Somewhere in the plan sits a holiday clause that reads "as the parties agree." A year later they agree on nothing, and two lawyers are billing to argue over a single word. Kevin L. Hoffkins has watched that happen for decades, and his fix is unglamorous: write it down, and write it specifically.

Kevin L. Hoffkins is a divorce and family law attorney based in Westport, Connecticut, where he has practiced for around 35 years, much of it in high-conflict custody and parenting-time disputes. He litigates the cases where two parents cannot be in the same room without a fight, and he argues that a lot of what sends them back to court traces to a plan built from a standard template with vague language left in.

Kevin and Lisa talk through how to close those gaps. A notice requirement that actually costs the other parent something when they cancel at the last minute. The difference between a fee clause a judge can decline to enforce and one written as "shall." Why a single late pickup usually is not worth a motion, and why a tamper-resistant parenting app matters once you are building a record. When persistent written disparagement can support a request for supervised time. And why an agreement the two of you negotiate tends to be far more specific than anything a judge will order from the bench.

They also cover religion in a parenting plan and the compromise Kevin reached in a Jehovah's Witness case, the family traditions worth naming that no judge would know to protect, and why he settles the parenting plan before the financial pieces when he takes on a divorce.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why vague words like "reasonable" get weaponized, and the specific language to use instead
• How to write real consequences into a plan: notice requirements and cost coverage when a parent no-shows
• "Shall" vs "may," and "actual" vs "reasonable" attorney's fees, and why the wording changes everything
• Why one missed exchange rarely justifies court, and how to build a documented pattern first
• Spelling out holidays, school breaks, birthdays, and traditions down to the day and hour
• Why you or your attorney should draft the first version of the plan, not the other side
• Handling religion, non-disparagement, and monitoring for written disparagement
• Why an agreement you negotiate usually beats a judge's order for specificity

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why vague "gray language" sends parents back to court
3:00 What to tell your attorney about the other parent
5:00 Notice rules and cost consequences when a parent no-shows
7:00 One incident vs a pattern, documenting, and going back to court
11:00 Fee clauses: "shall" vs "may," "actual" vs "reasonable"
15:00 Religion, the Jehovah's Witness case, and non-disparagement
19:00 Written disparagement, monitoring, and therapy for the rejected parent
23:00 Spelling out pickups, holidays, and school breaks
29:00 Agreement vs court order, mediators, and who drafts first
33:00 Child-centered divorce and doing the parenting plan first

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Kevin L. Hoffkins at The Law Offices of Kevin L. Hoffkins: https://www.hoffkinslaw.com/
🔗 Kevin L. Hoffkins bio: https://www.hoffkinslaw.com/about/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

Lawyers are trained to escalate. David Morneau puts it plainly about his own education: you do not give in, you never apologize, you always advance. He was successful at it for years, and it never sat right with him.

David Morneau has practiced family law in Ontario, Canada for 25 years. He was primarily a litigator, stepped away from law entirely in 2019, and returned with a practice based outside the courtroom. He is an accredited mediator and a collaborative professional, and he developed a process he calls principled cooperative negotiation. He is also a friend of Chris and Lisa's who wrote the foreword to their first book and has presented alongside them.

The subject here is fear: what it does to people going through a separation, and how the system around them keeps them there. David's view is that conflict itself is natural and even useful, and that our approach to it has not evolved. He talks about the moment he recognized the destruction litigation was doing, about writing contracts so dense he cannot imagine a client understanding them, and about a legal culture he thinks is afraid to improve in case improvement makes it unnecessary.

He and Lisa spend a long stretch on what to do instead. Naming your own emotion before it drives your next move. Bill Eddy's EAR responses, and what happens in a heated room when someone says they can see this is upsetting. Why compassion, vulnerability, and taking accountability register as weakness inside an adversarial process, and why they work in a negotiation. Lisa connects it to the strategic communication work she and Chris do with clients who have to deal with an ex directly.

