Kate Anthony: [00:00:00] Welcome back. So before we get into today’s episode, I just wanna let you know about a little flash opportunity that I am offering right now. Normally, I think you know this, individual Sanity Saver sessions, right? I don’t offer single sessions generally speaking, for a variety of reasons.

I don’t think they’re necessarily… they ha- they serve a specific purpose, right? Which is to address one problem at one time, and usually they’re reserved for past private coaching clients who need to return for just one thing, or for members of Phoenix Rising who are working with me ongoingly in a group setting but have one specific thing that they really might need help on.

If you’re not already working with me, private coaching generally means p- purchasing a three-session package or my premium coaching package. But a couple times a year when I have space in my schedule, I will open individual [00:01:00] sessions to everyone, and this is one of those times. So from now through Sunday, November 15th, you can book one private Sanity Saver session with me with no package or membership required.

So if you have been feeling like, “Oh my gosh, I just need a specific answer to my specific question with- about my specific thing,” this is your opportunity, right? Because sometimes we can listen to all the podcasts, we can read the books, we have the information, but it still feels like, eh, but my situation feels different.

Or is this general- generally good advice? Or does this actually apply to me? Whatever it is, right? You have the opportunity from now through November 15th to book one session with me, and we will get that answered for you And get you clarity on that one thing. So the link to do that is in the show notes.

You’ve also should have been [00:02:00] getting emails about it all week if you’re on my email list. So please check that out in the show notes, and hopefully I will talk to you very soon. All right, so let’s get into it today. Whoo, man, there is something happening lately in the world of divorce that I find incredibly frustrating, and I wanna talk about it because I genuinely don’t really understand why it’s happening.

So this is not a giving you all of the answers episode. This is a sort of inviting a conversation and to let you know that we’re actually gonna have more conversations about this going on. So women are spending enormous amounts of time and energy, and often quite a lot of money, developing very thoughtful and comprehensive parenting plans.

Often they work with professionals who specialize in exactly this kind of thing. They work with me on creating a parenting plan for their specific divorce. They’re anticipating the problems [00:03:00] that can arise when you are raising children with someone who has demonstrated over and over again that cooperation is not exactly their strong suit, nor something that they’re actually remotely interested in.

And then they take their plans to their attorneys. And often these plans are born of experience, right? You have been co-parenting with this person for many years. You may have been separated from this person already for q- for many months, and you have been keeping lists of things that are like, wow, obviously, we’re gonna have to put that into a parenting plan because they’re not cooperating on X, Y, and Z throughout the separation.

It needs to go into a parenting plan, right? And then you take the plan to your attorney, and your attorney says, “This is way too detailed. The judge is never gonna sign off on this.” What? I genuinely wanna understand what is happening here because again, these aren’t women who are sitting around inventing outrageous [00:04:00] restrictions on how their ex-husbands should parent.

They are people who have spent years dealing with broken agreements, manipulation, intimidation, shifting expectations. They have seen how ambiguity gets exploited, and they’ve experienced what happens when an agreement leaves room for interpretation And they have decided that when it comes to their children, they want as little room for that kind of behavior as possible.

When they get divorced, they want everything sorted out so that they can just get on with their lives, right? And then they do the responsible thing. They plan ahead. They think through how the holidays are gonna work, how medical decisions are gonna be made. They have been told, by the way, by coaches, by attorneys, all of the things that these are the things that need to be thought through and figured out.

How information about school and extracurricular activities will be shared. What happens when a parent doesn’t respond to a request in a [00:05:00] timely manner? How vacation schedules will be determined, how exchanges are gonna happen. They think about what happens when children get older, when the schedules change, when unexpected circumstances arrive, and more importantly, they’re thinking about situations that are not just hypothetical.

They’re thinking about things that have already happened in their families, things that have already caused conflict, things that have already affected their children, and they’re trying to prevent those things from happening again, which, by the way, strikes me as a pretty reasonable goal for a parenting plan.

Maybe the actual purpose of a parenting plan. And then they bring these carefully developed agreements, by the way, which have very reasonable language in them. The language is always in both parents agree that, both parents will, right? They’re not mandating un– anything unreasonable. They’re p- they’re carefully [00:06:00] developing it into, language that is soft and agreeable and all of the things.

