, it's perfunctory. The court's making me do it. So let's just get this over with. And hopefully the mediator will be able to help. And hopefully the lawyers will be able to help. And it just ends up being a really super expensive conversation that doesn't really get you anywhere. So yes, you should mediate. And here's why. Because when you go to mediation, if you get them to sign a settlement agreement in mediation, then the case is done. If you go to court and you go before a judge and the judge hands down a decision, then that decision is appealable. So you could win 100% of everything that you want in court and still not be done because they can appeal that. And even worse, they can file a motion to stay the orders, meaning whatever you won in that final judgment is just going to be held in limbo and you're not going to get to enjoy the fruits of that until after the appeal is done. Appeals take a long time and they're very expensive. Now, oftentimes appeals aren't successful. Most of the time, people who appeal don't prevail. I mean, it's like a 15% win rate or something if you're appealing. But even so, you're still dealing with this person. So it is definitely better to try to get them to sign an agreement. But don't go back and forth between your attorneys to try to get them to sign an agreement. You definitely want them to sign in mediation when all these people are around them, the mediator, the other lawyers, because one of the things about narcissists is that they desperately do not want to look bad in front of people that they respect, and especially the judge. So if you get to mediation and you've got all your leverage ready to go and all of these bits of information that they're realizing is going to come out if they end up in front of a judge or that they might end up with a bad result or something like that, that's how you squeeze them into settling a case at mediation. So I do recommend that you try to mediate again. And PR, it's kind of a long way of answering a question, but I thought it was a really good one and a great opportunity for me to tell you why I think mediation is a good idea, even if you're dealing with a narcissist, and sometimes especially if you're dealing with a narcissist, because that's where your leverage is going to be the best. Because all narcissists are driven by supply, and a big piece of that supply is how they look in front of people. So looking bad in front of a judge or maybe having information come out about them that's public, that they don't want to come out about them is a really, really nice form of kind of manipulating, ethically manipulating the manipulator into signing an agreement. So I call it an ethical manipulation because you're just taking information that you have and using it against them. And all narcissists are liars and do things that you can definitely use against them. So you're just trying to get back to what's fair. A lot of people say, I don't want to fight. I don't want to spend a lot of money. If you feel that way, then you've got to create leverage. Okay. So let me see if I can answer a few more questions for you. Let me know where you guys are watching from. I'd love to see where you guys are from as well. I'm here in Los Angeles, as many of you probably know. And I see somebody here who is from Arizona. Let's see. So I see somebody from Texas, Florida, South Carolina, Georgia. That's amazing. Fantastic. Okay. So I have time for maybe one more question. So let me see. Hello, Calgary, Alberta. Hi, Amber from California. I see somebody from New Mexico. Awesome. Houston, Texas. Fantastic. I have a cousin in Houston actually. Okay. So somebody is asking me questions specifically about property and how that's going to be distributed and what your rights are around property. That's definitely a legal question, something that you should ask the lawyer in your area. I'm seeing things about arrests and domestic violence. Just remember that arrest, domestic violence, things like that are all very good forms of leverage, especially if you have children. Those are the kinds of things you can use against a narcissist in mediation as leverage. So as well as creating exhibits out of emails that they send or texts that they send and showing how they lie or their bad behavior or things like that. If you create summaries and exhibits of these things, they end up becoming great leverage and a great way to squeeze that narcissist in mediation to get them to settle the case the way you want them to settle the case, or at least not in such a ridiculous form like what they would want you to do, like giving up all kinds of rights. So let's see. A question here about freezing assets. You definitely want to ask your lawyer about that. In a lot of jurisdictions, there's a standing order that doesn't freeze the assets, but it at least puts what I call an invisible bubble around all the assets so that you can continue to live your day-to-day life, but you're not allowed to make any big sudden movements like move money to the Cayman Islands or something like that. So let's see. Parental alienation is a long answer. I have a bunch of videos on parental alienation. I would highly encourage you to check those out and also check out the work of Michael Bone and Amy Baker, and they do a lot on parental alienation as well. So, all right. Well, I am so excited to have been here with you guys for another YouTube Live. I see Jennifer from South Africa. I don't even know what time is it in South Africa right now. My goodness. And obviously I have so many questions over here and I wish I could have gotten to all of them, but it's really my pleasure, my honor to come on here once a week and just do open forum and let you guys ask me as many questions as you can. I also do an Ask the Attorney Anything at the end of my free webinar, which is called The Three Must-Have Secrets to Communicating with a Narcissist. And I highly recommend that you come and join me on that free webinar as well. The sign up is going to be in the first comment. I pin it as my first comment under my videos. So, come on, join me, check that out as well. And if you haven't subscribed to my channel, now's a good time to do that. Subscribe, hit that notification bell so that you can get notified when I come on live and when I upload brand new content. I also have a free Crush My Negotiation Prep Worksheet. You can grab that at the link below or just go on over to winmynegotiation.com and it'll be all yours. And I have a free private Facebook group as well called Narcissist Negotiators with Rebecca Zung. So, you can come and join me on that as well. So, I have tons of free resources for all of you out there. So, I'm really grateful that I had this opportunity to connect with you guys on a personal level. And as always, I send you light, I send you peace, I send you strength and courage. And thanks so much for joining me. I'll see you in the next video. Remember, today's a great day to start negotiating your best life.