They also get into the information environment around these cases. Bill Eddy's idea of negative advocates, meaning the people who love you and inflame the conflict anyway, and the accounts that publish nothing but disaster stories from family court. Lisa argues from her own ten years and roughly a hundred court appearances, self-represented against a wealthier ex, that the outcomes people are told to expect are the extreme tail rather than the pattern. David closes with a line from William Ury about the courage it takes to face the pain of human differences.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why fear, not anger, is the emotion driving most high-conflict cases
• What incendiary language in affidavits and letters is actually doing to your case
• Why the large majority of cases resolve outside a courtroom, and why you never hear about it
• How to name an emotion, yours or theirs, and lower the temperature in a negotiation
• Bill Eddy's EAR responses, and using empathy as a tool rather than a concession
• Negative versus positive advocates, including the friends and professionals who inflame things
• What doom scrolling does to your sense of agency in your own case
• Breaking a negotiation into smaller pieces, and the question that moves it forward

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why fear is the subject
3:00 David's 25 years, and why he left litigation
5:00 Fear as the emotion underneath the conflict
13:00 Incendiary language, and where it came from
17:00 Emotional intelligence, and naming what you feel
21:00 Why vulnerability gets read as weakness
27:00 Doom scrolling, negative advocates, and the stories being sold to you
33:00 Lisa's own case, and what self-represented parents actually achieve
43:00 Teaching conflict skills as necessary, not soft
55:00 Smaller chunks, and the question that moves you forward

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 David Morneau: https://davidmorneau.com/
🔗 David Morneau on Instagram (@therecoveringlitigator): https://www.instagram.com/therecoveringlitigator/

🎧 More with David Morneau on this podcast
Ep 5: What to Ask Before Hiring an Attorney
Ep 6: The Client as Consumer, Part 2
Ep 10: Taking Your Power Back in Family Court
Ep 100: How a Child's Voice Reaches the Judge
Ep 131: How to Advocate for Yourself With Your Own Lawyer

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

Rigidity is the signal, whatever shape it takes. Not thin, not obviously skipping meals, just increasingly specific: this food can be eaten, that one cannot, and going out to dinner becomes a problem. Melissa Spann says that pattern deserves more attention than any number on a scale.

Our guest this episode is Melissa Spann, chief clinical officer at Monte Nido and Affiliates, an organization running more than 50 eating disorder programs nationally across inpatient, residential, partial hospitalization, and intensive outpatient care. She joined Lisa from Miami. Her clinical framing is a biopsychosocial one, meaning she looks at genetics, temperament, and environment together rather than reaching for a single cause, and she is emphatic on one point: parents do not cause eating disorders, and the shame that attaches to them helps nobody.

Melissa walks through the categories, including the ones families are rarely told about. Anorexia nervosa, which is a much smaller share of cases than its cultural profile suggests. Bulimia nervosa, where the compensatory behavior may be obsessive exercise or laxatives rather than purging. Binge eating disorder, which accounts for more cases than either of the categories people know by name. And the catch-all category covering atypical anorexia and orthorexia, where a child is restricting hard but their body size does not move, so nothing looks wrong from the outside. She also unpicks the assumption that this happens to one kind of person, which is where most of the missed cases live.

The practical half is about detection and response. Physical signals that get explained away, including the child whose stomach hurts every week and whose pediatrician cannot find anything. Emotional signals that are indistinguishable from ordinary adolescence, and the one to trust, which is change. Food disappearing from the kitchen. She and Lisa talk about trauma as a co-occurring factor, including the daily kind that never registers as a big event, and about why simplifying the problem into "just eat" fails. Melissa makes the case for modeling, since a parent narrating their own dissatisfaction is teaching, and closes on where to start: your child's primary care physician, who has been plotting a growth trajectory since infancy and can tell you if something has moved.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• The eating disorder categories most families are never told about, including orthorexia and atypical anorexia
• Why rigidity around food, body, or exercise is the marker that cuts across all of them
• The physical warning signs that get explained away, starting with the weekly stomach ache
• Emotional signs that look exactly like being a teenager, and the one to trust
• What hoarding food means when a child has no money of their own
• The biopsychosocial picture: genetics, temperament, environment, and daily trauma
• Why parents do not cause eating disorders, and why diet talk at home still matters
• Where to start if you are worried, and why early intervention changes the outcome