And they bring them to their attorneys, and then they’re being told that they’re asking for too much detail. And I keep coming back to the same question. If we are telling parents to anticipate problems, protect their children, and establish clear expectations, why are we pushing back when they try to do exactly that?

Now, before we go any further, I wanna be clear that I don’t think all attorneys do this, and I don’t think every detailed parenting plan is necessarily appropriate for every family. There are legitimate legal questions about what a court can order, what’s enforceable, and what makes sense under the circumstances.

And very often what I’m saying to my clients is, “No. Yeah, some things in this plan may actually not be enforceable.” That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be discussed and agreed upon. Are you gonna go back to court [00:07:00] because your ex-husband introduced his new girlfriend at three months instead of six months? No.

But maybe it would be wise to have that conversation in advance so that you knew what the expectation was. The plans that I’m talking about, really, they contain reasonable provisions written in legal language designed to establish clear procedure for foreseeable situations. These are not demands that one parent be allowed to control every minute of the other parent’s parenting time at all, right?

They’re attempts to create a comprehensive agreement that reduces the number of things two people will have to negotiate after their divorce ongoingly. And I wanna understand why that would be a problem, because here’s the thing about parenting plans. For families where both parents are reasonable, cooperative, and committed to finding solutions together, a relatively simple agreement might be perfectly adequate.

My parenting plan, I don’t even [00:08:00] know what was in it because things changed so often over time, and my ex and I were, mostly in agreement, and if we weren’t we could have reasonable discussions about it. But most things in our case were, open to mutual agreement because both of us were willing to work together over time.

But when one parent has consistently used disagreement as a means of maintaining control, every issue left open to future negotiation can become another opportunity for conflict. And when we are talking about coercive control and post-separation abuse, ongoing conflict is the point. It’s not just a side effect of two people that can’t communicate.

It is the purpose of the control. The person creating the conflict is getting exactly what they want from it. They get continued access to the other parent. They get to interfere with plans. They get to create uncertainty. They get to force conversations and negotiations [00:09:00] that otherwise wouldn’t need to happen.

So when you leave things open-ended in a parenting plan, you may be leaving open the very channels through which that behavior has operated for years. And this is precisely why a comprehensive parenting plan exists. Like- this is why parenting plans are in settlement agreements. So there’s an entire field of professionals helping parents develop detailed agreements intended to anticipate problems and reduce opportunities for future conflict.

Samantha Boss, for example, she’s coming on the podcast very soon. We’re talking in the next week or two, and she’s one of the people doing this work. I think that what these specialists are offering addresses a very real need. Again, I do it with my clients. Samantha Boss, her wh- like parenting plans like basically is her job.

I’m a divorce coach. I also work with parenting plans. But we’re helping parents think through all the circumstances that might arise over [00:10:00] the years of raising children in two households and establish procedures for dealing with them before the circumstances turn into disputes. So the goal is to pr- create predictability, to reduce the need for ongoing negotiation, to give parents something concrete to refer to when disagreements arise, and ultimately to protect children from being caught in r- the res- repeated cycle of this conflict.

And I don’t know, that seems like a pretty solid objective to me. But then those plans enter, the legal process, and then an attorney is looking at the document through a different lens, and they’re thinking about what the law permits, what the other side might agree to, what a particular judge might approve, and what it might cost to negotiate or litigate disputed provisions, and those are all very legitimate considerations.

The problem is that I’m not sure clients are always [00:11:00] being told which of those considerations is driving the objection, right? They’re just being told that it’s too detailed and that a judge will never sign off on it, and that doesn’t really say anything to the client. So I wanna understand whether there’s an actual legal or procedural reason that comprehensive parenting plans encounter resistance.

Is there some limitation on how detailed a parenting agreement can be? Are judges reluctant to approve lengthy plans even when the provisions themselves are perfectly reasonable? Are attorneys concerned that judges will see too much specificity as evidence of the parents being overly contentious or one, one parent being overly controlling?

Or is there simply a preference within family law for relatively standardized agreements? And I don’t have the answer. I’m not gonna pretend that I do. These are questions that deserve [00:12:00] answers because there’s a really important distinction between an attorney telling a client that a particular provision isn’t legally permissible and telling her that it’s unlikely to be approved by a particular judge, and both of those things are different from saying that the other parent probably won’t agree to it.