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 How early it starts, and the second-grade career day
3:00 Levels of care, and what PHP and IOP actually mean
4:00 The categories: anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, and the catch-all
7:00 Orthorexia in practice, and why rigidity is the marker
9:00 Why eating disorders start: genetics, temperament, environment
11:00 Trauma, including the daily kind nobody counts
12:00 The misconceptions, and why "just eat the burger" fails
14:00 Physical warning signs, and the weekly stomach ache
15:30 Emotional signs, hoarding food, and what change tells you
18:30 Modeling, body talk at home, and building new rituals

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Monte Nido and Affiliates: https://www.montenido.com/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

There is a reason your ex seems to read your mind. Tanya Marie Dubé's explanation is that they spent the relationship training you to be predictable, and that the same thing felt like uncanny closeness in the early stage, when it looked like being understood.

Tanya Marie Dubé is a narcissistic abuse recovery mentor, speaker, author, and host of the Unbreakable Women interview series, which she runs quarterly and through which she has interviewed hundreds of experts. She is Canadian, she came out of the foster care system, and she has spoken publicly about a childhood and then an eighteen-year relationship that gave her a long personal history with this. Her earliest work was walking people through divorce; her practice now starts after the recognition, at the question of what you actually do next.

In this episode, Tanya explains why people struggle to find help at all, which is that you need the vocabulary before you can search for anything. She found hers in a textbook paragraph. She and Lisa talk about the loop people get stuck in, where attention keeps returning to what went wrong and keeps finding evidence for it, and why she points clients toward where they are going instead. Lisa raises a pattern BTGO sees constantly in family court: someone who spent years having their authority taken hands it immediately to an attorney and expects to be saved, which is the same arrangement in a new coat.

Then the practical core. Tanya's three-column exercise: your triggers, your usual reaction, and the response you have decided on in advance, with ten seconds of pause between the trigger and anything you do. Copies on the phone, the laptop, the bathroom mirror. Lisa connects it to writing by hand, to keeping a promise to yourself, and to the strategic communication work BTGO does with clients, because the abuse comes through the communication and that is where you answer it. Tanya finishes on the message designed to get a rise out of you, what is usually going on when it arrives, and why emotional stability is the actual defense rather than the better argument.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why you can't find help until you have the vocabulary for what happened
• How the loop keeps finding evidence for what you already believe about yourself
• Why handing your authority to your attorney repeats the pattern you just left
• The three-column chart: trigger, usual reaction, decided response
• Why ten seconds of pause changes the outcome, and why handwriting it helps
• How doing the exercise rebuilds self-trust, not just self-control
• What's usually happening on the other end when a provoking text arrives
• Why emotional stability defends you better than the better argument does

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Meet Tanya Marie Dubé, and why this information is hard to find
7:00 Finding the word in a textbook paragraph
10:00 Getting out of the loop, and where you point your attention
13:00 Giving away your authority, and doing it again with your lawyer
15:00 The courtroom moment, and what her lawyer told her afterward
17:00 The three-column chart
18:00 Why writing it by hand matters, and rebuilding self-trust
20:00 Emotional stability as the actual defense
21:00 Strategic communication, and starving the reaction
22:00 The text designed to get a rise, and gray rocking it

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Tanya Marie Dubé: https://www.tanyadube.com/
🔗 Tanya Marie Dubé on Instagram (@tanyamariedube): https://www.instagram.com/tanyamariedube/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

Children in an amicable divorce sometimes tell Dr. Jill Leibowitz about the perks. Two rooms. Two sets of things. They will name the hard parts too, but they are not sunk by it. What sinks them is conflict between the parents, and the reason is that a child in the middle of it has no control over anything and no way to say so.

Our guest this episode is Dr. Jill Leibowitz, a clinical psychologist with a private practice in New York City. She does play therapy with young children, talk therapy with adolescents and adults, and dyadic work with a parent and infant together to support early attachment. She also teaches and supervises graduate students, and she is the author of two children's books built around the itsy-bitsy spider that give kids and the grown-ups reading with them a way to talk about big feelings.

In this conversation, Jill lays out what separation looks like from a child's side: feeling unheard, feeling responsible for each parent's feelings, hiding that they had fun at the other house so it will not hurt yours. She and Lisa talk about the parent who is terrified their child will absorb an abusive parent's model of relationships, and why a child having their own experience of that parent, over years, is what lets them eventually sort out what is theirs and what was put there.

They cover the subtle forms of exposure most parents do not count as exposure, the case for the parent getting their own therapeutic support before the child gets theirs, and what it does for a child when you can say out loud that you cannot fix this and you do not blame them for being angry about it.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• What separation looks like from a child's perspective, and why control is the thing they lose
• The forms of exposure parents miss: side comments, phone calls, social posts, and text threads
• Why your child needs their own relationship with their other parent, separate from yours
• How other trusted adults and a therapist change what a child ends up concluding
• Why your own therapy can matter more right now than getting your child into therapy
• What to do when your child's behavior triggers a reaction that belongs to your ex
• Why letting your child be angry at you often lowers the anger instead of raising it

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Meeting Dr. Jill Leibowitz, and what play therapy does
3:00 What divorce looks like from a child's perspective
5:00 No control, no voice, and feeling caught between two parents
7:00 Bad partner, good parent, and your child's separate relationship
11:00 Why your child is not destined for damage
13:00 Keeping the conflict away from your child
15:00 The subtle versions: side comments, phone calls, texts kids read
19:00 Whose therapy matters more right now, yours or your child's
23:00 When your teenager's behavior reminds you of your ex
27:00 Letting your child be angry at you, and Jill's books

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Dr. Jill Leibowitz at Real Talks Everyday: https://realtalkseveryday.com/
🔗 Dr. Jill Leibowitz on Instagram (@realtalkseveryday): https://www.instagram.com/realtalkseveryday/

🎧 More with Dr. Jill Leibowitz on this podcast
Ep 345: Code-Switching Kids and Co-Parenting Mistakes

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

One of Lisa's clients spent forty-four thousand dollars on a single court motion. Later, representing himself, he settled the same kind of fight in mediation for eleven hundred. Rebecca Stern, a divorce mediator, says that gap is the whole argument for staying out of court, especially when your case is high-conflict.

Rebecca Stern is a divorce and family mediator who works with people across the country over Zoom, in amicable cases and in high-conflict ones. She also builds parenting plans for families whose children have special education needs, and she works as a parenting coordinator, the person who helps parents actually implement a plan when it starts to break down. She joins Lisa to make the case that the harder the conflict, the more you have to gain from mediating it.

Rebecca explains how she runs a session: short, two-hour meetings so no one is worn down into a bad decision, joint when possible and fully private when there's intimidation or a power imbalance, which she levels by educating the person who has been kept away from the money behind the scenes. She always starts with the children before touching finances, and she builds a parenting plan detailed enough to function as an instruction manual, the kind a courtroom will never produce. And she walks through the emotional skill underneath it all: tactical empathy, and reframing a fight so the problem, not the other parent, becomes the thing to solve.

She names the people who make things worse without meaning to, the loving family and friends who become negative advocates, and why they belong in your support system, not your negotiation. She explains why a kitchen-table agreement usually lacks teeth, the provisions for when you disagree later, when someone stops complying, when a move or college arrives, and why a professional catches what you would miss. Her last piece of advice is the one people resist most: take care of yourself, because a steadier you makes a better agreement. Rebecca works nationally and can be reached through her website.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why high-conflict cases can gain more from mediation, not less
• Why a judge's vague parenting order is the top reason people end up back in court
• How a mediated parenting plan can read like an instruction manual, down to a child's needs
• How private caucuses level a power imbalance so you're heard without bracing for a reaction
• The reframe that moves a stuck negotiation: make the problem, not the person, the thing to solve
• Why loving family and friends can become "negative advocates," and where they actually belong
• Why a do-it-yourself agreement usually lacks the teeth a professional would add
• Why filing starts a clock, and how mediation keeps control out of a judge's hands