I don’t know, maybe the attorney believes pursuing all of these provisions would make settlement more difficult or expensive, right? Again, the client needs to know why. The client needs to understand this, but also I’m seeing this often enough that it is giving me pause. There… It feels like there’s something more going on

I don’t know many attorneys who would say no to something that’s gonna keep them, keep their hours, racking up. That’s how they get paid. I’m not saying necessarily that they’re being greedy, right? But billable hours are important to an [00:13:00] attorney and to their standing in their firm and all of those things.

A- and yes, attorneys, some of them actually wanna get c- cases resolved. They’re looking to clear their cases. That’s their job. They wanna help their clients reach settlements, avoid unnecessary litigation, and move forward, and I totally support that. Nobody wants a divorce to drag on indefinitely while legal fe- fees pile up.

But there is a difference between resolving the legal case and creating a workable parenting a- arrangement because, by the way, we’re gonna end up in, we’re gonna end up back in court over and over again if we don’t have a parenting plan that addresses our specific needs in this case. Because parents, children have to live with the agreement for years beyond the finalizing of the divorce, and- If the f- if the final decree doesn’t address predictable sources of conflict, [00:14:00] then those become ongoing disputes that go back into the attorney’s offices, right?

And then the legal fees are adding up. We’re getting m- requests for modifications or more mediation, back to court, all of the things, right? And the children are living through repeated conflict their pa- that this one parent was trying to prevent in the first place. Ugh. So anyway, I am genuinely curious about whether some of the resistance to comprehensive parenting plans is rooted in a focus on resolving the immediate case rather than anticipating the long-term needs of the family.

Again, I have no idea whether that’s happening but I think it’s a fair question. I think there’s also the issue of flexibility. I can imagine that an attorney arguing that a parenting plan needs to allow families to adapt as children grow and circumstances change, like that makes perfect sense to me.

I agree with that. [00:15:00] My parenting plans actually have clauses about that. The ones that I help my clients with, I always put in that, parenting plans should be revisited maybe with a, a co-parenting specialist, with a, a custody evaluator, whoever, before major transitions, right? A cus- a parenting plan you create for a three-year-old doesn’t work for a 13-year-old.

It should not be so rigid that ordinary life becomes impossible. And flexibility and specificity are not actually mutually exclusive, right? A comprehensive agreement can establish procedures for dealing with changes, like I just said. It can explain how parents will handle scheduling conflicts, how requests for modifications will be communicated, what happens when they can’t reach an agreement.

All of that is still flexibility, but it is still in the plan. It doesn’t require both [00:16:00] parents to be perfect cooperators every time, something unexpected happens And when you know that cooperation has historically been a problem, having those procedures in place seems really important.

Which brings me to something else. I someti- I do, I wonder sometimes whether attorneys fully understand how coercive control operates after separation. Very often, I guess they think that the divorce is done,” right? Because when you’ve never experienced a relationship where someone deliberately uses ambiguity and disagreement to maintain control, you might look at a highly detailed parenting plan and think it’s unnecessarily complicated, right?

You might believe that the parents should be able to work out ordinary parenting issues as they arise, and in many families, that is a reasonable assumption. But in families where conflict has repeatedly been used as a tool for domination and control, requiring ongoing negotiation will perpetuate the dynamic.

And, this [00:17:00] might be something that we need more education for attorneys family law attorneys to understand. I think in my divorce strategy toolkit, a couple things in there. One is that I recently revised my parenting plan to a much more comprehensive, far more detailed presentation, and also addressing some of these concerns and issues.

And I also have in there, I think, a letter to attorneys explaining some of this, because sometimes they really don’t. And so that is also in my divorce strategy toolkit bec- I, I keep adding to it. I add, I add things to it all the time because this thing started out as 20 documents or something, and it’s now I think it’s over 40.

So if you already have it, keep checking back into the drive because I keep adding things, and if you don’t have it yet, you really should get it. [00:18:00] It’s 97 bucks, and it’s worth probably thousands for all the stuff that’s in there. So anyway, listen, the point being that The parent that is asking for detailed procedures may be trying to minimize conflict and contact.

She might be trying to create structure that allows both parents to fulfill their responsibilities without having to negotiate every decision, and if that’s the goal, I would wanna understand how removing those procedures serves the children’s interests. And I also want to acknowledge that a parenting plan can’t eliminate every possible problem, and even the most comprehensive agreement can’t force someone to behave reasonably.