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why high-conflict cases need mediation most
3:00 What mediation actually is, and how Rebecca runs it
7:00 Attorneys and experts in mediation, and how long it takes
13:00 Filing, the clock, and the cost gap with court
17:00 Start with the parenting plan, then the money
19:00 A parenting plan that reads like an instruction manual
25:00 Tactical empathy and universal agreements
29:00 When mediation won't work, and leveling a power imbalance
31:00 Negative advocates: when family makes it worse
35:00 Give your agreement teeth, and take care of yourself

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Rebecca Stern, divorce and family mediator: https://www.rebeccastern.com

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

Fifteen to twenty matters can sit on a single day's calendar in a California family courtroom. That is the room your account of the last decade has to fit inside. It is why, Demetria Graves says, the concise and factual party tends to come out ahead of the one throwing everything at the wall, and why she gave up writing long speeches early in her career after never getting past the third sentence.

Demetria Graves is a Certified Family Law Specialist, certified by the State Bar of California, and a managing partner at a Los Angeles area firm based in Pasadena. She hosts her own family law podcast and has been working specifically on what it takes to divorce a high-conflict ex, which is the frame for this conversation. She is direct that divorce attorneys are not equipped to diagnose anybody, and equally direct that they are not your therapist either, which shapes most of her advice about building a support system around the case rather than through it.

She and Lisa start at recognition, including how often the people who name the problem first are the children, and why staying for their sake tends not to hold up. Demetria describes how controlling behavior presents differently in the cases she has handled, some through the children and some through money, and is careful that this is her own caseload rather than a rule about anyone. Then the practical layer: when to make the first call, what to ask in that meeting about strategy, about who in the office will actually touch your file, about timelines, and about how you will be billed.

The heart of it is what a high-conflict case does to you and what to do about that. Filings arriving all at once by design. An opposing party who is charming with the clerk and the judge. Counsel whose actual objective is to provoke a reaction that can be described later as instability. Demetria's advice is to disengage from most of it, answer only what needs answering, and describe conduct rather than reaching for a diagnosis, partly because a label does not decide custody and partly because you cannot know how the judge in front of you will hear it. She and Lisa close on the practical plan that should exist before a petition is filed: housing, money, the car, the kids' school, and the sixty days or more it can take for support or fees to be ordered.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why naming your ex a narcissist in court weakens the argument you came to make
• What to ask an attorney in the first meeting, and how the billing actually works
• Why deciding across several conversations is normal rather than a failure of nerve
• Whether filing first makes any real difference to your case
• The all-at-once opening, and why you can end up looking like the problem on day one
• How legal abuse runs through filings, depositions, and your own legal bill
• Why custody and paternity cases often run longer than divorces do
• The practical plan to have before you file: housing, money, and the wait for support

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Recognizing it, and why a divorce attorney cannot diagnose it
5:00 Staying for the children, and when the children raise it first
7:00 How controlling behavior shows up differently, and why it is not gendered
9:00 Questions to ask an attorney, and how the billing actually works
12:00 Stops and starts, and why taking your time is not a failure
15:00 Who files first, and whether it makes any difference
17:00 Guns blazing on day one, and why the narcissist label works against you
20:00 The other attorney's job is to knock you off your game
23:00 Custody and paternity cases, and legal abuse by sheer volume
29:00 Behavior over labels, and preparing your own side of it
33:00 The practical plan: money, housing, and the sixty-day wait

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Demetria L. Graves at The Graves Law Firm: https://www.losangeles-divorcelaw.com/about-the-firm/demetria-l-graves/
🔗 Legally Uncensored, Demetria's podcast: https://www.legallyuncensoredpodcast.com/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

There are a hundred items on the list and you want all hundred, because conceding any of them feels like handing the other side a win. Erika Kaneko asks a different question: of your hundred favorite films, how many are actually your favorite? A handful. The rest are on the list because they are on the list.

Erika Kaneko is a corporate attorney in New York City. She spent years at large firms before opening her own practice about a year before this conversation, working with startups and small business owners on managing risk so they can concentrate on growing. She does not practice family law and says so up front. What she does every day is negotiate, and Lisa brought her on because those skills transfer straight to the thing this audience dreads: sitting opposite an ex with no interest in being fair.

Her starting position is that negotiation runs on feelings rather than terms, and that a deal closes when both sides feel acceptable about where they ended up. She and Lisa apply that to custody schedules, asset splits, and the impulse to make the other person pay for what they did. Erika explains why active listening reveals which items on a long list of demands actually matter to the other side, why preparation should begin with writing down what would genuinely make your life easier, and why grounding a request in something objective and then asking whether it makes sense is difficult for even a very reactive person to fight.

The back half is tactical. Why assuming the other side will say no means you never find out, and how to raise something without signaling how much you need it. When a family member acting as a proxy negotiator helps, and when sending someone who does not fully understand your interests works against you. Why you can let a person lose without attacking their character, and why whoever is deciding your case is watching which of you appears reasonable. What to do when you are worn down enough to concede everything, and Erika's argument that having gotten out may already be the win worth counting. And the point Lisa keeps returning to: if your ex has always gotten their way, nobody knows better than you how to let them believe they got it again.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why most negotiations are settled by how each side feels rather than by the terms
• The hundred-item list, and how to find the one or two things they actually care about
• Preparing by writing down what would make your life easier, not a list of demands
• Anchoring a request in something objective, and why "doesn't that make sense" lands
• Why what you say across the table does not have to match what you feel about them
• When a proxy negotiator helps your case, and when it works against you
• Letting the other side lose without attacking their character, and who is watching
• Turning a long-standing power imbalance into leverage at the table

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 The underrated part of negotiation: it runs on feelings
4:00 What negotiation actually is, versus the courtroom-drama version
6:00 Wanting them punished, and the hundred-item list
8:00 Preparing: what would genuinely make your life easier
11:00 Anchoring in something objective, and "doesn't that make sense"
14:00 Assumptions about what they'll agree to, and how to ask anyway
16:00 Proxy negotiators: when they help and when they don't
19:00 Letting them lose without attacking their character
21:00 Negotiating from desperation, and counting getting out as the win
26:00 Making them feel like they won, and why blame closes the door

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Erika Kaneko: https://erikakaneko.com/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

A person describes being thrown from a moving car, then apologizes for taking up space because she does not think her situation is that bad. Federica Velutini-Hoffmann says that is the norm, not the exception. Once you have been taught you do not deserve room inside your own relationship, asking the world for help feels like an imposition.

Federica Velutini-Hoffmann is a bookkeeper and financial consultant based in Waitsfield, Vermont, where she runs QuarterMaster Bookkeeping and works with small businesses, nonprofits and individuals. Her route there ran through advocacy. She worked at a nonprofit serving survivors of sexual violence and trafficking, coordinating volunteers and training the hotline during the day, then covering after-hours medical advocacy: showing up at the hospital, walking someone through their rights, arranging emergency orders. She left after a traumatic brain injury and chronic illness, moved into finance out of necessity, and then realized the two halves of her background belonged together. She is also a member of the Amicable Divorce Network, as Been There Got Out is.

In this episode, Federica and Lisa work through what documentation looks like when it is built for a courtroom rather than a diary: pulling the message history, annotating it against the stalking and abuse statutes in her state, and making the finding easy for the judge to reach. They talk about why a target who presents as emotional gets read as the unstable one, and what changes when the facts arrive without the heat around them.