A person determined to create conflict will find ways to do it regardless of what the order says. And sometimes provisions that look good on paper are difficult or impossible to enforce. I understand all of that, but those limitations don’t explain why a reasonable, legally worded provision should be rejected simply because it anticipates a future [00:19:00] circumstance or because it seems like it’s too long.

And they certainly don’t answer the larger question of what parents are supposed to do instead. Are we expected to keep returning to court whenever a predictable disagreement occurs? Every single time, you- then a judge is gonna make a ruling that could’ve been in the plan to begin with. So we’re supposed to keep paying attorneys to resolve issues that could’ve been addressed in the original agreement, and how does that serve children?

And what is the alternative? We’re asking parents to be proactive. We’re telling them to document patterns, anticipate problems, protect their children, establish boundaries, and then when they attempt to formalize those protections in a legal agreement, they’re being told that they… That, “Oh, no, it’s too much.”

It just doesn’t make sense. And I think one of the most frustrating parts for women in this position is that they’re relying on two different forms of professional expertise. Maybe they’re working with a parenting plan specialist who encouraged them to think comprehensively about their children’s future, and then they take it to attorney who tells them [00:20:00] that it w- it, it, we can’t file that.

We can’t even present it to the other side. So who’s right? Is the parenting plan specialist proposing provisions that aren’t realistic within the legal system? No, I do not think so. I think most of us know what the fuck we’re talking about. Is the attorney being unnecessarily conservative? I don’t know.

Is there a genuine disconnect between what parenting plan professionals recommend and what family courts are willing to approve? I’m not sure, and I think we need to explore it, and I’m definit- I’m planning on exploring it a lot more. Like I said, I have conversations coming up with Samantha Boss and family law attorneys, and I wanna start asking these questions more directly.

When an attorney says a parenting plan is too detailed, what does that mean exactly? I wanna know, what does it mean? And I wanna hear it from you because I wanna hear from you if you’ve had this experience. You can, head to my Instagram DMs, reply to a story, whatever. I wanna hear about this.

I am not suggesting that you ignore your [00:21:00] attorney’s advice or assume… I want you to have an explanation that helps you understand the legal and practical limitations, and I want you to have this conversation with your attorney. Really, that’s the main thing. I want you to have this conversation with your attorney.

So here’s the deal. I know this person. I’ve anticipated all of these issues. Because I’ve experienced them and lived them, I have documented them. So explain to me W- what the alternative is here, right? I really, I want you to ask all of these questions of your attorney, and then I want you to tell me what they say.

So if you have developed a comprehensive parenting plan and your attorney told you it was too detailed or the judge wouldn’t sign off on it or whatever, and you have something to to report back on this, come over to Instagram. I’m at, @kateanthony_divorcecoach. Tell me what happened. What kinds of provisions were [00:22:00] rejected?

What explanation did your attorney give? And did you eventually get those provisions included, or did you have to remove them entirely? Did you work with someone? Did you pay someone thousands of dollars to help you create a comprehensive parenting plan and then have to reject it entirely? And if you’re a family law attorney listening to this, I wanna hear from you.

Help me understand what am I missing. Are there legal or procedural obstacles that parenting plan specialists and their clients don’t fully appreciate or understand? Are judges genuinely resistant to comprehensive agreements? What can parents do to make these plans more likely to be accepted? Let’s have this conversation.

I think they, there is a real disconnect here, and I need to get to the bottom of it. My clients are asking, and our kids deserve parenting arrangements that are designed around the realities of their families. That’s just the bottom line, and the parents who are trying to make that happen deserve some answers.

So if you’re dealing with this right [00:23:00] now, if you have worked on a detailed parenting plan and your attorney is pushing back, or if you’re struggling to figure out how to advocate for the protections your children need, this is something that we can work through together in a Sanity Saver session.

And as I said at the top of the show, for this week only, through Sunday, I have open Sanity Saver sessions up to everyone. Normally, they are reserved for my alumni and members of Phoenix Rising. But through Sunday, November 15th, you can book a single private session with me without committing to a coaching pack- package or membership.

We can focus on your specific concerns and help you prepare for a more productive conversation with your attorney. The link is in the show notes, and I will see you next week. Bye.