Then they get into financial abuse after separation. Federica describes the pattern of making an ex-partner ask for every reimbursement, and why that is designed to be degrading rather than administrative. She and Lisa cover what a divorce actually is in financial terms, the non-monetary contributions people forget to count, the tool called Detour that maps a divorce's finances the way an attorney needs to see them, and why the gap in most people's financial knowledge is a public education problem rather than anything to be embarrassed about.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why targets of abuse minimize what happened to them, and what that costs in court
• How to turn a message history into documentation a judge can rule on, annotated to the statute
• Why presentation matters: the overwhelmed parent often reads as the problem
• What post-separation financial abuse looks like in practice, from reimbursements to extracurricular costs
• How to value the non-monetary contributions a non-earning spouse made to the marriage
• Why abusive partners returning with apologies is usually about winning, not about you
• Where to start when financial documentation feels paralyzing

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why targets minimize what happened to them
5:00 Federica's path from her own experience into advocacy
11:00 Documentation a judge can act on: annotating messages to the statute
15:00 Presentation, and why the emotional parent can read as the problem
19:00 The night after court, and processing what actually happened
23:00 Loving the person you thought they were
25:00 When they come back saying all the right things
27:00 Money, kids and the courts: financial abuse after separation
33:00 Mapping the finances, and what unpaid work is worth
39:00 Financial illiteracy is common, and where to find Federica

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Federica Velutini-Hoffmann on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/federica-velutini-hoffmann-44a132a3/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

Hypnosis has an image problem, so Vanessa Herrera starts by pointing out how ordinary it is. Driving on autopilot and arriving somewhere you did not intend to go. Losing yourself in a film you know is fiction. The groggy half hour before you are properly awake. All of it is the same altered state, and so, she argues, is what happens to you under years of sustained stress from an abusive partner.

Vanessa Herrera is a hypnotherapist based in Los Angeles who works with clients over video, in English and Spanish, using hypnosis alongside imagery, NLP, EFT tapping and mindfulness. She helps people find their own footing again rather than handing them someone else's answers, and this conversation is aimed squarely at people going through the legal system with a high-conflict ex.

Her central point is that the critical mind, where logic, reasoning and decision-making live, switches off under fear. Suggestions delivered in that state get filed as truth, which is how an ex's voice becomes your internal voice. The remedy is not to avoid the state but to recognize it and use it deliberately: choosing the responses you want in advance, and rehearsing them until they are what comes out.

Vanessa and Lisa work through the myths, the difference between hypnosis and meditation, and whether analytical people are harder to work with. Then the tools: writing down before bed exactly how you intend to feel and act tomorrow, because the half hour before sleep and the REM hours after are when it lands; the 4-6-8 breathing pattern she credits to Richard Nongard, inhale for four, exhale for six, statement repeated eight times; and a daily two minutes of sitting still, noticing each impulse to respond and responding to none of them. She also covers EFT for the older emotional charge, and why hypnosis is dissociative by design, which is what lets you see your own situation the way you would see a friend's.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why sustained stress puts you in the same state hypnosis uses, and how an ex's voice gets installed
• The myths worth dropping: mind control, getting stuck, and what stage hypnosis really is
• How to write down tomorrow's response the night before, and why the timing matters
• The 4-6-8 breathing pattern, and why counting stops the spiral
• A two-minute daily exercise that trains you to sit still under provocation
• How to buy yourself a minute in a settlement conference without losing ground
• Why a calm, unreactive party reads well to a judge while the other side escalates
• What EFT tapping adds when the charge is older than the current case

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why you are already being hypnotized, and by whom
5:00 Choosing your responses instead of reacting, and meeting Vanessa
7:00 Myths: mind control, getting stuck, and stage hypnosis
12:30 How it compares to meditation, and who it works for
16:30 The night before court: shields, writing it down, and daily practice
20:30 The 4-6-8 breathing pattern
22:00 Staying centered inside a settlement conference
25:00 The two-minute wall exercise, and the power of doing nothing
30:00 EFT, perspective and releasing the older charge

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Vanessa Herrera at Hypnosis with Vanessa: https://hypnosiswithvanessa.com/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.